Mobility, we almost has it.

Today, she managed to scoot forward about a foot towards something she really wanted. The "something" was an envelope, which she chewed into a soggy purple wad within a minute of reaching it. She's still better at turning around in circles than she is at moving forward, but I believe good progress was made today.

Doctor's appointment

Dr says that everything is normal. Nothing noteworthy to report. Tiny squee has rearranged so that its back is to the left. Seeing that for the entire rest of the pregnancy, it has been facing the other direction, that's sort of interesting... but not particularly noteworthy. Perhaps that's why sleeping didn't go so well last night - Tiny Squee was busy repositioning.

We went to Powell's today; they were having a 30% off Friends and Family sale. I got a bunch of books, including several cook-and-freeze cookbooks which I hope to use to make food for after Tiny Squee arrives. I also got some baby board books to add to our (rapidly growing) collection. Our baby will be very well read.

Theatrical Squeeing About

We went and saw Beauty and the Beast (the musical) this afternoon. The tiny squee got VERY excited and was squirming and kicking all over the place. It was somewhat distracting. It is obviously Mike's baby.

All up in my stomach

This tiny squee has decided that the place to be is all up in my stomach. I didn't actually realize that my uterus extended quite so high into my abdominal cavity, but it must since the alternative is that the tiny squee is actually roaming free through my internal organs.

It's making dinner a challenging meal to eat. Typically, I can eat breakfast and lunch more or less normally. Then, while I'm digesting lunch for 8-10 hours, the tiny squee moves north and camps out in my stomach. Sometimes, it pokes its butt up and out, which gets to be quite uncomfortable. I poke at it until it moves back down.

As an interesting aside, I finally made it to a PMQG meeting. I don't think I've been there for at least 6 months. I definitely haven't been since I've looked pregnant. There were three other pregnant quilters at the meeting as well. One is due in May and two are due in July. I'm the least pregnant-looking. Of course, all the other ladies are having their second babies. It made me feel like I should sew something, so I headed to the fabric store this evening. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was exhausted and there was a tiny squee all up in my stomach, so the motivation left me. Perhaps I'll sew something tomorrow.

Hiccups

I think the baby is hiccuping. Every so often, I feel this very rhythmic gentle bumping, usually on my left side near the bottom of my tummy. It's probably about one bump per second and kind of feels like a heartbeat, except that the baby's heartbeat is much faster than this. It usually lasts a few minutes and then disappears.

Someone in my yoga class (which I haven't been to in forever, but am aiming to get to tonight) said she was feeling the baby hiccup, so that's my theory.

I think the baby was particularly active last night. It would explain the "having a baby" dream. I know it was active this morning after my alarm went off. There was some hiccuping, then some wiggling and kicking, then a huge movement that I felt on both sides.

Eating challenges

Eating has become more difficult. It depends where exactly the Tiny Squee is located at any given moment. It's large enough now that it takes up most of the available space. When it's down low, it's hard to walk and I have to pee every 15 minutes. When it's high, there's no room for my stomach. It likes to shift position just to make my life more challenging.

Here's how today's eating went:
Breakfast (7:30am) - bowl of cereal and a mocha.
Overfull until about 11:45, when suddenly I was starving. I ate an entire plate of Thai noodles.
Comfortable for about an hour, then went to extremely overfull and started to burp up Thai noodles.
Remained overfull until 6:30, when I was suddenly starving. I ate 2 pieces of bacon, 4 eggs and an english muffin.
Now, I desperately want cake.

Busy week.

This week felt really busy. I seem to have very much underestimated the amount of time that work was going to take this term. My plan was to sort of take it easy so I'd have some free time to get baby stuff done. The reality is that I don't feel like I've had much free time, except on the weekends. Grading has been a chore this past week, but I did finally get caught up so I don't feel quite so far behind. Of course, Friday's classes turned in a bunch of stuff that I have to grade this weekend. Also, there's the job application to finish writing essays for (7 essays? isn't that a little much for one job application?). The house is currently a disaster area because I haven't had the time or energy to get it organized. Baby stuff that I was organizing last weekend is still exploded all over the living room. And there are two activities for today that I wanted to attend, but sitting here this morning I just feel too tired. Maybe I'll just schedule a nap for today.

That last paragraph sounds like I'm complaining, which I'm really not. Pregnancy isn't entirely comfortable right now, but it could definitely be worse. Getting up off the couch or out of my rocking chair is definitely getting more challenging, but I feel pretty good most of the time. Too much activity (walking too fast, walking up stairs) makes me out of breath and my heart starts beating fast, but apparently that's completely normal. By the last trimester, blood volume has increased by 40-50%, but the number of red blood cells has only increased by 20%. That means that the heart has to pump harder to get the same amount of oxygen around the body. So my body is treating a flight of stairs as aerobic exercise.

