18 weeks - Oh my goodness, my belly button is changing!

I don't know if it was all the food I ate over Christmas, but somehow my belly magically doubled in size over the past couple of days. I looked in the mirror on Christmas afternoon and realized that my belly seemed bigger, so I lifted up my shirt, and lo and behold my belly button had changed! It is becoming stretched out and more shallow! I was already feeling moody, and for some reason this changing belly button made me a bit teary. I am certainly excited to be pregnant, but it is hard for me to have my body change so drastically. I need to make up my mind to embrace it, and it is certainly helpful that other people seem to find pregnant bellies adorable. Last night I got dressed to go out, and my brother and sister both thought that I looked really cute, so they made me pose for a picture. Ta-daa!

17 weeks - I have a little belly!

It has been a while since I last posted. Actually it has been about 4 weeks, but the end of the semester was a really busy time for me and Adrian, and I kept forgetting to add new information. The holiday season is upon us, and Adrian and I are booked solid from now until New Year's with gatherings for both family and friends. We just got home from a whirlwind of Judeo-Christian/Pagan holiday celebrations. We decorated a tree with Adrian's family in honor of the winter solstice, and then went to my Aunt's house to celebrate Hannukah with my family.

Last week I had my 16 week doctor's (nurse mid-wife) appointment where she measured my belly, took a blood sample, and listened to the heartbeat. I invited my mom and my brother, who was home for the winter break, to come the appointment with me. Even though the appointment was quite short, it is always nice to hear the words: "everything looks normal". The baby's heartbeat was about 150 beats per minute, but it took her a while to locate it because apparently the baby was moving around a lot. She told me that I had a very active baby. Even though my belly feels really huge to me, she said that it is actually perfectly normal for how far along I am, and that it is just sticking out because I am so small to begin with. The blood sample was part of a quad-screen test which looks for chromosomal abnormalities and signs of neural tube defects. I just got a call yesterday that everything came back negative! So far so good.

People say that starting at around this time you can feel the baby move. I have felt something, but it is so hard to tell if it is the baby yet. I like to think that it is. I also like to think about the fact that this is the last holiday season that will be just me and Adrian. How bizarre. What will next year be like?