The Beginning

The pregnancy tests in El Salvador aren’t the same or as easy as what you can find in the states. They come with 2 parts- the stick that has the HCG test strip in it, and a dropper. So really the test is 3 parts: you have to find a cup to pee in and squeeze it up with the dropper and put it on the test. Not that this is a bad thing, but it’s just more steps. And I don’t know, I just didn’t know if I could trust them as much. So I bought a few boxes on amazon.com of the Clearblue Digital and First Response tests.

This was a mistake.

They came in the mail well before I was set to miss a period.... But because the box says that it “can detect pregnancy up to 5 days early,” I started using them. I guess it was the excitement of the possibility of having a baby... and me having a little too much time on my hands. I used up all 11 tests, and they all came back negative. Even the last one that I took on the day of my missed period. So I figured it just wasn’t happening that month.

But when days passed and I still had no sign of my monthly visitor, I got a stronger and stronger hunch that maybe it was happening after all. Too bad I had used up all my fancy tests, right? So I had to stop at the pharmacy and grab one of those 2 piece Salvadoran tests. 

Lesson Learned: Don’t buy the tests until you actually need them! :)

So that night Noel made me pork chops and green beans for dinner and afterward my stomach was feeling all funny. Not because of Noel’s cooking, he’s a great chef. I just felt different, I had a feeling something was up. I went to bed so nauseous that night. Before I went to bed I got the test and all its parts ready and set out for the morning.

When I woke up in the morning I ran straight to the bathroom. I stood there in anticipation as I watched the liquid spread into the test. In the back of my head I just knew that was it. One line appeared. Immediately thereafter another. And then I had that moment, the kind where you stand there not sure if you believe your eyes. 

Finally I pick it up and rush downstairs to the office where I find Noel on his iMac. He sees what I’m holding. And my eyes were big. I can’t really remember what I said, but it was something like, “Holy crap, look at this.” 

I show it to him, and he looked at me sweetly with a smile. I had to sit down as it really started to sink in. I wish I could better remember what happened, but I guess I was overwhelmed that it was actually happening. Ok, I was freaking out. I just couldn’t believe it! Then we both started getting teary and I started taking deep breaths and had to sit down. And Noel was so calm! He then said, “Let’s go look at the box.”

We go upstairs, examine the box and it’s directions for reading results... “Yep, it’s positive!” Noel says. So I wasn’t just imagining it. We hug each other, just letting it soak in. We agreed that after I dropped him off at work, I should go to the clinic and get the blood test. Over the next 30 minutes while we were getting ready to leave, we kept going back to look at the test and saying “Yea, that’s positive” and “Yep there are definitely two lines there.” Haha, like we thought the line would disappear, and maybe it wasn’t really what we thought it was after all. 

There's definitely 2 lines there!

The clinic I went to that morning was the same one Peace Corps used to send me to when I needed tests done. I actually went there about a week and a half before because I had so much really bad gas, nausea, and my stomach was so bloated, I was convinced I had another stomach parasite. I thought the symptoms were similar to what I had when I had amoebas and parasites. But NO!!! It wasn’t a parasite! It was a BABY! Haha! But hey, I had never been pregnant before, I had no idea what the symptoms were like. 

When I walked into the clinic, I said to the front desk woman, “Necesito una prueba de embarazo de sangre, por favor.” I need a pregnancy blood test please. As soon as I said that, in walked Laura, a girl from my Peace Corps group that was there to do her close of service medical tests. I was praying that the front desk lady would not repeat what I had asked for. I wanted this to be private. I’ve seen it at clinic here before. The nurse will say really loudly to her patient in front of everyone in the room, “Ok, so what are you here for? A yeast infection right? Oh no, hemorrhoids!” How embarassing, right! there’s no such thing as HIPPA laws here!

Anyway, luckily she did not repeat herself. For some reason I felt compelled to make up a story for Laura, and told her about how I had left Peace Corps with amoebas (this was actually true. I found out I had them on my LAST day in service... what a great souvenir, no?) and that I was still having issues. Silly. I didn’t have to tell her anything, I know. But anyway, that’s what I did.

