Halfway and Happy

I can’t believe I’m more than half way through this pregnancy already! The past few weeks have flown by and I passed the half-way point last week (I’m 21 weeks pregnant this week and half way is 20 weeks).

At 20 weeks, our little girl was the size of a banana (6.5 inches, 10.6 oz) and now has working taste buds. This week she’s grown to the size of a pomegranate (10.5, 12.7 oz). I don’t think she’s actually grown 4 inches in the past week…I believe starting this week, measurements are from head to heel (rather than crown to rump) because the baby is stretching out more and full-body measurements can be taken.

It’s amazing that even at this stage in a pregnancy a baby still doesn’t weigh even one full pound yet! I’ll be watching in the coming weeks to see when she crosses that milestone! And at 21 weeks, our little girl has a lifetime supply of eggs in her own reproductive organs…over 6 million at this point! Amazing!

With the knowledge that we’re having a little girl, it has been fun to explore baby names (we’re getting close to a decision!) and buy girl clothes. I already bought three bags of adorable girl clothes at a garage sale and the clothes are only 0-9 month sizes…we’ll never have to do laundry! Rock is getting so excited about the new room we’re getting setup for him! It won’t be long until he’s in it full-time and we can get started updating the nursery for a little girl.

A few pregnancy related symptoms have surfaced in the past few weeks to accompany my growing belly. Did I mention that I measured my girth last week and I’m only 1.5 inches smaller than I was with Rock…when I was FULL-TERM?!. Oh my…it will be interesting to see where my final measurements end up with this pregnancy! With my large belly has come heartburn…again. During my last pregnancy, heartburn sent me to the E.R. at 22 weeks along, so hopefully I can control it better this time around! And something I’ve never experienced before has started, which is swelling in my legs/ankles. Every now and then my feet look like they belong to a Flinstone! Yikes! (Or maybe “yabba dabba do!”) But it hasn’t been very often yet…so we’ll see if it continues.

(Left- belly at 21 weeks with baby girl, right- belly at 22 weeks with Rock)

In the coming weeks we’re getting ready for a family garage sale, an overnight stay at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, then a ‘babymoon’ to Florida for a friend’s wedding, and finally we’ll end out the next month with a nice July 4^th with family in Steamboat! I will definitely be shopping for a maternity bathing suit for all of these warm weather adventures (well, maybe not for the garage sale…but all the others!).

We're having a...GIRL!!!

We had my 20 week ultrasound yesterday, where we had great news all around! The ultrasound tech kept us in suspense about the baby gender for a long time, evidently because they have to look a lot closer with girls than boys to confirm the gender…but we were eventually shown her little GIRL parts (3 different times to confirm!), so they are nearly 100% sure she’s a she.J

Our baby girl was healthy with a strong heartbeat in the 155 bpm range, perfect measurements  (all measurements were showing her to be 19 weeks, which is technically how many weeks I was at the ultrasound), and good amniotic fluid levels!

At first, it didn’t really sink in that we were having a girl because I was SO preoccupied with making sure she had a heartbeat! I haven’t felt much movement yet, so I was worried going into the appointment that there would be bad news. You can imagine I was SO thrilled to hear her heartbeat and even see her heart beating on the monitor that everything else just went in one ear and out the other.

We found out the reason I haven’t felt much movement yet is that the placenta is on the front of my uterus with this pregnancy. The doctor and ultrasound tech both said the placenta would act like a pillow and cushion any movement our baby is making…so it made complete sense as to why I haven’t felt her move much! She IS moving in there, we saw that on the screen, but the few times I have felt her move, it’s always off toward my right ribs where the placenta isn’t there to cushion. Very interesting and a huge relief!

Other than that, we enjoyed spending the afternoon at the appointment with Rock, my mom and dad, and Phil’s mom and sister. Then we met up with the rest of the family for dinner (Rich, Mason, Katelyn, Caleb, and Phil’s dad, Jim). It was a GREAT day! I was completely exhausted by the end…too tired to even talk much at dinner, but totally thrilled none-the-less!

Thank you God for blessing our family with a healthy baby girl! Please continue to be with her for the remainder of this pregnancy and the rest of her life. Amen!