I didn't realize Marguerite was a botanical name! I always liked in the Anne of Green Gables series how Anne names her oldest son James but they all called him Jem.

Sebastian is my oldest son's name! (My husband's stepson). Love it. My other son is Vincent.

Ruby was my first choice from the minute I found out I was pregnant, but alas, I was vetoed mercilessly!

I forgot about Hazel! I have always liked botanical names.

Oh really? Hmm. I think I prefer in between. Not a name to make you go "huh?", but not super common either.

So it's pretty early in my pregnancy, but my husband and I are discussing names already, mostly because I knew it would end up being a challenge, haha. He wants me to suggest names and then he tells me which ones he doesn't like. So far, the only girl names that have made it past his veto are Lucy and Zoe. Boy names: Jackson and Owen. I would totally go for Lucy and Jackson and be happy, but he would like more options. Names he's rejected: Ruby, Calla, Cass, Rose, Amelia, Iris, Joy, Cara, Penny, Jewel. For boys, he passed on: Lucas, Luke, Jonah, Cash, Liam, William, Jude, Eli, Grayson. Help! I have been though so many lists and can't find others to suggest. I asked him if he wanted to go in a more traditional or a more unique direction and he doesn't know. No family names he wants to use. Bah!

Thank you! Yes, at my mom's suggestion I've been putting spinach in my fruit smoothies. My salads can only be romaine for some reason, I think because it's kind of watery with the big midrib? Watery fruit and veg go down best it seems like. Can't wait till local watermelon starts showing up!!!

@wintermom Yay, your own tennis court!!! Hi ladies, I'm sorry I haven't been by in awhile. It gets me down that I can't be active AT ALL right now so I'll probably just pop in to wave until I (hopefully) start to feel better in the second trimester. I have anemia apparently and am awaiting the results of a second set of blood tests before they decide how they want to treat it. In the meantime, any exertion wipes me out completely and triggers intense nausea and dizziness. I am getting increasingly excited and happy about having this baby, but it is really surreal to have gone from a two-a-day workout person to an on-the-couch-at-4pm person. Also, food aversion is so crazy! I can't stand meat right now, and since eggs upset my stomach, I don't manage nearly the amount of protein I used to. Basically the only foods I'm not averse to (besides junk food--what the heck has happened to me?!?!) are bread, peanut butter, fruit, pasta, cheese, greek yogurt only if it's in a fruit smoothie, potatoes, and salad only if it has pickles and honey mustard dressing. Is it horrible if I live on this stuff for the next 3 or 4 weeks until the 1st trimester is over? Or do y'all think I need to force myself to eat a larger variety? I did manage some ground beef last night but it was a huge struggle and made me miserable. UGH. I feel like a picky toddler! LOL. I know this comes as no surprise to any of y'all that have gone through this before, but I had no idea how much smells would affect me. The smell of the fridge turns my stomach. The kids' morning breath makes me gag. I usually LOVE the way my husband smells but now he smells weird. Pregnancy is CRAZY, y'all!! At least my boobs are getting bigger! Anyways, I miss you guys and sharing the active lifestyle with y'all. I'm 9 weeks today, so hopefully another month and some iron supplementation and I'll be able to report on walks and pregnancy yoga, etc.

Thanks so much everybody!

Thanks so much, y'all! Wow, yesterday was a crazy day. I was miserable and very anxious going in to the ultrasound appointment, worried that I would have to have a D&C and of course, still feeling sick and awful. The nurses were all very somber. When the ultrasound started, I had my eyes closed, and the tech suddenly said, "open your eyes and look at the screen." And there it was, a little bean with a heartbeat fluttering. I was speechless and didn't know what to think. She panned over to a huge dark area and said, wow, no wonder you thought you lost the baby. The spot where the hemorrhage had been was absolutely enormous. She took measurements and checked everything, texted me some pictures, said it's measuring right on track at 7 weeks 5 days, and switched me over to an OB patient. They sent me back out in the lobby to wait for the OB, where I dripped shocked tears and texted my husband and parents. The OB checked everything, told me to take it easy for a couple weeks to let the area heal up, and come back in 4 weeks. He doesn't see any reason why the rest of the pregnancy wouldn't be normal. He didn't say anything about my "advanced maternal age" at all, yay! He is concerned about anemia, so I will get more blood tests next week. He said all the shortness of breath I've been having is normal--my cardiovascular system is working 30% harder than usual and my body is just struggling to adjust to that. Honestly at first all the feelings of shock and overwhelm and "how am I going to do this?!" flooded back over me, but that passed and now I am back to feeling cautiously excited. It really helps that the nausea was not too bad yesterday after I *finally* got to eat some lunch. It's a lot easier to be optimistic about having a baby when you're not gagging every time you move. I've discovered that, even though the only things that actually sound good are bread and cheese, if I make myself eat watery fruit and veg (frozen grapes, cucumbers, etc) and protein like ground beef, I do feel less nauseous for longer periods. Tomorrow I'll be 8 weeks, so hopefully I only have 2-4ish weeks to get through before I start feeling even better. The pic is a back view, with the head to the right.

