Baby Catch-Up!

Now for the fun stuff…the baby update! During the one day home between Florida and Steamboat, we managed to schedule my 24-week doctor appointment, which went great (other than the weigh-in)! Our daughter’s heart rate was 146 bpm and my blood pressure was just right (100/60). Rock and Phil enjoyed the appointment too by reading magazines in the room while we waited for the doctor to arrive. Rock now loves to flip through paper pages, something he didn’t get to do before because all of the books we read at home are cardboard, kid-proof pages!

Now for the un-fun part…the scale! The doctor’s scale measured me at a weight three pounds HIGHER than I was FULL-TERM with Rock! Oh my! To my defense (or maybe just my defense mechanism), my scale at home was less by 5 lbs, so I prefer that digit compared to the doctor’s office! Needless to say, I am exercising more deliberately now. I have been exercising all along…but now I’m doing it with more meaningful intentions of slowing additional weight gain.

The most exciting development lately has been the baby movements I’ve felt more and more frequent and more and more intense. An important note is the first time I was able to feel my daughter move on the outside when my hand was against my belly happened on Friday, June 15 ^th at 2:50am! I was so excited that I ended up lying there trying to feel her for an entire hour. It cracked me up when she moved again later that morning and Phil got to feel her move too…without having to lay awake in the middle of the night like me! Ever since then, she’s been moving a bunch and at fairly routine times throughout the day. I forgot how much I loved this part of being pregnant!

I pretty much missed writing about the entire fifth month of my pregnancy because of our busy schedule, so our baby officially crossed the one pound weight mark during the past month. She’s grown from the size of a pomegranate (at 21 weeks), to a papaya, then a grapefruit and finally a cantaloupe at the end of the fifth month. The stats during the fifth month state that our baby ranges from 10.5-11.8 inches and 12.7-20.8 ounces.

I am currently in the sixth month of my pregnancy with a baby girl the size of a rutabaga (she just grew passed cauliflower and lettuce in the past two weeks) and will range in length from 13.6-14.8 inches and weigh in the range of 1.5-2.5 pounds! I guess we’re finally at a point where the weekly emails will describe pounds instead of ounces…that’s a BIG deal!

My weekly emails said my belly button should have popped out over a month ago, but I still have an “innie” (for now)! My daughter can now hear sounds around her including mine and Phil’s voices…which makes it extra meaningful to us when we pray for her and talk to her each day. Her skin is becoming more opaque (rather than translucent) and she can tell up from down because of a newly developed sense of equilibrium. Perhaps the biggest new development for our baby is that her nostrils are no longer plugged and her lungs are developing enough that she can now practice breathing amniotic fluid. She is also starting to show brain activity!

We officially moved Rock into his new room right after returning from Steamboat, so I’ve been able to wash and hang all of our little girl clothes and will soon start decorating the nursery for our new arrival!

Next week marks the start of my third trimester AND we have my 28-week doctor appointment which will include a glucose test to check for gestational diabetes. We will get a new ultrasound screening during the appointment too, in order to check on my amniotic fluid levels since the fluid issues started at 28 weeks with my first pregnancy. Phil and I are both excited to see our little girl and hopefully get a new ultrasound picture next week! We will be praying for healthy news at my August 2^nd appointment!