Oh Yeah, I'm Pregnant!

My poor baby is so screwed... I'm already not paying as much attention to him as I did to Jack at this stage. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think about him all the time and I am so excited for him and I love him so much! It's just... when I was pregnant with Jack I would immediately update anyone and everyone on how he was doing and give them the play-by-play whenever something cool happened or I had a doctor's appointment, especially an ultrasound. This time, though, I have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to update the blog with very much pregnancy related news! I mean, I want to, but when I get a chance to update lately I don't have enough time to do much more than post pictures and run, and since This One is still baking, I don't have pictures of him! And it's pretty hard to post pictures that I don't have, you know? I hope This One knows that this doesn't mean that I love him any less!

So, to make up for my lameness and to catch you all up, I'm going to devote a massive post to This One! As of today I am 19 weeks and 3 days pregnant, and there are 144 days to go until my due date! I have been completely amazed at the differences between my pregnancy with Jack and my pregnancy with This One. I didn't have any morning sickness, or even nausea, with Jack but this time I'm still struggling with the nausea! Seriously, I'm almost to the halfway point and I'm still getting nauseous! I think the main difference in this pregnancy is that I'm feeling (and looking!) way more pregnant at each stage than I did with Jack. Things have been happening so much sooner this time around then they did the last time, and honestly my body felt as achy at 16 weeks this time as it did at 7 months the last time! The heartburn started almost immediately this time, where I didn't get it until 6 months last time (and boy howdy did I get it!). Crazy. Oh well, if that what it takes to cook this kid, then I'll take it! It could always be worse!

On the positive side, the fun parts of being pregnant also started much much sooner this time than it did last time! With Jack, I first felt him fluttering about when I was 10 weeks, and with This One, I could feel him without a doubt by 7.5 weeks! Feeling the big kicks didn't happen until 17 weeks with Jack Jack, but with This One I started feeling his strong kicks at 13 weeks! Dave first felt Jack moving from the outside at 19 weeks, but I've been able to feel the kicks with my hand and sit and watch my belly jumping around for the last month! Definitely my favorite part of being pregnant (isn't it everyone's favorite part?), and totally makes the nausea, heartburn and other aches and pains totally worth it.

So, the last time I updated on This One, I had announced that it looked like Mommy's Intuition was most likely correct and This One is a boy, but that we had another ultrasound on Sept 22nd and could have another peek to make sure that he stayed a boy. So on Sept 22nd, Dave and I dropped Jack Jack off with my mom and headed over to the hospital for our appointment! We were excited to get to see our little baby, and make sure that he was growing as he should be! And, of course, we were also excited and anxious to hopefully get conclusive evidence that This One is, indeed, a boy! So far our only evidence was my strong feeling that I'm carrying another boy, which doesn't convince Dave at all, and an ultrasound that may have been too early to be accurate (even though I still say that I know what I saw!), which still doesn't convince Dave. In fact, while we were in the waiting room, Dave turned to me and said "Now we'll find out that it's a girl!" So I turned to him and said "The only way that this is a girl is if the penis falls off!"

They called me in and I laid on the table as the tech started the ultrasound (sidenote: who in the world thought it was a good idea to make pregnant women drink an insane amount of water and then lay her on her back, a position that does not make it incredibly easy to 'hold it', and then proceed to push on her incredibly full bladder, which, by the way has already been made smaller by the presence of a growing baby who uses her bladder for soccer practice, with an ultrasound wand?! I bet you it was a man). It was so fun to get to peek at This One! The baby slept pretty much the whole time (which really is making me hopeful that maybe this one will actually sleep once he's born!), and slept in the cutest position with his arms up above his head in front of his face, and... his legs crossed tight! It figures, huh? She (the ultrasound tech) tried really hard to see something and just couldn't get anything! She seemed almost as disappointed as I was, but then right before she was about to give up on him he started waking up! Seriously, probably the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life was to watch this baby wake up in utero! It makes him so much more real! Not that he's wasn't real to me before, but you know what I mean... it felt like we were bonding a little Anyway, This One was kind of curled around my placenta so it was a really tough position to see anything at all, but he opened his legs slightly and we saw a penis! It wasn't incredibly conclusive, I mean, this u/s was the complete opposite of Jack Jack's u/s! Jack was totally dancing and bouncing around and wouldn't hold still for the measurements and he made sure that we could see without a doubt that he was all boy, whereas This One just slept in a very modest position! But, that tiny little peek in combination with my Momma's Intuition and the other u/s we had makes me pretty confident that I'm right and it's a boy!

Ang keeps insisting that God's going to turn him into a girl just cause He likes to screw with me, so we'll probably be getting another u/s at a later date to make sure that the penis doesn't fall off and he turns into a girl. Ha ha!

The very next day I had my regular 18 wk appointment. Remember when I said that I'm looking so much bigger this time around? I wasn't exaggerating. I mean, I thought maybe it was an optical illusion and people just don't remember what a person is supposed to look like at this stage (I went to a birthday party for one of Dave's old coworkers and the wives were all shocked when they saw me and told me that I looked 7 months pregnant, not 4.5 months!). But, at my appointment, when I laid back and lifted my shirt so that the nurse could position the doppler to listen to the heartbeat, her eyed practically bugged out of her head! She said "Wow, you're really popping out there! You're only 18 weeks? I'm going to measure you... you look a lot bigger than 18 weeks!" See, it isn't just me and people aren't crazy! I mean, you'd think that this nurse, who sees pregnant women all the time and knows what we're supposed to look like would not have that sort of reaction! I mean, she saw me throughout my entire pregnancy with Jack Jack and even though she told me I looked extra big then, she never had a reaction like that! She even grabbed her tape and measured my fundal height just to be sure! Thankfully, she said that I was measuring right on and that I just must be carrying in a way that makes me look bigger. Sheesh, everyone told me that I was huge when I was pregnant with Jack... but now I'm looking even bigger? Yikes, what am I going to look like in February?!?!

I don't mind though. I mean, I'm pregnant. I'm supposed to be big... right?