STATS:
How far along: 18 weeks.
How big is baby: The length of a bell pepper, he/she can hear ( so all those songs I sing and books I read are not going to waste), flex those tiny muscles, and show off its gender specific genitalia.
Total weight gain: 2 pounds (143lb) this week, for a total of approximately 7 pounds from the start of the pregnancy. So at this point I am caught up with my first and second trimester (4 weeks) requirement.
Sleep: I decided to hold off buying a body pillow until I feel that surrounding myself with 5 separate pillows just doesn’t do it anymore. At this point I have 2 pillows behind me, two in front and one at my head and it works well. I have no trouble turning around to either side and am actually starting to enjoy sleep a lot ( aside from 3 bathroom trips). It’s funny that they say that your bathroom trips are supposed to decrease in the 2nd trimester, because for me, there has been no change at all.
Best moment of the week:
Read below in the movement section
Seeing friends on Wednesday ( I have a few photos to share that I hope to post next week here and on Selfie Magic)
Food cravings :
Nothing really this week. I’ve mellowed out with my peaches, though I still eat a lot of them . I started been able to eat Romaine again and made my favorite delicious ceasar salad with a home made ceasar dressing. I did ask my friend Elena to make me crepes, which I stuffed with Romaine, tomatoes and pickles and vegan ranch dressing (yum).
Food aversions: Veggie burgers. One of my most favorite things to eat now grosses me out. Being pregnant is really funny- it’s like your body is truly taken over by someone/something else. I can’t even stand my husband’s breath after he eats one 🙂
Symptoms:
I have some new players here this week:
Pregnancy brain – It always made me smirk whenever I read about pregnancy brain. Not that I was skeptical, but I wondered if it was something that not-so-smart women invented as an excuse – haha! Well, I can tell you – it’s definitely NOT an excuse. On a normal non-pregnant day, I am sharp, on the ball, with excellent memory, multitasking like crazy, get work done and manage some of my husband’s work activities. Everyone who knows me can rely on me remembering what they asked me to do and never has to remind me of important things or push me along.
NOW- whether it’s pregnancy brain or just me being pre-occupied with feeding myself right and nursery thoughts or whatnot, but I have been LITERALLY forgetting the most simple things: I forget to email people back, to call clients, to check on things, I forget what I am talking about and lose my train of thought often. Then I remember that I had to do something and one second later I forget again. Seriously, it’s that bad. I am usually reminding hubby about work things, but this week I had to tell him: “Listen, there’s something going on with me and I simply cannot trust myself to remember certain things, so if I tell you I need to do something, please understand that most likely I’ll forget, so it’ll be your responsibility to remind me.” I basically told him to start riding my ass (lol), which is something I always have to do to him and never the opposite.
Being out of breath – pretty much after any activity.
Stretchmarks – none so far. My skin looks nice and glossy.
Hunger – Very very hungry all the time. My taste for sweets (other than ice cream which came back earlier) has returned, but I am keeping it in check, of course.
Heartburn – Very mild, at the end of the day, depending on what I ate that day. By the way, heartburn is supposed to subside in 2nd and return in 3rd trimester, right? Is that how it works?
Skin – Still suffering. It went from a million little breakouts to more defined inflamed spots.
Movement:
So that little kick I wrote about last week was, in fact, our first movement ( hubby’s loving being right). I didn’t want to ascribe to much to it until I felt more and knew it was a movement. This past week I’ve been feeling a lot of dancing in “ma belleh”. It started early in the week with a few weird rolls, which were, like the first, so faint that I’d ask myself whether I even felt them afterwards. On Wednesday or Tuesday, I felt a few little rolls that made me realize without a doubt in my mind that those were actual movements. They were still very faint but there were a few more of them. And right on the day I turn 18 weeks ( Thursday) something amazing happened. I was lying in bed in the morning chatting with my husband. I felt a few rolls and some movement, that was more definite that other times. I brought it to his attention and we both lay there watching my stomach and talking to the baby while I told him when it kicked. The baby might been liking the attention because it continued moving. After some time, Andrew left to go to the bathroom and I kept feeling the movements. At some point, it kicked so hard it startled me. So I lay there looking down and enjoying the first real movement, when I could SWEAR I saw my skin move! I called Andrew back and he tried to put his hand on my stomach. I kept telling him “You won’t feel anything until the baby gets stronger at about 23 weeks or so”, so after a while he took his hand away. After a few minutes, we BOTH saw my belly skin move a bit ( so I WASN’T imagining it the first time). Hubby put his hand back there waiting for the baby to kick. I felt a few rolls and he looks up at me and says “I felt that!”.
“Yeah, right!” -I answer.” You could not have possibly felt that”. And right at that moment, as if to prove me and the medical books WRONG, the baby kicked so hard ( it felt like a little tiny foot jab) right under Andrew’s hand, that BOTH ME AND MY HUSBAND GASPED at the SAME TIME! That’s when I knew he DID feel it!
The first several hours I was just shocked. I was so set on the fact that Andrew won’t be able to feel what I feel for quite a few weeks that this event baffled me! I am not sure if we were just lucky to have his hand be in the right place and time, or our baby is a “Hercules” like my mom says, but I am very grateful that he got to experience the kicks this early on. Needless to say, he has since been trying to feel the baby everytime I let him know it’s kicking ( which is really adorable to watch). But it hasn’t kicked this hard ( except for a few occasional singular kicks) or this consistently since. One time I was skyping with my mom and gasped from a strong kick while talking 🙂 but it’s always a single event and the baby stops moving shortly after that.