So the test was done, and I was told I could come back in two hours. I went home. Had my 1 hour guitar lesson with Ruben Flamenco. He used to come to my house. But the whole time I could not concentrate hardly at all. I was tired and nauseous and anxious about getting back to the clinic to see if the results would confirm what my cheap drugstore test said. 

11:00: I am back at the clinic. Walking in excited and nervous. The woman sees me and grabs the envelope, slides it toward me on her desk. I look at it sitting there and take a deep breath and say, “Mi futuro en un sobre!” My future in an envelope! 

She replies, “Si, y este es para siempre.” Yes, and this is forever.

My eyes only got bigger. 

Another deep breath and I grab the envelope, open and there it says it: “POSITIVO”

I said thank you and started crying as I walked out to the car. I sat in the car, still staring at the paper with tears of joy and butterflies in my stomach. As soon as I got it together enough to drive, I drove straight to Noel’s work. I called him from outside and told him what the paper said. He came out to the car, I showed him the paper and all I remember after that was just happiness. We went out for a celebratory lunch. 

That day was so long and emotionally exhausting. I had so many tears and so much adrenaline, I was completely exhausted by the end of the day. But it was the best day. We will always remember that day. And it will help that I have this blog to help me remember the details. 

So we found out about a week and a half before we would leave for Mexico for the wedding. I kept thinking about how I wanted to tell my family. I so wanted to call them, especially my parents and tell them right away. But I kept thinking about how I was going to be seeing them in person so soon, that I would rather tell them in person if I could. So I decided to wait until we got to Mexico to tell them. And what’s more I wanted to wait to tell them after the ceremony on our wedding day. 

This had me worrying about how I would hide it from them for the several days that we were together before that. My family knows me... I figured they would surely notice if I was only drinking water at an all-inclusive resort. It ended up not being as big of a deal as I had imagined. And club soda with lime looks just like a vodka soda! Noel even brought me a few. I had even told the bar tenders what was going on, and they helped me out. I ordered “vodka soda” and they gave me water! Haha. 

So I was 10 weeks on Saturday! Here’s a picture!

10 weeks and expanding.
And it's not from eating donuts! I'm the same weight as I was pre-pregnancy, even with my wider mid-section!

But here's one from 6 weeks just so you can see the difference and that I was actually smaller before!

6 weeks. When I could still wear my jeans.
I've never had a flat stomach... this pic is pretty much how my tummy has always been, just a little extra bloated.
Sorry the pic is from a different side. From now on all will be taken from the same side.

I have to say, being pregnant, so far, is very different than I had ever imagined. I had no idea that the symptoms would be like this. Luckily I have been getting a lot better lately. Now I am only nauseous a little bit a few times a day. Before it was nearly ALL the time! And I was so surprised because I thought my mom and grandma told me they never had nausea in their pregnancies. Lucky them! I also was so tired all the time and getting a lot of headaches. The only thing that gets these headaches to go away is a nap. I still get tired but it’s not usually until the afternoon, so I can do more during the morning and day. 

My jeans started getting too tight to wear buttoned up about a week and a half ago. Thank you pregnancy bloat. But I just got some Belly Bands and I LOVE THEM! Now I can wear my same old jeans because this band holds them up and covers up the fact that they’re unbuttoned. I was trying to do the hair band through the loop thing, but it wasn’t working for me. My shirts weren’t covering up the unzipped zipper. A girl cant walk around flashing her undone pants!

My appetite has definitely increased. I have to eat nearly every 2 hours. Sometimes even in the night I wake up and my stomach is empty and I feel like I need to eat something. When I get too hungry the nausea attacks, and then I end up eating way too much which also makes me nauseous and gives me heartburn. So I just eat a little bit all the time. 

Unfortunately, my former loves Hot Sauce and Tomato Sauce, are now my enemies. Bananas are gross too. I can’t believe that I can’t handle hot sauce anymore! I used to love it so much I had to put it on nearly everything. Now I can’t handle how spicy it is. And tomatoes upset my stomach, for some reason I don’t even want to look at them. Before I knew about my new aversion, I made a big lasagna for dinner and we had lots of leftovers. After one piece I realized I couldn’t eat it. Poor Noel was eating lasagna for days, because I wouldn’t touch it. 