YOU GUYS, I DID NOT MISCARRY. I had an ultrasound today at my husband's insistence and there it was, perfectly normal! There was a huge spot where a hematoma bled horribly and they said no wonder I thought it was a miscarriage. I'll update more when I get a chance! I'm in shock still.

Y'ALL I DID NOT MISCARRY, STILL PREGNANT! It was a massive hematoma that caused tons of bleeding. The ultrasound today showed the baby is fine! 7 weeks, 5 days! Thanks so much to everyone who responded! Hi everybody, I recently found out I was pregnant for the first time (both my sons were adopted at birth). If you saw me posting about possible perimenopause a few weeks ago...yeah, I was pregnant. Anyways, this was quite a shock, and we had just settled into being excited about it when I had a miscarriage on Monday at 7 weeks along. Wednesday I was able to get into see my NP, who referred me to get an ultrasound on Friday just to make sure it was a complete miscarriage (I don't really have any doubt about it being complete, but seems like a good idea to get it checked). Anyways, I had severe nausea and fatigue while pregnant. Since the miscarriage, I have had a few stretches of time where I felt basically normal, but the nausea comes back in waves. It's not as severe as it was, and I get that it will take some time until it goes away altogether, but it is really wearing me down. I feel like I could recover better emotionally if I could just feel. better. If you have been in this situation, how long did it take until you felt better? At this point, I feel like I have been nauseous forever and (irrationally, I know) will never go away.

Hi ladies. Thanks so much for the kind words. @soror your poor shoulder! I'm glad it feels better today. @wintermom you rock on the pushups. I get stuck at like 20 and can't do any more in a single set, plus I have trouble keeping my elbows in. @Laura Corin I would love to join you on a walk across some fields to a pub! That sounds like something out of a book! Still feeling pretty rough... I guess it will take a few days for the pregnancy symptoms to go away...? I have been extremely nauseous and fatigued the whole time (literally nausea would wake me up in the middle of the night), and while it's starting to let up, I'm just so worn out by feeling sick to my stomach all the time that I am desperate for it to go away. I slept a lot yesterday. Still having a lot of food aversions and living on bread and cheese. Hopefully I can go back to normal energy levels, normal food, normal workouts soon. I gained 3 lbs (thanks a lot, bread and cheese) but I know that will go away once I return to normal eating and activity. Emotionally...It has been such an extremely tough year for us so far that my husband and I are kind of in the numb, "ok, what now" mindset. My older son took it pretty hard. But we are all just hunkered down loving each other and helping each other get through the day, and that's what it's all about, you know? Love you guys!

Hi ladies, just wanted to let y'all know that I have had a miscarriage. We are all pretty upset...even though it wasn't the plan to have a baby in the first place, of course we didn't want this. Anyways, I really appreciate all the support and how excited y'all were for me. What a bizarre roller coaster these last few weeks have been.

Y'all are up to so many interesting active things! Creek wading! Lambs! Home improvement! So jealous! I tried to do a bodyweight workout yesterday, but I couldn't even get through the warmup. Bah. I walked 30 minutes instead. I guess I will be a walking/prenatal yoga type after all! Once the pool is up and running that will be good too. Today I'll do some weeding and raking at my parents' house, plus force my mom to go on a walk in the woods with me. I am started to really look forward to having a baby again. The baby phase is my favorite, and my husband has never experienced that. I think that once the first trimester woes are over and I feel more like myself I will really enjoy everything. Right now though, I just feel like I have mono and a stomach virus simultaneously!

Still laid low by nausea and fatigue... I did half an hour of running intervals yesterday before I got nauseous and then did about an hour of yardwork today before I got overheated. I seem to get out of breath very easily! Ugh, I went from feeling like a Viking warrior-ess to a fainting female character in an old book slowly dying of consumption, lol.

Hi ladies! Just popping on to say that I'm still alive and kicking, but I've been hit hard with nausea, fatigue, and headaches. Saltines worked to relieve the nausea for a couple days, plus making sure my stomach didn't get too empty, but now that doesn't work anymore. Too many carbs seem to make me feel worse. Herbal tea with ginger and tiny nibbles of crystalized ginger help a little short term. Blargh! Anyways, I miss you guys. I have just been so out of it that I have barely even been using the internet. Next week I am hoping to be a little more active and to try grazing more instead of my usual meals, most of which are just not that appealing to me right now (like greek yogurt, protein shakes, salad, etc. I usually love those, but not right now unfortunately). It's funny--I don't get nauseous very often and basically never throw up, so the whole idea of getting "morning" sickness didn't even occur to me until it was happening, LOL! @soror Thanks for thinking of me!

