21 Weeks

Check those pale legs. Yeesh. Springtime come soon!

Nausea
I am taking away this category...knock on wood that it never has to come back!

Skin 
Pale and tight. It is beautiful and sunny today and I long to be outside soaking up some Vitamin D. Perhaps tomorrow I will set up a lawn chair in my still dead back yard and read Ina May. I LOVE YOU SUMMER, PLEASE COME SOON. KTHANKS.


In other news, tight skin. Who knew your belly button could hurt? The skin around the outside of my belly button is getting taut as the inside of my belly button rises close to the surface. Oy. I am going to look like a popped turkey timer, and I totally understand that, but already? I am making an effort to keep my abdominals tight and sit upright at work this week because it makes the ol' belly button a little deeper.


I have been applying this stuff liberally. No stretch marks yet - if they are genetic then I should just get prepared now. But, my old stretch marks on my hips, from that overnight time in 7th grade when my hips popped out and I had to transition out of juniors sizes, (which thankfully are all faded and barely there) have started to become noticeable again. 


I wish I could grab a tan. (I know, I know, tanning is bad...but 20 minutes enveloped in naked warmth sounds delectable to me right now...)

Weight/Clothes
Staying around the same. Though things are continually shifting, I feel like the belly has slowed its growth for a while here. Thank Goodness. Maybe this is because I "got to" pop so early? Who knows. But, I like everything the way that it is now, we can definitely take a breather in this range for a while.

Cravings/Aversions 
Weird moments of cravings here and there, yesterday afternoon I adamantly wanted a sausage and cheese biscuit (which used to be my hangover food of choice) at around 3pm. After about 15 minutes it went away. It's not so much weird foods as things popping into my mind that I want right.now.

Cramps/Pain
Round ligament pain is still my bff for life. Apparently it is sticking around, though it is not nearly as common as it was for a while there. Growing babies means muscles stretching. Yay!

Sleeping
Not great. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and being totally awake. Like, not a sleepy consciousness, but from deep sleep to eyes wide open.


Also, dreams. Weird. The other night I dreamed that I was hanging out with my preggo pal Andria from Illinois and she had made us what seems to be the most delicious looking barbecue chicken I have ever seen. As I cut out a big nice piece of juicy white meat and brought it to my mouth...the alarm went off.


I woke up salivating.


Mental State
Pretty good. Preggo hormones definitely make my mood jump up or down a level quicker than normal, but I am feeling pretty ok. We are checking stuff off the list, and when we aren't  I spend time online shopping and spending money I shouldn't to feel like I am accomplishing something. Should I be worried about this? I don't think so. Retail therapy, mmm.

Heartburn

So.much.better on meds.

Nasal Issues

I am ready to be able to breathe for realz again. Herman the Humidifier is still in our room, misting away.

The Girls

Are hurting again, new bras are imminent. 

Fetal Movement

Serious movement this week still mostly down lower than it seems like it should be based on where my belly is, but whatevs, and A got to feel his first "bump" last night. Yay! So fun.

Weird Stuff

Some symptoms are not presenting in me at all. I am still totally losing as much hair as I was pre-pregnancy, etc.

Also, now that we get to have another ultrasound at the next appointment I have no idea how I am going to make it through without finding out the sex of the baby AGAIN. Oh yeah, I never did a post on that ultrasound. Here ya go.

---------------------------------

Long story short, it was hard not to find out the sex, especially when the tech was all smiley and said, "Now I have a secret!" and when A (who is supposed to be the strong one) said right before we started "Should we just find out and not tell anyone?" GAH. Tempters. 

Everything looked all good and cute and all the bones were measured (seeing baby skeleton = weird), heartbeat looked great, etc. BUT, baby's head was so far down in my pelvis that they couldn't quite get all the angles they wanted of brain shots and face shots. So, we have another long ultrasound scheduled to measure everything up at our next visit. 

Hopefully we will have some cute stills to post after that. We have decided to not post the video though, mainly because we have too many friends in the medical/birth profession! We are pretty sure that what we cannot identify on the video someone else may be able to. Ack. That would be ridic. 

So, you will have to wait.

---------------------------------

And that was our 20 week ultrasound story.

And another photo, just for fun...

21 weeks, 1 day along

...and though I desperately need to save the days, I may or may not have tried to convince my husband to call in sick with me today so we could stroll around in the sunshine.