I don’t think my cravings have been too severe. Sure I have an occasional pang for fried chicken, and the other night I could not stop thinking about oranges! I wanted an orange so bad, all fruity and juicy, but we didn’t have any. My sweet husband ran out to the store just to get my oranges, and also the watermelon an papaya I had asked for. Love him! 

I’m headed to Houston for a few weeks on Friday. I am excited to go and hear the baby’s heartbeat and have some American summertime fun with my family! Also very excited about all the food options there will be! 

So we’re all up to date now folks! The future blogs, I assume, won’t be such whoppers as this one. There was just a lot to share for this one! 

Time to go throw dinner in the crockpot!

39 days til we move to D.C.!!!

Paz y Amor!

For those of you who think I've been getting fat lately... that I got married and immediately thought, "YAY! I can get fat now!" Think again. This ain't no beer belly... It's a baby belly!

That's right... Noel and I are excited to say that we have a little one coming in February! We couldn't be more thrilled! So... I'm 9.5 weeks now and the baby is due Feb. 16, 2013. You might be doing the math and thinking, Wait a minute, but didn't you just get married a few weeks ago, Amy? Yup, and I was with child in my wedding dress. Classy, I know. But these are different times we're in, people. I didn't feel like it was all that crazy or taboo. We even announced the good news at dinner after the ceremony! :) It was a happy happy day. One I will never ever forget.

Let me share the wedding story:

We were going to have a big wedding in Houston in October, but when I was home in March and we were planning it, something just didn't feel right about the kind of wedding we were planning. I think some may say I became a bit of a Bridezilla. Now, I don't know about that. But I do know that I was that girl that was obsessing over flowers and centerpieces and saying things like, "But Mom, this is MY wedding!" And I am pretty sure I tried on about 100 wedding dresses. I was overwhelmed by all the options. I felt like little things really mattered, and I wanted to be the one that made the decisions on what to buy because I wanted everything to be the way I wanted it. But at the same time, I was indecisive about everything.

The one thing I did decide on was a venue- a place called the West Lake Club in Houston that was sort of like a country club. It was a really nice venue. But I think it just didn't feel right because it wasn't really my style- the club setting. It was fancy and very very nice, but maybe it just wasn't me. And I think that made me feel different about the planning too. And the guest list grew bigger and bigger... because we had this beautiful venue, and we kind of needed to fill it up. It would have been silly to have this nice big space and not that many people in it. So the list got up to like 150. Which to many, might sound like a moderately sized wedding. Not too big, not too small. But to me that felt stressful and huge.

I thought about our wedding weekend. Noel would have had to fly into Houston from DC last minute just for the weekend. The schedule would have been packed. We would have had his family in from out of town, not really knowing how to get around or what to do in the big city of Houston. His parents would have flown all the way from Japan after not seeing him for several years, and maybe he wouldn't have even really had time to spend with them. I would have been worried about everything getting there and in it's place. If I was already so obsessed about flowers and the perfect dress, I was sure by the time the weekend came, I would have been a stressed out ball of nerves wanting everything to be perfect. And I would have had tons of people there, distant relatives that I don't even really know, to witness it all.

Ok I'm sure it would have been beautiful no matter what, and in the end I would have been happy. Everyone thinks their wedding day is the most wonderful, best day. But while I was in Houston trying to get the plans going, my family noted how much I wasn't really enjoying the process. I am not sure who it was, my mom, dad or brother, but one of them said something like, "I think the destination wedding is the way to go." And I started to think about it and talk about it and looked into it. I remember feeling like, "Why didn't I even think about considering this before!?"


I had been planning the kind of wedding that I felt like one was supposed to have. Because it's the kind of wedding almost everyone has. But it just didn't feel like it was what I really wanted. It was too much! Too showy, at least for me. After all, I just wanted to get married. And so looking at destination beach wedding on the internet, they looked so romantic, easy, and stress free. Not to mention the setting itself is gorgeous. So we decided to dump the whole Houston wedding and go get married at the Riu Palace Riviera Maya in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.

