Our Family is Growing!

Wow, 3 months with no new posts!  As you can see by the image above, Matt and I found out some very big news - we are finally pregnant with our first baby!  I found out on February 17th, shortly before my stay at the Inn at Christmas Place, which would also unknowingly be my last new post here on Brownie Bites until today.

A new pregnancy certainly isn't enough to halt all new postings, though, so where the heck have I been?!  Well, just a few weeks after finding out from my fertility clinic that we have a little baby on the way, I was smacked in the face with the most wretched 24/7 nausea I've ever felt.  This wasn't "morning sickness", this was all-day-can't-pick-your-head-up-off-the-pillow sickness.  I gotta tell you, I was really naive about how much first trimester sickness can interfere or halt even the simple workings of your daily life.  I quickly deteriorated to a point where I was simply existing.  I was miserable, and surviving each day was enough.  I even had a few desperate low points where I cried to Matt that I just wanted to die, because surely that had to be better than always feeling like I was on the verge of throwing up with no relief ever.  Trust me, I'm not proud of those moments, but they happened, so there it is.

On top of the nausea, I also had strong food aversions which pinched my diet down to very few things that I could actually look at without heaving - lemonade, bagels, saltine crackers with a little cheese, and plain flour tortillas to give some examples.  Every now and then I would get an actual craving and my sweet husband would practically break a hip trying to get into the car to go get whatever it was that I felt I could eat in that moment.  Around week 12 I started to feel the symptoms subside and I started to feel like a human being again.  The total damage from the first trimester was a 6 pound loss (my healthcare professional said that's totally normal), but now my diet is back to normal and I'm actually able to eat things that are good for me and my baby.  Best of all, I'm able to get excited about all of the fun (and scary!) new changes that are ahead for us!

I work from home doing freelance work, so Matt helped me rig my setup in bed so that I could work as much as I could stand during the bad weeks.  Brownie Bites, however, got pushed completely to the back burner and almost off of the stove completely.  With most of the posts here being food-related in some form, I couldn't even think about plans for new posts!

But now... I'm back!  We just returned from an awesome vacation in Seaside, Florida with our very dear friends that was booked a month or so before I found out about the baby, so be prepared for lots of fun photos of our experiences down there.  And of course you know that I'll be sharing the best places to eat while staying there, complete with yummy food photos!

To make sure you don't miss out on the new posts, here's how you can follow us on various social media to keep up with the latest!

Instagram - @ebrowniebites

Twitter - @erinbrowne

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Let's get this show (back) on the road!

Baby Browne - due October 31st, 2014 (ultrasound photo taken at 10 weeks - currently 17.5 weeks at the time of this post!)