30 weeks - the home stretch

I was just getting ready for bed when I realized that I had been meaning to add a new post to the blog. Adrian was making me laugh while he took the picture, but at least my smile looks more natural that way...

Amazingly enough, I only have 10 weeks left! It seems as though the time has flown by. Luckily, I am not sick of being pregnant yet, although I am starting to get to the point where I am beginning to feel uncomfortable much of the time. I think that the circulation in my legs is not as good as it used to be (my legs puffed up two weeks ago right above the elastic line of my socks!), but as long as I am not standing or sitting in one place for too long it seems to be fine. On and off throughout the day, my belly will suddenly feel really tight, like the baby is pushing on the outside as hard as he can. Most of the time, I like the feeling of him moving around in there, but every once and a while it feels like my belly cannot stretch even a tiny bit more! Sleeping has also become a bit difficult, since I have been finding it hard to get comfortable, but overall I can't really complain. I am actually enjoying being pregnant for the most part.

I look obviously pregnant now, and when I meet new people the first thing they ask me is: "when are you due?". I like the fact that seeing someone who is pregnant seems to bring out some type of friendliness instinct in people. For some reason, being pregnant is one of the few reasons that strangers will be prompted to talk to you. I used to think that this would bother me, but I think that it is fun that people are so interested in babies. Even the football players who I work with at the U of M have been very interested in my pregnancy, and ask me a lot of questions.

In a week Adrian and I will be on spring break, and we have so much to do! It will be our last chance to have a bit of free time before the baby is here. I am hoping to finally get the baby room set up a little bit and start writing my oral prelim paper (I am hoping to have a draft done soon so that I can defend my paper before the baby is due!), and Adrian is hoping to get some work done on the cars, and help me get the house ready. Most of all, it will just be nice to finally spend some time at home together. Adrian has been so busy with school that we haven't seen very much of each other in the past couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to using our week off to get the house ready for a baby together.

25/27 weeks - My due date has officially been moved!

I had my second ultrasound last week because at my first ultrasound, the technician suggested that I might actually be two weeks further along than we had originally thought. (Either that, or the baby was just big...).

This ultrasound was definitely not as overwhelming and exciting as the first, but it was great to see the little guy again. He looked a lot bigger this time, and it was hard to fit his whole body into the screen. It was also more difficult to get a clear shot of his little face, but from what we could see, he still looked pretty adorable. The main difference was that this time my mom brought her camera, so we were able to capture the moment! The first time I think that it would have been too distracting, and we were too emotional to care about taking pictures. This worked out perfectly, because now I have these images to remember the experience.

At my appointment with my nurse practitioner yesterday, she confirmed that we would be changing my due date to May 14th. The second technician and the radiologist both agreed that my due date should be moved up by two weeks. Although this hurt my ego a little bit for some reason, (could I have been wrong about my last period?), I actually like the idea of being able to magically skip ahead two weeks. I also like the fact that now it makes more sense why my belly seems so big, and why I have gained so much weight already (22 pounds - can you believe it?). This appointment was also a nice relief because my nurse midwife was not at all concerned about how much weight I have gained, and said that I am right on track.

Those extra two weeks actually put me right at the beginning of my third trimester. Maybe it is all in my head, but I definitely felt much more tired and sluggish today than I have felt for a while. Sometimes my belly feels like it is weighing me down. Even so, I am still enjoying being pregnant. It is amazing to feel the baby moving inside of me, and now I can actually see my belly move from the outside! It looks a bit like a science fiction movie (but of course much more beautiful...). I hope that the tiredness is temporary. I have a lot to do before the baby comes!

23 weeks - My belly just keeps a-growin'!

Things are definitely starting for feel very real for me (and Adrian) lately, and that is both exciting and scary.

My belly seems to have grown exponentially - now even strangers are noticing that I am pregnant and asking when I am due. I still maintain that I would not ask someone about their belly even if they were obviously pregnant because you just never know, but at the same time I am relieved to know that people can tell that I am pregnant. This growth in my belly is causing some wardrobe problems for me because I keep feeling like I need to buy new clothes to accommodate my changing shape, but at some point I am just going to have to make do with what I have. I do not yet think that I have reached that point.