I chose the place based on reviews from people that got married there. Everyone was happy and said the wedding staff did a great job, so I felt like I could trust them. It was a huge relief to just forget about all the planning, to hand it all over to the resort, and all we had to do was find our outfits and show up really. The wedding got exciting to me again. I knew the only people that would come would be our closest family and friends, and I liked how intimate and casual it became to feel. I no longer felt like it was a huge production... and the first day we went out looking for my beach wedding dress, we found it! It was so easy to decide on a dress all of a sudden! And what was even better was that it was only $100 on the sale rack at David's Bridal. And you know what? It was perfect! Simple, flowy, dressy but casual. I loved how it was short in the front and long in the back. I didn't have to worry about being too hot. I've seen some brides at their beach weddings in full poofy satin gowns.... and they always look like they are sweating their asses off.

Anyway, so we did it! And everything was so perfect! Everyone at our entire wedding, including, us, added up to 13 people. We got there on Monday night, had several days of fun in the sun and then the wedding was on Thursday in a gazebo with a grassy area that overlooked the beach. My brother, Evan, officiated the ceremony and it was so beautiful and personal. So much more special than having some random Reverend Juan Jose marry us with his Mexican Catholic rituals. Evan included a lot of special details and made it a Jewish ceremony like we wanted. He and his fiance, Jenny, even got us the most gorgeous Ketubah (Jewish wedding contract) as a gift, and we signed it right there after Noel stomped on the glass. And right when the ceremony was over, Noel and I danced to our song in the gazebo- Savage Garden's I Knew I Loved You. That way we were able to have our first dance, because with our small wedding group we weren't having a dance party reception. Although we did dance to the salsa band they had out on the courtyard a little later that night.

We had a nice semi-private dinner in the resort's air conditioned Brazilian style restaurant. The cake and flowers and everything were included in our wedding package. Everything was just so easy and couldn't have been more fun and perfect. I loved that we got to spend so much quality time with our family who traveled there to be with us. Everyone was enjoying themselves. It was nice that everything we needed was there in the all-inclusive resort. When we were hungry, we went to eat. When we were tired we took a nap. People could drink whatever they wanted, as much as they wanted. Seriously, now I feel like there is no better way to get married. Noel and I both are so glad we did it this way!

It seems so right how it all worked out this way. The West Lake Club where we were originally planning to have the wedding phoned my mom and said they were actually closing August 1st, and would give my parents their deposit back! Amazing, how the Universe works right? We couldn't have had our wedding there even if we wanted to! Good thing I changed my mind and decided to go with Mexico, or else I would have been super frantic looking for a new venue.

Also, because we moved the wedding up, Noel and I decided we could start trying for baby #1 sooner. I was really into the idea of having our baby in the USA before we move all the way to the Philippines. I wasn't too keen on the idea of having my first child all the way over there. So far from home, in a place where I have no understanding of their medical care. Where it won't be as easy to pick up the phone and call my mom when I have a question, because of the huge time difference. No, I want to have my first baby in America! :)

And we got pregnant! Way faster than I ever imagined I would. It was basically like right away. I was so surprised. Because I know many people that haven't had it so easy, it takes them a long time, lots of different methods. Being a pessimist, I figured it would be no easier for me. But lucky enough, I was wrong. And now we will have our Little Bubba, or Bubbete?, just in time. It's like someone's taking care of us or something. Making our lives work out for the best. Because if this baby didn't come along when it did, we would have had to stop trying for a while so that the timing of the due date didn't fall around when we were set to leave for Manila... then I wouldn't have been able to go with my husband, and things would not have been as easy.

This way it's just perfect. We get to have the homebirth I always hoped for, with my amazing midwife mom delivering the baby! I will get great prenatal care. And most importantly, we can all be together at the birth, and my family in Texas will meet our baby before we move.

Life is just amazing. It is stuff like this that makes me feel like there must be a God... I mean, it sure seems like someone or something out there is taking such good care of me. Something told me to join the Peace Corps and come to El Salvador, and because of that I met the love of my life. And because of listening to my heart and having such wonderful parents who made it possible, we found ourselves having the most amazing beach wedding, and now we get to have a baby on top of it!? Well, to whomever/whatever you are that is looking out for me, I am deeply grateful.

There will be many more Amy Baby Belly posts to come! Look for updates on my pregnancy, our move from El Salvador to D.C., and after- all my new experiences being in our nation's capital for the first time!


Paz y Amor.