25 Weeks!

Depending on which calendar you follow, this is my last week in the second trimester.  Pregnancy math is kind of weird.  I'm 25 weeks fully baked, starting 26 and the third trimester begins at the end of week 26.  Allegedly.  Some say it begins week 28, but I'm always early for everything, so let's just go with that...

At this point, the baby is now about 13.5 inches from the tip of her head to her toes and weighs 1.5-2 pounds.  About the weight of a rutabaga, they say.  If you can remember the last time you held a rutabaga.  She's starting to plump out with a bit more baby fat that she will continue to curse for years to come.  She also has hair.

Me, well, my belly is about the size of a soccer ball now.  I feel HEUUUGE.  My balance sucks and I have random bruises on my arms and legs where I ran into walls, doorknobs, counter tops.  If I overdo too much bending or lifting or walking, then my lower back begins to ache, and it usually results in a pretty awesome waddle the next morning.  Thankfully, some of the swelling I experienced last week has subsided, though I worry it's temporary.  I'm trying to keep an eye on my salt intake and drink plenty of water to help keep the swelling at bay.  It's hard, though, when you're craving chicken fried steak at ten in the morning and absolutely nothing else will satisfy you. 

I also experienced what I think was my first Braxton-Hicks contraction.  It didn't hurt at all, but for about 5 seconds my entire belly got rock hard pretty quickly, and just as quickly, it passed.  What I read is that these are "practice contractions" and totally normal.  Sort of like my uterus has started training for the marathon it's about to run.  

And that's sort of it in a nutshell.  I definitely have this sense of the calm before the storm.

14 weeks and counting...

ROCK!

I just discovered a lullaby version of my favorite ACDC classic, "Back in Black" featuring the dulcet tones of xylophone and dare I say - harp.  The album also includes a lullaby version of Radiohead's "No Surprises", Bob Marley's "One Love" and the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers" (how appropriate!). 

Epic win.  Thanks, iTunes!

15 weeks 1 day and counting...

24 Weeks!

I am experiencing a few recent developments in the joys of pregnancy toward the end of the second trimester.  First: cankles.  I can no longer see my ankle bones, and my toes look a bit like piggies.  Hopefully my belly will help to mask this for me while standing soon so I don't notice it as much - I think I have another week or two before my belly eclipses my feet and I'll no longer be able to see them.  I'm hoping for an "out of sight, out of mind" experience.My hands are also swelling.  I think this is the most upsetting side-effect to pregnancy so far because of my most very dear, precious possessions are my wedding band and engagement ring.  So far, I'm still able to get them on and off, but I'm nervous about what the next few months will bring and will be a bit heartbroken if they need to be relocated to chain around my neck.  Hopefully with cooler weather in the fall, some of this swelling will go down.  Finding a position to sleep comfortably in is increasingly more difficult.  I'm a belly sleeper, and that's out now for obvious reasons.  My second favorite position is on my back with my arms up over my head.  That's out because of the pressure the baby puts on an important artery while lying down.  That, and, my stomach gets pretty gurgley in that position.  So, I'm limited to side sleeping, which is causing some tossing and turning, and am seriously considering investing in one of those big pregnancy noodley-like pillows.

I have just three more weeks left in the ever-popular second trimester which is both thrilling and terrifying.  The second trimester has been very good to me.  I think that these new pregnancy challenges of swelling and bloating and the like are just a sample of foreshadowing for what's to come over the next three months.  I swear, it wasn't long ago that it felt like it was going to be forever and a day before this baby got here, but now...I'm wishing I could slow it all down just a wee bit.  Yesterday, the confirmation for our birthing classes arrived in the mail which caused another one of those, "holy crap I'm really having a baby" moments of realization.  I know, you'd think that would have sunk in by now, huh?

15 weeks, 5 days and counting...

Pillow Talk

It's about 4am as I write this.  I just had the most engrossing conversation.  With our baby.  Who is still in utero.

She started stirring around 3am, rousing me from my slumber.  I tossed and turned for a bit, trying to find a more comfortable position for us both.  Then, I responded to her tap-tap-tapping with my own.  And she tapped back!  I swear.  I tapped on my belly at the same place where she was a knockin', and she would tap back.  Like some kind of crazy baby morse code or something.

