Lazy Daze

It's been three weeks already since my last blog and I am now officially halfway through the pregnancy at 20 weeks come Monday. After some adamant prompting from some avid but rather biased family members/readers I decided I should update everyone. On January 20th we had our 2nd trimester ultrasound and found out our little kicker is girl!  Very excited about that!  Poor Jason has been working his little fingers to the bone around here, and as challenging as it is to force myself to lay down all day, I must say I think I would rather have this job than his.  He has been doing such a great job; being in charge of doing all the chores, running all the errands, taking care of me, helping me relax, taking care of the dog, and getting in his own "me" time leaves little time in his day.  But he is doing an amazing job and I am forever grateful.

As for me, I've been growing a little bit every day. I feel the skin stretching from the inside. While it's not comfortable, it's not worrisome to me.  The biggest challenge of the last few weeks has been the contractions. I got them in week 16 but they went away in a few days; then at the beginning of week 18 I again was getting them but more frequently.  At the appointment the doctor said they are definitely earlier than expected, but reassured me that as long as they are fewer than four per hour, not to worry. MUCH easier said than done.  After that I had several long days of worrying about whether or not I was on the cusp of preterm labor or just going crazy.  Jason had a few rough nights of trying to convince me to relax and stay calm.  Eventually, the contractions started decreasing in frequency and I started being able to relax more about them. I do still get some every day, maybe around 5 or 6 today so far but as the doc says, nothing to fret about.

Another exciting development was that last weekend I finally broached the idea of the upcoming baby from the standpoint of expectant mother instead of paranoid, anxious pregnant lady.  This allowed me to start creating our babiesrus registry, which can be found under my married name at www.babiesrus.com.  I only put it here to fulfill requests from family; it's not an add for babiesrus. It was quite fun and a bit overwhelming to roll through the isles of that store (borrowed a wheelchair from good friend Lorri).  I am now very much looking forward to building our nursery and filling it with diapers and little outfits.

Realized that as I did not share the new with family until the baby was 14 weeks, I have also not shared any ultrasound photos.  Here are a few:

8 weeks, saw a gleaming heartbeat so nicknamed "boom boom"

10 weeks, saw tiny arm and leg buds so nicknamed "nubby"

12 weeks, moving around all over the place, doc called her a troublemaker but we nicknamed her  "squirmy"

19 weeks; found out she's a she!!  So now we call her "she"

26 weeks

Next belly pic isn't due for two weeks though!! You'll have to wait for those. I'm religiously putting on my belly butter; hoping not to look like a zebra by the time I get to the end of this long marathon!