Along with the changing belly comes the fact that the baby is bigger now, and I can feel him moving quite frequently. It is hard to describe the sensation, because it feels natural and normal, and not foreign and scary; but at the same time I can tell that what I am feeling is not coming from me. I always imagined that it would feel like an alien in my belly (much like that horrifying scene in the the first Alien movie), but it is actually a much more pleasant and natural feeling. The best part about this new movement is that people can actually feel it from the outside now! Adrian was the first to feel the baby move about two weeks ago, and I have since had other family members and friends touch my belly in order to feel the little guy wiggle around in there. It is really quite amazing.

This leads to the scary part. Lately the realization that I will soon have an actual baby has been beginning to dawn on me. I have started receiving some baby items from people (a stroller, and some toys and clothes), and I have been thinking about the fact that there will be a baby using those items soon. Of course, that was the goal of this whole adventure in the first place, but the unknown possibilities of having an actual child are both scary and exciting. I suppose that you can never really be ready. Don't get me wrong, we are both very excited, but I also think that it is natural to wonder: "what kind of parent will I be?". I am curious to find out!

21 weeks - It's a boy!

I just had my first (and most likely only) ultrasound yesterday, and it is hard to describe how amazing and overwhelming it was! I had seen still images from ultrasounds before, but they did nothing to prepare me for how real and three-dimensional the images that we saw were! It was hard to believe that the baby we were examining on the screen was actually inside of my belly.

I went to the appointment with Adrian and my mom, and although every second was certainly not packed full of beautiful emotion (the appointment lasted about an hour), there were definitely some moments that took our breath away. All of us (even Adrian) were having a hard time not crying. The ultrasound started out a bit comically, since the first shot that the technician took happened to be a crotch shot of the baby. She made sure that we wanted to know the sex, and then explained that we were looking right at the male genitals. I had been concerned that I might be disappointed if I found out that I was having a boy (I always imagined that my first child would be a girl), but all of those fears faded away as soon as I saw the baby. I knew as soon as I saw him that I would love him! I think that something about seeing the live images from inside my womb really made the whole experience real in a way that it had not been before.

The highlight for us was when we saw a profile shot of the baby sucking his thumb. We actually saw him put his hand up and into his mouth, and then saw his mouth making a sucking motion! I realize that it might sound silly, but at that moment we all seemed to be thinking "wow - he is a real baby".

I was only a little bit teary during the ultrasound procedure, but on the drive home afterward when I was making all of the phone calls to family and friends, I felt extremely emotional. Adrian and I were really going to be parents! Someone was going to be calling us "mom" and "dad". It was an overwhelming realization. Of course, just as I was feeling a rush of emotion, the song "These Days" by Nico came on the radio. I am not sure what it is about that song, (perhaps because it reminds me of "The Royal Tenenbaums"), but I have always liked it and its melancholy tone. The song hit me in the just the right way, and I began crying. A lot.

Ever since yesterday afternoon, I have thought about the flutters in my belly a little differently. There is a little guy moving around in there! All I can say is wow.

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?

Blog beginning

My friend Jenny convinced me to start a blog. I have to admit that I actually hate the word blog, but I will just have to get over it, because this seems to be the easiest way to get information to people.

For those of you who don't know, I am currently 13 weeks pregnant, and my due date is May 28, 2009. Hard to imagine.

Since I have been going to a nurse midwife, I don't have any exciting in-utero images to share just yet (no ultrasound until 20 weeks unless there is a problem). I have been reading a book that Jenny gave me, and apparently, the baby is about 2 and a half inches long at this point. Adrian thinks that it is funny to say that the baby is in there playing the piano like the Phantom of the Opera, because that is how its hands look in all the illustrations.

Everyone has been wondering how I am feeling, and I am happy to say that I am feeling pretty great! I was only sick for about a week and half (between week 8 and week 10), but didn't throw up a single time. I was tired and run down until last week, but now I am feeling pretty close to normal. I am interested to see what comes next...