The Tiny Squee is definitely getting larger. I can feel it move around a lot more now. I went to visit B last night and we were watching my belly bump around as tiny squee did flips. It spends most of its time with its back towards my right-hand side. Sometimes, it moves waaaay over in that direction so that side gets really hard (tiny squee back / butt / head). The other side gets squishy because it's just full of feet. It's not really too comfortable when it does that, so I usually poke it until it moves back more towards the center. Sometimes, it moves waaaay up and squishes my stomach. I can go from starving to over-full in a matter of seconds because of baby positioning. Other times, it moves waaay down and walking becomes challenging. I totally understand why pregnant ladies start walking with that weird waddle. It's uncomfortable to walk when there's something hard all smoshed down in your pelvis. It makes me walk with my legs out wider than I would normally. I feel sort of like a penguin.

I finally broke down and bought maternity underwear. I'm not sure why I didn't do this sooner. They weren't any more expensive than regular underwear, but they're extremely comfortable. I'm not sure why manufacturers seem to believe that women want narrow, tight elastic bands around their legs and middles. Lots of women's underwear are cheaply manufactured and uncomfortable for various reasons. I've always thought that men's underwear were a lot better made and better designed. Anyhow, these maternity underwear are pretty low-cut in front to accomodate my belly full of tiny squee. Instead of an elastic band around the top, they have a knit band that stretches. They're awesome. I'm going to get more of them and probably wear them after I'm done being pregnant, too.

While we were shopping for maternity underwear, I also bought a pair of maternity leggings, a grey pair of
yoga pants, and a fancy shiny top that I think I'll wear to my baby shower. I'm thinking that all of these will also work for after-baby. I'm not sure what I'm going to wear with the leggings, since I don't normally wear skirts, but I do own some leggings that I never wear because they're not comfortable (mostly because they have really tight elastic waistbands). I think I'll just wear maternity clothes forever.

I feel like we've gotten a lot of the stuff organized and are more-or-less prepared for a newborn as far as stuff goes. Things we do not need any more of:
-Newborn clothing
-Flannel receiving blankets
-Other blankets, unless they're really cool
-Diapers

Things I would still like to get:
-A ring sling (like this) and maybe a wrap carrier (like this)
-A crib
-Bottles so Mike and relatives can feed the baby
I should go update my amazon wishlist.

Third Trimester, here we come!

We've officially entered the 28th week of pregnancy, which starts out the third trimester. I feel like I got about 5 times more pregnant in the last couple of weeks.. hopefully it's due to baby and not due to fudge and cookies.

Baby has active days and less active days. I went to prenatal yoga on Saturday and Shana (the yoga instructor) told someone else that the less active days are probably when baby is turned around and kicking towards the back. Apparently you can't feel kicks towards the back. All the kicks I've felt have been either down or to my left side, so maybe baby alternates between that direction and facing backwards. I enjoy the yoga class. It's really nice to check in with other pregnant ladies. I met someone who is almost exactly the same amount pregnant as I am. She's due March 28th. She looks a lot more pregnant, but she's also 5 inches shorter.

Sleeping has definitely become more of a challenge and I seem to have entered another tired phase. I slept (or at least tried to sleep) for 11 hours last night. I start out on my left side with a pillow between my knees. At some point during the night (usually about 3am), I wake up, go to the bathroom, and switch to the other side because my hip is starting to hurt. After that, I wake up every hour or hour and a half to change positions. I can see why pregnant ladies sometimes move to the couch or to a reclining chair for the last bit of pregnancy - laying on my back is more comfortable for my hips than laying on my side, but it's uncomfortable to be flat on my back. I have to be propped up on a couple of pillows so that I'm laying on a slope.

The disrupted sleep is making it easier to remember my dreams, so there have been a lot of those. Last night, I had a dream that I took the baby swimming. The baby had just recently been born, and this was going to be one of our first outings. Baby was the size of probably a 6 month old, which occurred to me in the dream. There was a whole saga involving lockers and where to put the baby while I changed and swim diapers. We were going swimming with Jess and several other friends who had babies. Jess's baby could swim like a fish because she had a pool in her backyard. In this dream, the baby was a girl.

I also had a dream that we took the chinchillas outside for a walk at my mother's house and we lost one of them. In the dream, we had three (we only have two in reality) and we lost the one that doesn't actually exist. We searched around the neighborhood looking for it. At one point, we asked a neighbor who was out raking his leaves if he'd seen the chinchilla. We told him it looked sort of like a squirrel.

