12 weeks, 2 days bump

Well here is our most recent belly picture. It is definitely starting to show, clothes are definitely becoming tighter. It is definitely smaller in the morning (when this picture was taken before heading to the gym-sorry for the clothes) then by afternoon and evening. I swear it grows throughout the day :-)

We will keep posting pictures in the coming weeks and will update after our appointment on Wednesday.

Hope that everyone is enjoying their weekend.

Love always,

Ben and Gabrielle

1/3 down, 2/3 more to go!

We officially hit 3 months today! 1/3 of the pregnancy done. Man time is flying by for us. Baby Rivera is now the size of a lime. Reflexes are a huge development this week. Fingers and hands will start to open and close, toes will start to curl, eye muscles will flicker, and the mouth with start to make sucking movements. The baby is making huge growth strides, just in the past 3 weeks he/she has already more than doubled in size. Gabrielle's clothes are definitely starting to get tight, and there is definitely a baby bump growing. We will try and take pictures this weekend!

Our next Dr's appointment is next Wednesday (day before we turn 13 weeks). We should be able to hear the heartbeat, so we are looking forward to that.

Ben is planning on working on the nursery some more the next couple of weekends. Gabrielle's parents bought us our crib and mattress and those items came in today. We are very excited (thanks so much!!!), it is all starting to seem even more real. Here is a picture of the beautiful crib (that isn't the bedding we are looking at but the crib and its color).

That is about all to report here.

Hope everyone is doing well.

We love and miss you all.

Love always,
Ben and Gabrielle

Happy Easter!

Hello everyone! We hope that you are all having a wonderful day and are hopefully able to spend it with family and friends. We had a wonderful evening last night, dinner with friends and then a lovely Easter Vigil at the church. Today has already shown to be an absolutely beautiful day!

It is hard to believe that this time next year we will have a little one (6 month old)! We are going ahead an posting this week's belly picture. The picture was taken today, where we are 10 weeks, 3 days.

Well sorry that this was so short but we have a lot to try and get done before we head out for early dinner at Gabrielle's parents and then hopefully able to meet up with the Rivera's after at Danielle's place. Wish us luck to make it everywhere, we would really love to see everyone!!

We will update again soon.

Love always,

Ben and Gabrielle

9 weeks 2 day picture

Well, I debated putting up one of these...but figured why not? We took this a few days ago when I was at 9w2d. While I am not showing a lot, or to anybody who wouldn't know (still have comfortable fitting clothes) we have both noticed that I have started to develop a slight bump. We will definitely add more of these as we do start to show more, but we had been asked when we would start posting any so here is one to at least start :)

Everything else is going well here. Ben started filling in the holes in the wall in the nursery. He is about half way done with that and then he will start sanding the fills down. The house is still coming together slowly. We think the front landscaping layout is just about done, then it is just a matter of getting the material to build the retaining wall...and then the rest of the plants, etc to put in there. It will be some time :) As far as the backyard....Ben has pulled out some stuff and is just working on trying to get the grass back to normal. So anyway you look at it we have plenty of things going on here!

We can't believe we are already approaching our 1 year Anniversary. It's hard to think that almost one year ago we were all together in St Augustine for our wedding. We are finalizing plans on what we are going to do. I think we are going to spend the day at one of the theme parks and then go to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Orlando, the Columbia. I know I am ready to eat some cake :)

Well we hope everyone is doing well! It is finally feeling like Florida again. Hopefully it is warming up for everyone too.

Love always,

Ben and Gabrielle

Holy Heartbeat Baby Rivera!

Today we had our first official OB appointment. We weren't sure what to expect and we were definitely surprised to leave with another ultrasound. We started the appointment with a routine question and answer session, then they did an exam. After the exam the Dr told us that he was going to attempt to try and see about hearing a heartbeat. He warned us that we were right on the edge of when we could possibly hear it (we are already 9 weeks tomorrow!) but not to worry if we didn't, we would just move rooms and do a trans-abdominal ultrasound if not. So he pulls out this little portable audible ultrasound and unfortunately we couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat. So we move into the ultrasound room. We could immediately see Baby Rivera's heart flickering on the screen (definitely much more clearer than last time). We were also able to see how much he/she has already grown since the last time, he/she is starting to take shape like a baby rather than just a blop on the screen. So as you see in the bottom picture (which shows the measurement of the BPM), Baby Rivera's heart rate was at 174 BPM! That is on the higher end of the average for where we are, but very good.

The gender guessing has begun already. Both grandmothers to be are saying Girl. So we guess only time will tell. It looks as if we are halfway to finding out what we are having. The Dr says we should find out around 18 weeks! Any others want to start saying their guess?

So today's appointment went really well. We are still really happy with him and his office. At this point we are now going to be going for appointments every 4 weeks. Our next appointment is scheduled for Wednesday, April 21. There shouldn't be too much going on at that one. We will again try to listen for the heartbeat (he said that is something he does just about at every visit). We have to go finish up some blood work this Friday and then we will be progressing as normal. Everything is looking great though!

We can't thank you all enough for the love and support you have shown so far. We love you all and appreciate it.

We hope you are all doing well!

Love always,
Ben and Gabrielle (and baby Rivera)

Starting to feel the sun!

After what has seemed like months and months of cold weather, it looks like we may finally be feeling a nice warm change. The weather this weekend was finally absolutely beautiful, and it looks like we are going to be seeing that trend for some time. Hopefully our good ole friend Florida is back!!

So as of Thursday we were now at 7 weeks pregnant (putting us today at 7 weeks 4 days). Currently Baby Rivera is the size of a blueberry. The big news with growth this week is that hands and feet are emerging from developing arms and legs! It is crazy how many things are going on right now with her/him and right now it is unnoticeable to the non-knowing person.

All is well here. Just wanted to check in with everyone!

We hope everyone is doing well.

Love always
Ben and Gabrielle

We have a heartbeat!

Words can not even begin to express what a wonderful site today's doctor visit was. It was by the far the neatest thing we have ever seen and to know that that was our little baby was just amazing. The doctor said the heart is beating at about 100 bpm and we are looking excellent. Based on menstrual cycle measuring we are 6 weeks today. The ultrasound is measuring us at 5 weeks and 5 days, so the doctor was really happy to see our numbers lining up. We are still proceeding at the 6 weeks time frame with an estimated due date of 10.28.10.

Some information about the picture: The POS FHA just shows that we had a positive fetal heart-rate found. Not sure if you can see the little white * s but that is the baby, at the very top. So we have definitely made some progress.

We go back to the doctor in 3 weeks and that will be our first official OB Appointment. We will then go over any of our questions and do a lot of paperwork and getting registered in the hospital among some of the other basic prenatal visit stuff. From that point we will just be going once every four weeks till we get closer to the due date and then we will schedule things more frequently.

Gabrielle has been quite fortunate still (though we are taking it day by day) with no bouts of morning sickness, just fatigue and a couple other small things. The strangest thing has been her lack of desire to have sweets, mainly ice cream..which used to be a nightly ritual has now stopped.

Ben did a great job this past weekend with cleaning up the garage. We can almost get a car in there now :) It looks great!

So that is our news here for now. Will continue to update.

We hope you are all doing well.

Love always,

Ben and Gabrielle