19 weeks: IT'S A GIRL!

ok. i hate being wrong, and i hate admitting i'm wrong even more. but...it's true. i was totally wrong. i was so convinced our baby was a boy, but the ultrasound image shows that, according to our sonographer, our baby is indisputably a girl. (even though we could barely tell what we were looking at sometimes. our sonographer was a little socially awkward. "oh, what is that gray hole in the body?" "um, that's not a hole. that's the stomach." oh well how could i have made that mistake?!)

so we're having a girl! we are so excited. ok, let me rephrase. we are so excited but sh is also terrified. he knows he's going to be completely whipped. looks like i'm gonna have to be the disciplinarian with this one (why is the mom always bad cop?). the day we found out, i had fun changing everything yellow and green on the baby registry to pink. :D i don't know how parents wait till the birth to find out the sex. besides the agony of waiting, the majority of baby clothes is still very pink or blue.

this weekend is baby's second plane trip in utero and second time in florida. sh's sister is getting married in boca this saturday. we are so excited for the wedding, but i ain't gonna lie. i am maybe equally excited for the warm weather. this weather is just WHACK. really. i am usually good with the cold but this winter has overstayed its welcome. plus, how will people know to give up their seat for me on the subway if my bump is hidden under a bulky coat? seriously.

baby fun facts: she has been extremely active the past week. they say that if you're in a position baby doesn't like, baby will make sure you know it. when i sit indian style or bent over, she seems to kick more, as if to say, "um, you're squishing me. change positions please." she's kicked about 10 times during the course of writing this post.

bump! i'm huge!

18 weeks: netipot is my friend. snot is not.

so yes. the netipot is as amazing as everyone says. all this snot just starts draining out after you use it - i used it for the first time sunday night and it was the first time i slept without waking up every hour or couple hours from being congested since i got sick. it is a little weird to have liquid go in one nostril and out the other (the reason for my hesitation to use it in the beginning) but once you get over that, it's actually very nice. the warm saline solution feels wonderful in your nose. it was really a godsend since i can't take any medication to fight this cold. sometimes, all i wanted was a couple gulps of nyquil. but what we do for babies.

the baby is moving like crazy. sh and i joke that it's practicing dance moves in my belly. i feel it more and more, which is really fun. it's like our little secret. and today for the first time, i was sitting on the couch with my hand on my belly and felt the kick from the outside. it'll probably be a while before sh can actually feel it, but i'm looking forward to when we can feel the movement together. what was interesting is that the baby kicked especially a lot at church on sunday while the band was playing. when i told my mom, she said it's definitely true that babies move more when they hear music or loud noises. she said when she was pregnant with ernie, he used to kick up a storm when she took andy and me to violin lessons.

the big day is coming soon - we find out the sex of the baby on friday! we talk about it literally every 5 minutes because we can't wait to know what IT is. sh said he's posting the results on fb as soon as we find out, from the ultrasound room. so look for the news to hit fb on friday morning around 9am. :)

bump time - (don't judge, yes i'm wearing the same tshirt as last week. i have a limited wardrobe!)

17 weeks: sick mommy. gymnast baby.

i am sick. i've had a slight cold the past week but nothing serious. then i woke up yesterday and felt like i slammed into a ton of bricks. super-sore throat, extreme sinus pressure all over, congestion, achy. it's worse because you can't take anything when you're pregnant (friends have suggested the netipot - is this thing really as amazing as everyone says?). i didn't even realize today was blog day until the hubs asked, "isn't it bump day today?" because he takes the picture every week.

i'm going to keep it short because i need to drink some tea and go to bed early. the big news this week is that i felt the baby move for the first time saturday. it feels like someone is poking you from the inside. i wasn't sure if it was the baby at first, but since saturday i feel it pretty frequently and now i'm certain it's the baby. it's not like anything i've felt before, and it's in the area where i know the baby is (very low in the belly). it's been such a nice development in my otherwise not-so-nice week. i think this morning the baby was doing some acrobatics in there because i felt a whole lot of movement. i know three days isn't enough to establish a trend but i feel like the baby moves more right when i'm waking up. or maybe it's just that i can feel it better when i'm lying down.

the bump: it might look smaller than usual because i'm wearing a tshirt (read: pjs i never changed out of today) instead of the tighter shirt i usually wear for the picture - but trust me, it has grown a lot this past week.