This sounds like a really fun day! @Laura Corin I'm sorry about your hand and your knee. Glad to hear the hand is improving. @wintermom Biking always makes my rear hurt! Bodyweight session this morning--I'm so looking forward to it after several days off. ETA: Strength training done plus some running. Definitely feeling nauseous today, boo.

Thank you! I haven't had my appointment yet, but I did grab some prenatal vitamins to tide me over till then. I'm not 100% sure what hospital/facility or provider I'll be using...since we're so rural a lot goes in to making that decision. But I think all the options on the table offer classes. This is all still so surreal, aaaaahh!!

Not much dedicated exercise since Friday...there were just a whole lot of random things that popped up and I had to deal with. But starting today it's back to routine. I'm working at my parents' place this morning (probably weeding and watering) plus I've been forcing my mom to get out an walk around the woods with me now that my dad has improved enough to be left alone some. I will try to sneak in a run if it gets cool enough this evening, but there's a possibility of bad weather so we'll see. Fit and Active Pregnancy News (now a regularly scheduled feature!): feeling pretty good. Energy level is decent despite switching to decaf and dealing with stress. I'm setting aside my heavy weights for awhile and switching to bodyweight strength training. I could keep lifting heavy if I wanted to, but I just have an aversion to straining myself that hard right now for some reason. It's probably irrational, but Imma roll with it. I did bodyweight only on Friday and I'm still a little sore actually. Weight has been rock steady at 133.6 for like a month now. A couple moments of feeling a little weird on the tummy, but eating has been fine and that may have more to do with stress than pregnancy hormones. My husband has (mostly) recovered from the shock, lol. I have def been reading y'all's updates and I'm sorry life was so crazy the last few days that I couldn't respond. It's nice to feel connected to y'all during this whole virus situation!

@wintermom Thank you! Yeah, I think my husband is concerned about the potential problems with us both being older and genetic problems, etc. One of the many things I think he is worried about, lol. I did check out a digital copy of one of those week by week books and started up a pregnancy tracker app. Apparently I'm 4 weeks, 6 days pregnant and due approx. November 29th. Lord have mercy, lol. ALSO, awesome on your pushups! This mornings I did the following workout: pull ups 3x4, 1 leg Romanian deadlifts 10x4, pushups 10x4, and shrimp squats 10x4, and some jump rope. It took a whole hour because I was not very efficient. I kept getting distracted by the kids' bickering, etc. But it felt good.

@Monica_in_Switzerland Way to go on your running! That's impressive! @wintermom I think my husband may be trying your method of handling pregnancy news, lol. Also, I'm sorry to hear about the tennis courts, blah. Today I'm planning a bodyweight workout, just to kind of get back in the groove and feel things out. Energy levels yesterday were good, but I didn't sleep very well last night (worrying about stuff) and so I don't anticipate feeling A+ today. Plus I will have to reduce/eliminate my caffeine intake, so... *yawn* I feel that it is providential that everything worked out that I've been on this fitness journey for the last 2 1/2 years and am now stronger than I ever have been and at a healthy weight. I think that's going to help me deal with the physical aspects of this huge change a lot better. And I expected to be upset at the prospect of gaining weight, but miraculously I just feel this confidence that my body's going to do what it's supposed to do and that part's gonna be alright. I'm writing this down now so I can refer to it later when my confidence wanes, as I'm sure it will. 🙂

Thanks everybody for the encouraging words! Y'all's excitement helps me not to be so scared.

So, ladies, can't believe I'm actually typing these words, but this morning I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I can't believe I'm pregnant for the first time at 40. I'm 95% terrified and 5% in awe. Financially and emotionally and in all other ways this was not in the plan to say the least. But I know God wouldn't send us this baby against all odds (12 years of unexplained infertility in my pervious marriage, me preventing and tracking and being OLD) if it wasn't all going to be ok in the long run so I'm clinging to that. I guess we will all have some interesting discussions about staying active during pregnancy....? I don't know. Ladies, I know absolutely ZERO about being pregnant! Send help, lol

@soror Yeah, I think I'll have a chance to get a pregnancy test on Thursday...it would be nice to rule that out so at least there's one less worry. Hopefully I will be in a position to get hormone panel done at some point. But, assuming that I'm not pregnant, I will probably try dialing down exercise intensity a little to see if that helps! I worked outside this morning, then went for a run this evening, though I didn't have a lot of oomph. I took it a little easier rather than push it--it was still almost 90 degrees!