Operation Baby Landstra has commenced

Matt and I are expecting our first child January 17, 2013 and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Since many of our family members live miles – and states – away, we wanted to be able to update everyone on Baby Landstra’s progress.
I’ll also be writing some about my first experience with pregnancy, since “how are you feeling" is one of the top questions I get asked as people begin finding out. However, there are some components of pregnancy I will do my best NOT to share. And if you don’t know me all that well, let me tell you prior to being pregnant I had some pretty strong feelings about pregnancy over-sharing. So here is my pledge to you:

• I will not post about bodily functions. Yes, I had no idea how much these certain unmentionable things we take for granted in our everyday lives are affected once a baby starts growing inside you. But I promise I will not write or talk about it in detail.

• Pregnancy is counted in weeks. 40 weeks to be exact. And it used to drive me nuts when pregnant people told everyone else their progress in weeks and not in months. But because the doctor, the baby books and other new moms or moms-to-be always count in weeks, I have noticed myself falling into that trap. So to save you from figuring up how long 17 weeks is in normal people counting, I will do my best to try to translate that week count into an approximate month count. Because seriously, normal people don’t talk in weeks.
• Facebook will not know more about this baby than you. Usually I am a big fan of Facebook, but something about announcing a pregnancy on Facebook makes me kind of feel icky. While I know – or knew – everyone on my friends list at one point in my life, something about letting them all in the loop feels odd. So while I am not going to be super-secretive about this pregnancy on Facebook, I am taking relaxed approach. No big Facebook announcements for me – especially not to announce when this baby starts coming! But I promise, we will let you all know the important events through this blog, emails or phone calls.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoy reading and keeping track of Operation Baby Landstra.

 14 weeks on July 18 - Just barely a bump

16 weeks on August 2, still not much of a baby bump