Also, I’d like to mention that to me the movement felt nothing like butterflies. Some people compare it to gas bubbles, but after I finally felt it, I realized that I’d never had “gas bubbles” before ( just gas pains), so what I was feeling couldn’t be gas. I guess, if I didn’t know I had an actual baby inside of me and I felt a movement like that, the only plausible explanation would have been gas. But being pregnant, there was little doubt that it was movement, except for the fact that the first ones were so faint, I wasn’t sure I even felt anything.
Gender: 5 MORE DAYS! I guess this is as good time as any to let you know how we’re doing the gender thing. I will not be announcing the results immediately. In fact, I won’t even tell my mom or know it myself for the first few hours. We’ll be doing a video with a “grand” reveal that I will post on Friday or Saturday ( depends on how fast I can get it edited). Until that video is ready, noone will know the sex 🙂 ( thanks to Lauren for this great idea!) This will be very hard for me, since I simply cannot keep secrets when they are my own. But I am very excited about it!
To be honest, I don’t have a feeling about our baby’s sex anymore. I have absolutely no idea if it’s a boy or a girl. But I’d like to open a poll for you guys to start guessing (see the sidebar)
What I’m looking forward to:
Finding out the sex and making our gender reveal video
Making sure everything is ok with our baby at the anatomy scan next week.
What I miss:
Looking good. Having my skin and hair back. OMG-getting my hair done! I want highlights so bad 🙂 Good old sushi.
Next appt: September 1st, the big one
I will be DYING waiting to hear what you’re having!! I can’t wait!! I love feeling the kicks!! It’s so fun!! My baby girl is getting so strong!! Some of them are a little uncomfortable but I don’t care, she can kick all day long if she wants! That’s so nice that your husband got to feel the baby too.
Pregnancy brain is so terrible! I am noramlly pretty good at spelling and grammar but with this pregnancy, I can’t spell/type anything. It’s horrible!
I’m going to be checking every 5 min starting on Fri waiting for that video!! EEEKKKK!!!!
I’m so excited for you that I almost started crying when I read this!!!!! Howwwwwwwww freakin exciting!!
That is so awesome!!!! I loved reading about your experience!! I am SO EXCITED for your reveal video!! I have been thinking about you all week!! Since you find out what you are having the same as I start massage school it makes it easy to remember. I can’t wait to know what you’re having!!! I’m super duper excited for you guys!!! 🙂
oh yay! That is SO COOL that you both got to feel your baby kick! I had some flutters a few weeks ago, but not much since then. I can’t wait! Good luck at your appointment – can’t wait to find out what you’ve got in there!
Awwwwww!!!! I’ve reread the movement part like 3 times 🙂 So exciting!!!
I wanna know the gender sooo bad 🙂
I’m excited to hear the gender and that’s a cool way to reveal it. Congrats on feeling the movement to both of you & not everything about pregnancy is text book 🙂
Can’t wait to find out what you’re having – it’s SUCH an awesome appointment! 🙂
I couldn’t stand the smell of some foods on my husbands breath either, lol. I used to make a little tower of pillows between us so I couldn’t smell him when he came to bed haha!
Awesome idea for the gender reveal! You must be so excited to find out 🙂
I can’t wait to hear what you guys are having, and I’m looking forward to seeing your nursery too, I bet it will be beautiful 🙂
pregnancy brain does not go away. nowadays, everything is called a “thingy”. The fridge= “thingy that keeps other thingys cold”. The car= “thingy that goes beep beep”. word retrieval is extremely difficult. sad. true.
btw- i think its a GIRL!
Wow, I thought it was just me! But you’re right, word retrieval is a thing of the past for me. I’m fine everywhere else, but words just don’t come to mind. I feel dumb most of the time lol.
Good luck with the gender appointment. It took me three ultrasounds to get a 100% clear shot of her “goods”.
Pregnancy brain is terrible- and it’s totally real.
Being out of breath gets worse. I have to stop and take breaks while carrying laundry up the stairs and feel like a sloth 98% of the time.
I told my husband on the way to the gender reveal appointment that I was more nervous/excited feeling than I was on our wedding day. It’s a super amazing time. 🙂
I just wanted to let you know you are finding out the baby’s sex not gender.
Yeah I know 🙂 But in certain phrases it’s unclear what I am talking about if I use the word sex, since sex also means intercourse.
Now that is ALWAYS exciting! Just wait until you are sitting there & and you see a fist stretch across your belly like something out of alien. Or you husband looks over at you & can literally see your belly moving from side to side because the baby is doing somersaults in there. It is an incredible feeling!!!
Yay! that so great that he got to feel the baby kick:) it took my josh WEEKS to feel it:) and just you wait, when baby gets bigger you can LITTERALLY watch the foot draaag across your belly:) it’s amazing:) oh, and just you wait for baby hiccups:) they’re something else:)
I vote for PINK!
I had the worst heartburn throughout my 2nd and 3rd trimester. 🙁 I drank Maalox like it was going out of style!
Did you not get your hair highlighted during pregnancy because of the chemicals and smells in the salon?
Yup. 2nd especially since highlights done properly don’t touch the scalp.
I figured. Unfortunately with my job (hair dresser) I was obviously in the salon my whole pregnancy. I just did my best not to stand directly over the clients head while applying/rinsing the color.