Our baby story begins......

Here is baby Noah at 12 Weeks ....

So Grandma Murphy has given me the idea to blog the progress of our growing family!

Since we are so far away, this is a great way to keep in touch with everyone and you can keep updated on our progress!!!

As you can imagine, after over a year of trying we were beyond ecstatic to find out that we were pregnant! After many tests with a fertility Dr., he told us that we would have a very difficult time getting pregnant on our own. So we set a date (December 17th) to have a fertility procedure done. Our parents knew that we were working with a Dr. and we wanted them to have some element of surprise to when we got pregnant so we told everyone that our procedure was not going to take place until April so that way when we got pregnant in Jan.... they would be surprised!

Well the surprise was on us because a week before Thanksgiving, for some unknown reason to me, I was compelled to take a home pregnancy test and much to my COMPLETE SHOCK.... It actually said "Pregnant" in the little window. I can't tell you how long I had waited and dreamed to see that one little work appear in that one little window. I was frozen in disbelief.

I had always dreamed of all the different cute ways that I could tell Shawn that we were pregnant (a t-shirt that said "I love my pregnant wife", putting a "Baby on Board" sign up in his car, putting a big bun in our oven.... etc.) but he came walking in the bathroom and found me with the test out and ALL the direction spread out all over the counter as I was reading to figure out what I had done WRONG to get what I was sure was a false positive. So he says, "What are you doing?" I didn't even know what to say... I just stared at him in shock, my face white as a ghost. He again said, " What the heck are you doing?" So I just handed him the stick and he looked at it and then looked up at me and it was like looking in a mirror. The same shocked pale white face says "NO WAY!!!"

Of course we found out on a Friday night and had to wait the entire weekend to take a test at the Dr. But the 5 home tests we took that weekend pretty much confirmed it for us.

And it has been wonderful ever since!

We have been having a FANTASTIC pregnancy. No morning sickness at all. I was extremely tired the first trimester and could fall asleep at the suggestion of a nap. :) Since we worked with our fertility dr the entire 1st trimester, he did an ultrasound every 2 weeks the entire 1st trimester so we have truly gotten to watch our baby grow in pictures. It's been AMAZING.

We are now 16 weeks pregnant! I am finally starting to show and it's SO fun. I went and got 2 pair of maternity pants which are a little too big but will be fitting soon enough. My regular pants just finally got too tight. It's all finally starting to feel really REAL.

Lucky for us, our friend Shelley is an Ultrasound technician (not to mention 7.5 months pregnant herself). Usually you can't find out the sex of the baby until at least 18 weeks but Shelley snuck us into the hospital she works at and scanned us for an HOUR and was able to tell! It has been killing my mom that she is so far away and missing all of the pregnancy so Shawn brought our laptop and webcam into the room and was able to hook it all up so that my parents and grandma were able to watch the ultrasound live and be there when we found out that we are having a BOY!!!!!

























Shawn and I had been convinced the entire pregnancy that we were having a Girl. We were going to name her Charlee. Our minds have been completely wrapped around the idea of a girl. We called the baby Charlee all the time. So when we found out we were having a BOY.... it was like finding out that we were pregnant all over again! Shock Shock Shock! It's over a week later and we are STILL in SHOCK!!! LOL

But SOOOOOOOOOOO excited about a boy! We are 99% sure of his name .... Noah Tomek Helwig. Or I guess I should say that I am 99% sure. Shawn is still on the fence (he says 70%) about Noah but we will see how THAT goes. LOL..... Like Sandy said, "He got to pick the middle name so I should get to pick the first name".... Let's hope I can get him to love the name as much as I do....

The Dr. says that I probably won't be able to feel the baby move for another 4-6 weeks. We are anxiously awaiting that next step.

Our good friend Candice is a nurse in Labor and Delivery at the Hospital that we are delivering at so that is makeing me more compfortable with the whole delivery scenerio. All she had to say was "I'll make sure you get the best anestisiologist for your epidural" and I was SOLD!!! LOL

We are thinking that we wanted the theme of the baby's room to be music notes (for Shawn) and Irish stuff (for me). So we decided on an Irish Lulaby. My friend Megan is an artist and she is going to paint one entire wall a page of sheet music for an Irish Lulaby. We will have both music notes and Shamrocks throughout the room. So I am excieted about that.

Our neighbor Elizabeth took us to Babies-R-Us a few days ago and helped us Register. We were completely overwhelmed and shocked that they could have a stor THAT big just filled with baby stuff. Thank god she went with us and gave us all her advice (she has 2 kids). We still have not picked out the big stuff like cribs, car seats, and strollers. But it was still fun to get familiar with all the stuff.

I know we have not had anything too exciting happen yet but I'll keep posting and keep you all updated on our story.....

We are due July 24th! Oh how fun 4th of July is going to be.... LOL.... We also have Jana's wedding in May in Minnesota and our friends Shane and Rebecca's wedding in Miami in June. So the summer will be very interesting.

We love you all and thanks for being interested in our expanding little family!!!

xoxoxoxo -
Shawn, Rebecca & Noah