Then, the hormones kicked in and I started to well up a little and I decided it was probably time to roll out of bed and watch some infomercials.

I don't think I'll ever forget this moment - our first conversation together.  Why is it that the best conversations always happen in the wee hours?

16 weeks and counting...

If You Say So

So, I'm in Starbucks (aka St. Arbucks) for my afternoon frap and this weird Boulder hippie dude points to the baby bump and says, "It's a boy."  I smile and rub the belly, "actually, it's a girl."  He insists, "no, it's a boy."

Clearly this guy can tap some cosmic line that I'm not privy to.  Nor were the two doctors and ultrasound tech who informed us of our girl.  So, let us all be warned.

I Get A Kick

I know that I've told you all that this little girl seems very active.  A little disco dancer.  But seriously!  The bigger she gets, the stronger the kicks, and what were once little flutters are now distinct sensations.  I swear, she rolled over the other day and I felt like at any moment we were going to have a Sigourney Weaver Alien scene.

She's particularly active after breakfast and around 8.30 at night.  Like clockwork.  Then, periodically throughout the day and night at random intervals.  It's impossible to concentrate on anything when she's moving around.  Most of the time, I love every second of it, but it's distracting for sure.  And it's hard to eat when there's something moving around inside you.  I lose my appetite a bit when that happens.

The kicks are strong enough that you can feel them from the outside now, although she gets shy when Dad tries to feel.  When she really gets going, you can sometimes see it, too.  One day, I spent a good 20 minutes staring at my belly watching for the slightest movement (yes, I need a new hobby).

My favorite is when she gets going while I'm in the bath.  It's like a scene from Jurassic Park.  Little ripples of water extend from my belly.  A tiny little splash sometimes.  No joke.  It's very Sci Fi.

17 weeks, 6 days and counting...

22 Weeks!

Yesterday was a fun day.  I bought a week's worth of outfits for our little girl.  Well, I should say, I bought about seven pieces.  I do realize that it's likely that she could go through all seven in one day.  But it was fun.  And it makes me smile to see them hanging in our little girl's closet.  I know we'll get a ton of stuff by way of gifts and hand-me-downs, but I wanted her first fashion to come from me. 

I'm also experiencing something new this week.  Stares from strangers.  I can see their mind processing the question, "is she pregnant or plump?"  It makes me want a t-shirt that says something like, "not plump, baby bump."  Before I found myself in this state, I always thought that shirts like that were just stating the obvious.  Now I understand why pregnant women are attracted to them.  I've also discovered the first of what I'm sure will be a series of stretch marks.  Not on my belly, no, but on my already fabulously robust Finnish thighs.  Those damn Scandinavian genes!  Truly, though.  I don't mind so much.  It's sort of like a road map that shows how much I've grown.  A reminder of where I've been and where I'm going.  Nothing to get worked up about - maybe even something to be a wee bit proud of.  Not that I'm going to prance around in Daisy Dukes or anything...

18 weeks and counting...

Baby Bump

21 Weeks, 5 days knocked up.  Not the best picture - took it with my Mac on the stairs by the front door, but hopefully this will appease some of you (who shall remain nameless) who are pleading for bump pics.  You know who you are.  ;-)

18 weeks, 2 days and counting...

Birth Plan

I've been trying to get my head around this concept of a birth plan.  The websites I visit and books I read all say that now is the time to start thinking about my birth plan.  Okay.  Think, think, think.

What exactly is it?  Well, in a nutshell, it's the debate over natural vs. drugs.  Hospital vs. home.  Doula vs. Doc. 

Some of these questions I can answer very easily.  Yes Hospital, no to the home birth (although, I do have some underlying anxiety that I'll go into labor during a massive Colorado snow storm and will be unable to get to the hospital).  Other questions - like do I want an epidural - are a bit trickier.  On one hand, pain relief seems like a good thought to me.  On the other hand, the more I read about some of the pain relief options available - like the epidural - the more anxious I become.  And then there are these "birthing methods".  The Bradley Method.  Lamaze.  The Husband Coached Childbirth (that one gives me a ridiculous images of Scott in a referee jersey and a whistle).  It's just kind of overwhelming.  My thought has always been that I'm going to walk into that hospital pregnant and in labor, and a couple days later, we're leaving with a healthy baby.  That's the plan.  But the details inbetween are starting to get fuzzy and I feel like I need to be better about educating myself so I can make some informed decisions in the moment.