16 weeks: i want to want food

16 weeks! 4 weeks till the halfway point. generally, things are moving along ok. but my main struggle is still not being able to, not wanting to, eat normally. i really hope my appetite comes back soon. i need to start gaining weight. it's weird - my face, arms and legs keep getting skinnier but my belly keeps growing.

also, i've been experiencing a lot of heartburn, indigestion and gas lately (but mostly the last one). i stayed up till 2am yesterday, sitting in bed next to a passed out sh and sammiepants waiting for things to calm down in the tummy (read: burp out all the gas). thank goodness i had angry birds to keep me company. :)

i'm pretty tired today so i'll end it here and leave you with my bump picture and a few baby fun facts:
baby is almost 6 inches long and is moving around like crazy, though i probably won't be able to feel it for another couple weeks. i read that baby can feel touch through the belly so sh's been massaging the belly at night and talking to baby (since it can hear us too). it's a nice nighttime ritual and it helps us feel more connected to a baby that sometimes seems imaginary since we can't see it yet.

bump!

15 weeks: feeling bipolar + maybe hormones can be a good thing

sometimes, i complain to sh that we are still so far away from august 23. but i have to admit that each week does go by pretty quickly. 5 more weeks and i'll be halfway through the pregnancy (and we'll know if the baby is a mini-sh or a mini-carol). well, hopefully by then i'll be liking food and sh can take me out to eat somewhere yummy. not being able to eat normally has been the biggest frustration for me during this pregnancy. it's really hard to think of something i can eat that's not cereal, fruit, yogurt or bacon.

so i've been feeling very up and down this week - bipolar not in my attitude towards the baby, but in how i feel about this world into which the baby will be born. i think it's hard sometimes to wrap my head around the fact that this world is so dichoto...mous? (is that a word?) sometimes, life is good. saturday morning was chilly but super sunny, so sh, sammie and i took a nice walk to fort greene (which did wonders for my SAD-ness) to pick up muffins and coffee from a small coffee shop. i thought to myself how excited i am that soon we'll have a baby that can join us in morning walks like these.

but at other times, life really just sucks. i've recently gotten into the tv show bones. i know it's been on for a while but the first time i saw the show was only a few weeks ago. it seems like it's on at least 3 times every evening, so i've been watching it incessantly. (it doesn't hurt that i had a crush on david boreanaz during the buffy years and now he's back as a hunky fbi agent.) obviously, there's always a dead person involved in the plot since dr. brennan + team are now investigating said dead person's bones to solve the mystery of the death. and almost always, there's a murderer involved in the plot as well. i started crying during one episode where the murderer was particularly callous and horrible and demented.

when sh got home later that night, i started tearing up again. when he asked me what was wrong, i told him how it's scary to think of bringing a baby into this crappy world. just the thought of the baby experiencing any hurt, sadness or fear makes me want to cry, but i know it's inevitable. how can a parent raise a child to have some understanding that this world is flawed while also adequately protecting the child from those flaws until it's ready to tackle them on its own? i know this is probably one of THE questions of parenthood and i probably won't have to battle it until a little later, but it's there, floating around in my mind. the lens with which i look at everything has changed since i got pregnant. if i weren't pregnant, i would've watched that episode of bones and gone, "ugh. what a nutjob" and moved on. now, it's "omg, nutjobs like that live in the same world as our soon-to-be born baby." freak out ensues. i'm sure hormones have something (maybe a lot) to do this with these emotions and thought processes. at first i would blame hormones for overreacting or being oversensitive or just feeling miserable. but now i'm not so sure. maybe hormones can be a good thing. maybe it's preparing me now for the emotions and thought processes i'll go through a million times over as a mom.

ultimately, all these emotions and thought processes i'm going through as i progress through pregnancy are showing me a little more about how God feels about us. if i can love the baby this much and i haven't even seen it yet (minus the little show it put on for us during the ultrasound), how much more does he love us? after i calmed down from the freak out over bones, sh responded that we don't have to worry. he reminded me that this world sucks but God is good.

this week's baby bump picture: