It's a boy!!

We had our anatomy scan today, and, as you can tell by the title, we're having a boy! We were right, and we couldn't be happier.

If you had asked me yesterday how I would feel knowing that we're having a boy, I would have thought that I would have been a bit nervous about it. I only have a sister and have never really had a lot of experience with little boys. Plus, my husband was a bit of a naughty kid. Still is naughty - now he's just a grownup. Now, though, I couldn't imagine it any other way. I'm absolutely over the moon about having a little boy.

Here are a couple of pictures of our son (SON!!! I'm going to have a son!!! Crazy):

Here's a profile shot. Notice him with his fingers in his mouth. We may have a thumb-sucker...


Here's one of the 4D pictures. Kind of alien-like, no?


Here's a foot. You don't even have to wait until the baby is born anymore to make sure it has 10 fingers and 10 toes.


And, here's an arm, complete with the elbow he's apparently been using to poke me with (you could see him jabbing me with it during the scan):


I'm not going to post any photo evidence that we're having a boy, but you'll have to trust me that it's true.

The ultrasound tech commented that most babies don't move their limbs as much as our kid was this early. OBVIOUSLY, our kid is already way more advanced than most. :-) I kid. It was pretty funny, though, and it supports my theory that, if this kid is as active outside as he has been inside, we're in for an adventure.

As for the rest of the appointment, everything looks great with the baby. Spine, heart, kidneys, brain, amniotic fluid...everything's great. We actually elected NOT to have any of the birth defect screenings (the blood tests), which I think was surprising to us both. Before I got pregnant, I think we both would have thought that we'd want the testing. Now that we're here, though, we aren't interested in the tests. Since we aren't high risk, and since most of the tests aren't diagnostic, we just decided to skip them.

My placenta is a bit low-lying, but not of any concern right now. They're going to check it again in a couple of months, but it should continue to move out of the way as I continue to grow.

Wahoo! Everything's going well!

18 weeks 2 days

I really should just start taking belly pictures 2 days late all the time. If I do that, I'll be taking them all on Mondays, so I'll actually look NICE for them. Dressed up. WIth makeup. All that stuff. Even though I don't put pictures with my face on this blog, you'll have to trust me that the ones that I'm taking while I'm in my work clothes definitely look a lot nicer than the Saturday ones I take right on my week turnover.

In any case, here I am at 18 weeks and 2 days:



Definitely getting bigger. And I'm getting kicks all the time now. It's still weird to me. It seems that everyone else thinks I'M the weird one because I don't think kicks are "magical" or "amazing." I just can't get used to the fact that there's a BABY in there kicking me. Another human. It's just...strange.

In other big news: We have our anatomy scan tomorrow! We'll hopefully find out the gender then, and we can't wait!

Decorating the nursery

Currently, my husband and I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. For a variety of reasons, we're not in any rush to buy a house. When we moved into our current place, we specifically rented it because it will be big enough for a baby, at least for awhile. Now, we (okay, me) are trying to figure out how to decorate the nursery.

On the 30th, we'll figure out whether we're having a boy or a girl (hopefully), and then I'll be able to start figuring out what theme to use for the nursery. For a boy, we'll probably go with airplanes and / or cars. My husband and I are both into mechanical things, so it's a no brainer. Plus, my husband has a whole bunch of little cars and airplanes, and he's been saying for years that he wants to use them in a baby room.

For a girl, I think we're also going to go with airplanes and / or cars. Maybe with purple or pink thrown in to make it a bit more feminine. We both firmly believe that little girls also can love little cars and things, and we would start her early on that. I get that there are gender differences and that any girl we have may end up playing with baby dolls or stuffed animals later. That being said, what little kid (boy or girl) doesn't love little cars? I have a couple of nieces, and they both love those sorts of things. Since encouraging a girl to be science-y is important to my husband and I, starting her out with cars and planes is a pretty good way to kick that off.

If this kid DOES turn out to be a girl, though, we're going to find a heck of a time finding lavender fabric with cars on it for the bedskirt and curtains. I don't think it's a very high-demand item.

It's a shame, really.

Feeling the baby, for real this time

I've commented that I thought I've been feeling the baby for a couple of weeks now. Recently, I've had a new milestone - feeling kicks from the outside.

As I said before, my milestones here are still pretty early. A lot of people (most people, in fact) don't feel external kicks until 20 weeks more more. On two separate occasions, though, I've noticed that the baby was particularly active. When I put my hand on my belly and kept it there for a bit, I got a little poke. Definitely a kick.

Getting kicks is kind of weird. I hear a lot about how "magical" it is, but I'm not sure about that. It's really weird to think that there's another THING living in there. While it's obviously something that we wanted and planned for, it's still a little strange now that it's actually happening. I'm still in denial that I'm pregnant sometimes, but getting poked and prodded by the baby definitely brings it back to the front of my mind.

It all feels pretty surreal still. Maybe it will sink in more after our ultrasound next week, but I doubt it. I have a feeling it will get more real once the baby starts kicking my ribs and / or bladder, but I think it won't really sink in at all until the baby is actually here. Heck, it might not even sink in then. In some ways, it's still weird to me that I'm old enough to have a full time job and a husband - I still feel 8 years old sometimes. Knowing that I'm old enough to be a mommy is really just outside of my comprehension sometimes.

We have a doula!

Today, we hit another milestone in our baby journey - we signed our contract with our doula. For those of you that aren't familiar with what a doula is, you can read more about them here. Essentially, I think of a doula as a labor coach. She'll come to our house when I'm in early labor, will come with me to the hospital, and she'll stay with me the entire time until after the baby is born. It's really important for me to have someone there the entire time. While we're delivering with a midwife (which will likely mean that we'd get more one-on-one care than if we'd been with an OB), even a midwife can't guarantee that she'll be there the whole time.