Movement

Movement can now be seen on the outside of my tummy. If you very carefully look at the left side of my belly, you can see the baby bump out. You can also listen to my mother talking about nuns. The movement was, at times that I didn't catch on video, much more dramatic.

Musical Baby

Mike decided to play music for the tiny squee last night. I'm not sure whether flopping about means that it was enjoying the music and dancing, or not enjoying it and trying to get away... but here are the reviews so far:

Beatles: no real response.
Barenaked Ladies: much flopping to one song (with a strong beat), not so much to a second.
Phantom of the Opera: some flopping. Obviously it's a musical theater baby, but would prefer a show with a somewhat faster beat.

Hunger and flip-flopping

The tiny squee continues to make me hungry five (or 10) times a day. I'm trying to ration its supply of sweets and convince it that squash and apples are just as tasty. I'm not sure that it's working. I just really want sweet things. Or salty with lots of fat (Cheetos, anyone?).

There's tons of activity going on in my midsection, too. Baby seems to be testing out a variety of different positions. For several days there was a lot of banging on the bottom parts. I think baby was jumping up and down on my cervix to see if it was closed securely (it was). Then, the poking and prodding shifted over to my left side. This morning, baby seems to be laying on its back and poking its toes upwards. It's totally unpredictable and still a slightly disconcerting sensation.

I'm trying to make it through the end of this term with my regular clothing before switching into maternity tops full-time. Maybe I'd feel differently if it was summer and I was wearing thinner tops, but most of my sweaters are stretchy enough to still fit. I think I may have overestimated the amount of maternity clothes I would actually need. I should have held off on buying stuff until I actually didn't fit into my other clothes. I don't feel like I'm really big enough to wear most of what I've gotten without looking kind of silly. I need to sort through what I have and see what I'll actually wear. During winter break, I may end up trying to sell (or take to Goodwill) some of the stuff I really won't ever wear.

It's a wiggler

There's been quite a bit of action from the tiny squee recently. Today, it felt like baby was bouncing up and down either on my bladder or cervix. It's a really interesting sensation. I wouldn't say it's an entirely pleasant sensation, but it's not as entirely disconcerting as it was when it first started happening.

Baby has also been hungry for junk food. We need to have a talk about this behavior before it gets out of hand. It would really be more convenient (and healthy) if I started craving kale, squash, or cabbage.

Re-stomach issues

Thursday met with a resurgence of stomach upsets. I think it must have been stomach flu and not food poisoning - it lasted too long to reasonably be food poisoning. I spent Thursday tired and sick and ended up calling out of work (which I never do). I think I watched 12 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and eat 6 or 8 pieces of toast and that was about the peak of my productivity.

Luckily, I felt better yesterday and seem to be back to normal stomach behavior today (although I'm still pretty tired).

Baby seems to have made it through the experience relatively unscathed, as judged by the amount of dustbathing that's been taking place in my abdomen. Baby prefers to wiggle around when I'm driving and in the evening. Mike has yet to be in the right place at the right time to feel a wiggle, but I'm not actually sure if they can be felt on the outside yet. I haven't managed to feel one with my hand either.

We took our Christmas / baby announcement photo yesterday. I had a groupon for holiday cards and it had to be used by the 15th, so we had to move forward on the project. I hope they don't take too long to get here so I can get them mailed out before Christmas.

Halfway!!

I'm at 20 weeks now, which means that we're halfway to the birth. I still don't look all that pregnant (although sometimes I look a lot more pregnant than others), but the baby starts to gain weight a lot faster now. That means that I'll probably start to look pregnant-er in the next couple of weeks. I should also start feeling the baby move more.

I've felt what could potentially be baby movement. It sort of feels like there's a degu dust-bathing in my abdomen. It feels almost like nausea, but not quite. It's a really weird sensation. This has been going on for a week or so, but I'm not entirely ready to pin it down as baby movement. It's difficult to identify a sensation that you've never felt before. I was pretty sure I felt a definite baby movement last night, which felt sort of like several pokes, but then I spent the rest of the night sick so there was obviously something abnormal going on in there to start with.

Dr Liz says that in the next few weeks I should start feeling the baby move at least once a day. That'll be exciting. It'll be nice to know that everything is going ok in there. It's sort of tough to tell right now. There's not a lot of pregnancy symptoms at this point, so I get concerned that there's not a lot of pregnancy. However, baby has been doing fine at all the appointments, so I shouldn't worry.

This week, baby is roughly the size of a degu! So if you picture one of these rodents on the inside rather than on my lap, that's in the right ballpark. The length of a goo is probably pretty close to the crown-to-rump measurement of the baby and the weight is about right.