Welcome!

Welcome to the Bertolone blog, which will more than likely be exclusively written by the female Bertolone, Mallory (me).

As so many people do, I decided it would be nice to start a blog to document the journey of our first pregnancy. Adrian and I unfortunately live too far from many friends and family members for them to be involved every step of the way, but it is my hope that this will be a way for them to share and feel more included in our experiences.

So where to begin...

I am currently 15 weeks pregnant (today is the very beginning of the 15th week) and feel like a sea cow. My favorite online pregnancy resource, www.thebump.com, reminded me today that our baby is now the size of an orange, but to me it looks more like a whole bag of oranges. Okay, so my belly bump is still pretty small, but I'm not used to seeing it and it's taking some getting used to. I do love knowing that our baby is growing bigger by the day, even if I don't love the fact that I'm doing the same. We've come a long way since the the website told me baby was the size of a poppyseed.

And for the record... at this point I do not plan on posting belly shots, so please don't ask. Maybe when I look pregnant and not just chubby I'll change my mind.

At our 13 week ultrasound they GUESSED that our baby is going to be a boy (which is what we are both sort of hoping for), but I'm not getting my hopes up yet. We have another ultrasound at 18 weeks where hopefully they will be telling us the sex of the baby with more certainty. The first ultrasound was an experience - it really made the pregnancy more real for both of us and it was almost surprising to see that yes, in fact there IS a little baby in there.

And here he (or she) is...

head and arm/hand

full body (I think this picture is amazing and it looks like he's using my body as a springboard to do a flip)

the cutest face I've ever seen :)

I am due on November 18th, and love that our baby will be born just before the holidays! I will try to post at least once a week until then, maybe even more as we get into decorating the nursery. 

I suspect this blog will end up being about more than just the pregnancy and will probably grow to include regular updates about Adrian and me, the work we plan on putting into our house, and any of the other thousand things that cross my mind each day. I also plan to change and personalize the appearance of the blog - I just wanted to get something up while it was on my mind.

Stay tuned!