So, like any data oriented person, I turn to books.  Off I go to Barnes & Noble thinking that there's got to be some bible of birth that will shed a little light on the subject for me.  I just want a concise list of pros and cons and maybe some statistics thrown in (I like me some statistics).  But I came up empty handed.  If there is such a book out there, someone please tell me, because all I could find were rather editorialized tomes with blissed out pictures of hippies during childbirth and somewhat preachy authors advocating for natural, orgasmic births.  What-ev-er.  I mean seriously, some of this stuff was traumatizing.  I do not see Scott and I naked in a field somewhere gazing at eachother as I push a watermelon out of my lady parts.  Puhlease. 

At a recent appointment, I spoke with my doctor about my data seeking conundrum.  I think she was a bit surprised.  She printed out some information on childbirth from for me, but wasn't anything I hadn't read already.  My health provider is Kaiser, who I've been pretty darn happy with so far, and my doc did explain their philosophy on childbirth which sounded pretty good to me: episiotomies are no longer standard, they'll provide a whirlpool tub and birthing ball to help me find a comfortable position, they'll let me labor naturally, they'll let me walk around.  Okay.  That all sounds good.  Then, she suggested I sign up for the birthing classes.  (Yeah, check that, doc - already did.  I'm a planner.)  And that was really about it.

In the meantime, I've turned to women I know, trust and respect who have been wonderful about sharing their birth stories with me.  Until recently, I hadn't spoken with anyone who passed on the epidural and I was beginning to wonder if they existed - like unicorns.  But since, I've spoken with three of them - all with different points of view.  And what was most comforting is knowing that they struggled with the same decision making process that I am.  I've also spoken with other women who have had an epidural, loved it, and didn't feel "gipped" by their birth experiences (which is what a lot of those hippie books claim).  Still others went in with a bullet-proof birth plan that had to be thrown out the window and ended up with a C-Section delivery and turns out, they weren't all that traumatized about it.  With all that in mind, I'm feeling a bit calmer about the whole situation now and am beginning to think that my initial instinct on this birth plan thing was probably right on.  I want to be present and involved during the whole process and to experience it all in the moment and ultimately, the goal is to walk out of that hospital with a healthy baby.

18 weeks, 5 days and counting...

Dog Days of Summer

I think I'm just beginning to understand why people say that pregnancy in summer should be avoided, if possible.  Granted, I'm not ginormous and pregnant with twins like someone I work with this summer, but I'm still feeling a little sorry for myself over the following complaints:

1.  It's hot.  Fortunately, we moved to Colorado, and I'm embracing the dry heat and ever so thankful that I'm not in the DC humidity and mugginess.  But it's still hot.  And I get sweaty.  And then tired.  And thirsty.  And I eat too much ice cream.  And I can't sleep without a fan blowing directly on me.

2.  I'm swelling.  I swear, my feet grow a full size throughout the day.  And I think it's mostly because I'm hot.  Last night I had a work event that required a lot of walking and standing around, mostly outdoors.  Even though I wore the most comfortable sandals I own that aren't flip-flops and still matched my dress (sort of), I find myself nursing 6 blisters today and propping my feet up because already, early afternoon, they are starting to swell.  Again.  Blech.

3.  I'm itchy.  Swelling + heat + stretching skin makes one itchy.  And it isn't very pleasant.

4.  I'm cranky.  With the hot-ness, swelling and itchiness, it's understandable that a little irritability comes into play.  Okay, maybe a lot of irritability.  Maybe I'm a hot mess some days.  Deal with it.

But thankfully, I have a really sweet husband who sends me text messages to check in on me, finds me obscure musical downloads, makes chili dogs, and is getting better about walking so damn fast in stores.  He helps me take it down a notch.  I hope I don't break him.

19 weeks and counting...