22 Weeks

Our little girl is a full pound and is 11 inches long. She's kicking harder all the time too. Her little fingernails are starting to grow and she's growing the hair she'll be born with (or not.) She has the eggs in her ovaries that she'll ever have. How weird is that? My own grandchildren are technically in my belly at this point. Well, sort of.

Here is our little muffin with her hand up by her face. At least, I think that's her hand...

21 Weeks

Our baby weighs about 13 ounces, so just shy of a pound and is 10 inches long from the top of her head to her heels. Her skin isn't transparent anymore and her tongue is fully formed now. I can feel her moving throughout the day, not just the kicks and punches.

We hit a milestone last night. Kelly had his head on my belly and was talking to the baby like he usually does. She was kicking at him, but he couldn't feel it. She shifted a bit and it felt like she was bracing her back for a really big kick so I told him to push his cheek a little harder on my belly. She kicked him good and hard in the face and he felt it! We think. It may have just been me twitching from her kicking so hard at him, but Kelly is convinced it was her. He called his mom at 11pm to tell her because he was so excited.

Here is our little soccer player with her legs crossed again and her arms up by her chest.

She's kicking me now, telling me to get up and to go to work, so I'd better listen.

20 Weeks

WE ARE HALFWAY!!

This isn't my favorite of the 3D ultrasound pics. She was wiggling too much and this one of her face is pretty blurred. Kinda looks like she has a little pig nose.

Our little girl is 10.6 ounces this week and about 9.5 inches long, including her little legs. She is packing on the weight. The tooth buds from last week are starting to form milk teeth under her gums. Her skin is still translucent, but is slowly getting thicker. Little nipples will likely show up this week. She's getting stronger every day. Her harder kicks are almost strong enough that Kelly can feel them. He shouldn't have a problem feeling them in about a week or two.

Cool preggo factoid: she can hear well enough now that loud noises outside the womb will startle her and make her jump.

The light is a little funky on these belly shots, sorry. I was too tired to care.

This pic makes her look like a gorilla. She was tilted funny, but you can see her little legs crossed Indian style with her long Spiers monkey arms at the sides.

5 Month OB Visit

We had our 20 week ultrasound today, and the news is in: we are having a baby girl!!! The doctor says the ultrasound tech has never been wrong and she does them for 4 doctors and a midwife. I just knew she was a girl.

Our little girl is growing perfectly. She is right on track and very healthy. Squirmy too. She didn't like the ultrasound probe on my belly or the goo, cuz it was cold, so she kicked the probe good and hard once for me, made me laugh. We saw Dr. Noorda today instead of Dr. Blackett, cuz she was doing surgery. Nice guy, but way too friendly and touchy for my taste. Apparently any modesty I have won't matter by the time I have this kid. Kelly and I are absolutely giddy. We went and bought a cute onsie to celebrate.

This is our baby's profile, you can see her little heart. (the dark spot in her chest)

This is our muffin's little legs kicking at the probe. See the little knee cap? (The stuff that looks like boy bits is just her umbilical cord, we asked)

This is just the beginning of embarassing baby pictures. Those are her little legs thrown up in the air, showing us that she is lacking the necessary parts to have made her a boy.

19 Weeks

So close to the downhill slide! I hate to say it, but I'm getting really sick of being pregnant. I can't sleep, wear, do, or even eat how I want. It's all about the baby. Which is the way it ought to be I suppose. Kelly tends to turn into the diet nazi around dinnertime, but doesn't know enough about being pregnant to tell me what to do the rest of the time thankfully. I know he's just looking out for his baby the only way he knows how, but I'm tired of him forcing me to eat vegetables. Keeping the baby healthy is more important than me having to choke down an extra pile of peas, I know. I'm reminded every week. I always google for pictures of the baby for the week I'm in and most of the pics that come up are from aborted babies. It didn't bother me as much at first because they weren't recognizable as human and it didn't sink in. Now, they're very human and big. How could someone do that? Unless the fetus died and they had to, I just don't understand it.

Anyway, onto cheerier subjects. The baby kicked me a few times this week. Hard. The first one scared me to death. I was sitting at work, off in Lala land, and it felt like something pushed a big fat thumb (or a little tiny foot) into my belly. From the inside out. I thought I had an alien that was going to burst out of my stomach for a minute. After the initial "holy crap what on Earth was that??" it was really cool. Kelly still can't feel the little kicks, but they're getting stronger really fast, so it won't be long.

Our muffin is just over 6 inches long (9, if you include his/her legs) and weights around 8.5 to 9 ounces. That's just over a half of a pound. Half the end length and a fraction of the final birth weight. My sweet little baby is just skin and little rubbery bones right now. Eyebrows and scalp hair is forming this week along with the beginnings of tooth buds. S/he is swallowing and fully digesting the amniotic fluid now and working on that first poop.

Thanks to Aunt Natalie, Grandma Sonia, and my mom, I finally have clothes of my own that fit. Kelly can keep his pants. We spent a good day shopping for maternity clothes and found a lot of cute ones. Without their help, I'd have ended up in a muumuu. I just don't have the enthusiasm to sort through rack after rack of shirts looking for the 4 cutes ones. I can't even count how many pairs of maternity pants I tried on. In the end I have several very cute tops, an incredibly comfortable pair of jeans, a really cute pair of khakis, 2 pairs of dress pants for work, and a pair of shorts that are a little big for my belly at the moment. We figured by the time it gets warm enough for me to wear them, I'll be huge anyway. I really love spending time with them and wish we'd have had more time to just hang out and talk.

This is for those of you who either haven't seen me in a few months, or just don't believe that I actually needed maternity clothes. This is the difference from 5 weeks to 19 weeks pregnant.

18 Weeks

I'm creeping up on the halfway mark now. Our little one is about 5.75 inches long and weighs about 6.75 ounces. I was thinking about this the other day: by next week the baby will roughly weigh a half pound. By the time I give birth, s/he'll be in the neighborhood of 7 to 8 pounds, probably. It took almost 20 weeks to get to a half pound. Including his/her legs, s/he is almost half of the length s/he'll be at birth, so that makes sense to me. Somehow, during the next 20 weeks, this little gummi bear is going to double, then quadruple, then double again his/her weight. Holy crap. I don't know if my stomach can keep up with that.

Vocal chords are functional now, although there's not much noise to be made when you're completely submersed in water. S/he is sucking and swallowing. The baby can finally hear us. I get the distinctive feeling there is going to be more Pink Floyd played for my belly than I can stand in the next few months. The aveoli are starting to form in those little lungs, and all the chambers of the heart will be visible on our upcoming ultrasound. I still feel like we're having a girl, but I guess we'll see if I'm right or wrong on the 12th.

I'm still not sure if I'm feeling the baby move or if my stomach is just doing strange things. My stomach has always been really growly and rumbly. I'm just not sure where it is now, so I can't tell if the gurgling is from my lunch or from the baby enjoying my lunch. If I don't start feeling anything by the end of this week, I'm gonna start getting nervous. You know, more so than the basket case that I usually am.