Plus, the doula will be a bit of an advocate for us. There are lots of stories of area hospitals doing things like breaking your water without your permission. I'm absolutely not okay with that, and a doula will help make sure my wishes are followed as much as possible. While I don't have illusions that everything will go exactly to plan, I have certain things that I'd really like to see respected. A doula can help with that.

Finally, a doula will help be a labor coach. I'm very interested in an unmedicated child birth, and a doula is a great way to help us get there. She's organized childbirth classes to help prepare us, and she'll help encourage me to go through the birth without pain medication. She's very understanding that things may not go as planned, but she's also very encouraging of me trying to have the unmedicated birth that I want.

I'm very excited.

Belly pictures

Things have been crazy with work this week, so I've been a bit lax on the blog posting. In order to make up for that, this is a bit of a double post. It has belly pictures from both 16 weeks and from 17 weeks.

First, the 16 week picture. I'm wearing regular jeans and a regular shirt here:



Next, the 17 week pictures. I'm wearing maternity jeans now. TECHNICALLY, I can still get my regular jeans to button (I think), but it's mighty uncomfortable. Why torture myself? I've also mostly switched to maternity shirts. Not necessarily because I'm too big for regular shirts, but because my shirts need to be long enough to cover up the panel in the maternity jeans.



I think you're really starting to be able to tell a difference! I'm up about 8 pounds (right on track), and it's mostly in my belly. Everything else seems to be the same size as it was before. I'm sure I've jinxed it, though, and tomorrow I'll wake up with a fat face. :-)

I got that one wrong (and another prediction)

I've been making pregnancy predictions on this blog for quite awhile, and I've generally done okay. I definitely dropped the ball on one, though: I'm not going to be able to hold out on maternity clothes until week 19, like I predicted. My belly has grown faster than I thought it would, and, with my rib cage expanding, too, it just isn't going to happen.

I'll make another one. The big one. A gender prediction. I think this baby is a boy, and my husband thinks it's a girl. If you believe the Chinese gender charts, the baby is a boy. According to most of the other old wive's tales, though, it's a girl.

We hope to know at the end of November. Only time will tell.

Registering

This past weekend, we set up our baby registries. It's way early, obviously, but we did it anyway. I've been doing a lot of research on baby gear, and the registries served the purpose of allowing me to get all of my thoughts in one place. Plus, there's no Babies R Us in our town - we started our registry while we were near the store in the adjacent town.

We started at Babies R Us. I think I've only been to that store once or twice. It's definitely overwhelming. There are SO many choices. We chose a stroller (the one I mentioned here) and car seat that we liked, and we registered for a few other things. My husband is obsessed with the idea of this baby needing a Jumperoo. He keeps saying that he wants it to become a professional wakeboarder. I THINK he's kidding, but you never know...

We also set up a registry at Target, but that place was pretty terrible. There was no selection at the store we visited, so we ended up setting things up online. The trouble with setting up a registry online is that you run the risk of registering for items that are available only online - not in stores. So, at some point, I'll have to check to see if the stuff we picked is actually in stock in the stores, too.

Compared to the wedding registry, a baby registry is actually easier. There was a lot of up-front research in figuring out which stroller and car seat we wanted, but, overall, you don't need to register for very many things. There are only about a dozen total items on the registries so far (although we may add a few things once we know the gender). Putting together the registry actually made the whole process seem less overwhelming.

Feeling the baby?

For the past few days, I've been feeling little flutters. At first, I thought I was completely insane - it's still early to feel baby movement. "They" say you can usually start feeling movement at about 16-22 weeks. I'm 15 weeks and 2 days pregnant today, and I think I've been feeling little flickers for at least a couple of days. I dismissed it at first as something else. Just a random muscle spasm or something. But it's been happening to regularly now to be anything other than baby movement.

I did a bit of research, and it seems that second-time moms can start feeling movement at 14 or 15 weeks. The difference usually comes because second-time moms just know what they're looking for. Once I read that, I started to feel better - maybe I'm NOT crazy.

In other news: My work clothes aren't going to fit much longer. This is as much a function of the type of work clothes I have than anything else. I wear a lot of fitted button-down shirts, so I don't have much room to grow in my clothes. All of my clothes are the same size, and most of them are pretty fitted. I have very limited options for transition clothes. Plus, my rib cage is actually getting bigger, so my button-downs don't fit anywhere: They're too small in the bust, around the waist, AND in the belly. I may need to start wearing maternity clothes soon. I've been wearing a belly band for a week or so, and I may just make the switch soon. I bought a TON of clothes this past weekend, so I have enough stuff to at least start making the switch.

I'm a couple of days late in the belly picture, but here's the picture from today: 15 weeks and 2 days pregnant. Crazy.



I think you can actually see a bump now. My administrative assistant said today that she thinks someone who didn't know I was pregnant would be able to tell. Maybe. I think you can tell that I'm CHANGING, but I'm not sure if you could tell I'm pregnant if you just met me for the first time. It's going to be pretty apparent soon, though.

Another milestone today

Today, when I got dressed, I couldn't button my work pants. Okay, so I could have TECHNICALLY buttoned them, but it would have been might uncomfortable. I wore my belly band for the first time yesterday because I thought my pants were going to end up being uncomfortable by the end of the day, but I wore the band today because I didn't really have a choice.

This pregnancy is going fast! I have a feeling the next 18+ years are going to go even faster.