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.