I apologize for being a blog slacker! It has been a busy few weeks in the Browning household. For starters, football season is in full swing!!! The Eagles are 3-1 and doing great (especially the defense if you ask me)! Also, the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games are FAST approaching (we are just 6 days away), so my job has been getting more and more busy. It's going to be a great event, though, I'm just ready for it to get here! During the last couple of weeks we have officially outed the news that we are pregnant. It was so fun to tell all of our friends and coworkers. Of course, everyone is so excited for us! The pregnancy seems so much more real now that people know, it's weird! It's like we've known these last 3 months, but since we couldn't really talk about it much it seemed less real! It's fun though, I'm loving every minute of this!I've been feeling SO much better lately, especially the last week. I am so glad the "morning" sickness seems to be fading. I even went a couple of nights without my medicine, so that's good. I am hoping to stop taking that completely, but for now I'm just taking it randomly at night. My next doctor's appointment is 9/30 and it is just a checkup (no ultrasounds or anything fun scheduled for that appointment), but I am still excited. Apparently they will check the heartbeat at this appointment using some piece of equipment that goes across my belly. I've never had this before, so I'm excited to see how that goes. And SOOO excited to hear the heartbeat (I've seen it but never heard it). So that will be fun!Last week, Hays and I visited Babies R Us to look around. We have SO much to learn! Oh my goodness! The clothes and bedding were all so cute, but when it comes to the bottle choices, breast pumps, formula/baby food options.....ahhhh!!!! It's all so much to comprehend! We were a little overwhelmed, so we spent most of our time in the bedding and clothes sections. There is some SERIOUSLY precious stuff (will definitely post pics soon)! We already have our favorites, but who knows what we will officially decide on (we can't do anything until 10/28 or later- that's when we find out what we're having)! 
I haven't really had any weird cravings for anything. On Labor Day I was home all day and ended up eating a variety of random food (none of which I will EVER eat again, especially not together): orange sherbery, applesauce, and marshmellows. Yummy, right?!?! I don't think it was really a "craving", it was more of just what looked good when I was going through my fridge and pantry. :)I am still wearing normal clothes, and I don't think I'm showing at all (I apologize for no new pics lately- I can't find my camera cord). I can't wait to have a little baby bump to show off though. Today we went to our friend Dallas' birthday party tailgate and there was a girl there who is 4 weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy and she is REALLY showing. It's so cute and I can't wait for that!!! This morning when Hays got up to go to football I went to a yard sale in my neighborhood (which I rarely do, but I was intrigued by this one because it's in the nicer/way bigger house section of my neighborhood) and I found TONS of cute maternity clothes. I will be the first to admit that I have no idea how maternity clothes work and how sizing goes for this stuff, but I found a bunch of stretchy-belly pants in size M and a couple of cute flowy tops and even a fun dress! I am not showing or anything yet so I didn't try anything on, but I am looking forward to fitting into my maternity deals!!! 11 pieces for $25- you can't beat that! (Don't worry, Daddy, I will wash the clothes twice before I will try them on....promise.)This week, Hays' cousin Nathan dropped off a bag full of baby books that he and his wife Blair found on a shelf at their house. They are done having babies, so they passed down the books to us! So thoughtful! I am really excited about reading them. Many of them are about "baby's first year", so that will be neat! Right now all the books I'm reading are about pregnancy, so it will be fun to learn about the fun things that are to come later on.So that's what's new with us. We are talking about Brayley more and more and getting more and more excited about being parents! We hope March gets here very soon, but we are enjoying reading about baby "Brayley" every week- this week he or she is the size of a PEACH!
So the day after my wreck, I went for my 11 week appointment with Dr. Schell. It was already scheduled for that day, but I'm so glad it fell when it did because I wanted to ask her about the wreck and really make sure everything was still okay with Brayley. The appointment went great. I started by being weighed (Oh joy! I was actually down 6 pounds....they said it's probably due to the morning sickness and me not having much of an appetite). The nurse said it was to be expected this early on, and I should start feeling better and gaining more weight for my next appointment at 15 weeks and then definitely at 19 weeks! So that's fun to look forward to, I guess. After that the nurse took my blood pressure (100/80) and asked me how I'd been feeling. I let her know that I'd still been having some morning sickness, but I was taking Phenergan at night and that was helping me to sleep. I told her about the wreck I had the day before and explained exactly what happened. She said that Dr. Schell might want to do an ultrasound just to check on the baby and 3 things immediately came to my mind: 1) PANIC- oh my goodness, she thinks this might be bad enough to do an ultrasound! 2) YAY I get to see my baby! 3) Hays is going to kill me if they do another ultrasound without him here! I had called the doctor's office earlier in the week to ask if they were doing an ultrasound at this visit and since they said "no" then Hays decided not to come. I knew he'd be disappointed that he missed it. Dr. Schell comes into the office with the floating ultrasound machine and wants to look at baby Brayley right off the bat. She did a belly ultrasound this time, this is the first time I've had one of these....it was pretty cool! Immediately the black circle pops up and little Brayley is inside. I guess I shouldn't really say "little" because Brayley has grown a TON since I saw him last. Baby measured 4 cm, which is perfect for almost 11 weeks. I could see the baby's head and legs- it was awesome. At one point, he was kicking his legs around and flipping around in my belly. It was crazy! I couldn't feel it at all, but I could see it on the screen. Super surreal! I was in awe! It was so much fun seeing Brayley again, and such a relief to know that everything was okay! I tried to scan in the pictures, but they didn't turn out so well, but LIVE on the screen, let me tell you- Brayley was AWESOME!
I go back to the doctor in 4 weeks for another check up and then 4 weeks after that for the BIG ULTRASOUND when we find out if Brayley is a boy or a girl. For the record, my guess is BOY (for some reason I always refer to the baby as a "he"). So, we'll find out soon enough. The ultrasound is scheduled for 10/28! I am already SO excited to see Brayley again!!!
So...September started off fun! I had just picked up lunch at Taco Bell (I know...I'm bad!) and I was going to pull in the parking lot in Regency Center and eat in my car before running into TJ Maxx really quick. Well, as I get in the left turning lane to pull into the parking lot I notice that traffic is backed up (due to a red light at Lowry/Nicholasville Rd). So, the cars are spaced out enough for me to make the turn in between them (after being motioned to do so by a driver in a minivan who is letting me turn in front of her). I start to make the turn and then see a black Honda Accord coming at me at FULL SPEED....apparently there are 2 lanes that go straight at that point on Lowry Lane (Who knew? Not me!). So I see the car, realize it's going to hit me and I try to floor it and get out of there before she does too much damage (well, I was sort of hoping I'd get out of there without wrecking!). No such luck! The Honda hits me right behind my back passenger side door and dents the side of my car and nearly rips off my bumper! :( Boo!!!! The lady that hit me was really nice. Her car didn't have much damage, but my car "Emma" looks awful. Currently, my bumper is duck taped to hold it onto my car. Classy, right? Emma just turned 6 months old and she's already been jaded. Oh well, no one was hurt and that's all that matters. Insurance will be fixing the cars....that's why we have insurance, right? I was wearing my seatbelt and no airbags went off, so I am pretty sure there was no harm to Brayley, but luckily I was going to the doctor the next day anyway, so I'd be able to ask her about that while I was there. More on that to come...
