17 Weeks!

can you believe it's been 17 weeks already?? I can't! it's starting to go by quickly now which is really kinda awesome!

just 12 more days until we find out the sex of the baby!

this week the baby is the size of....



an onion!! lol (insert "no wonder i cry so much!" joke here that i stole from the website but thought was hilarious)

yes, an onion! and that means that it is measuring about 5 inches (which is like BIG! - it's the length of your hand if you were to open it all the way, check it out) and it weighs between 5 and 6 ounces! whoa! That's between the weight of a pack of cards through to a hockey puck! (go flyers? lol)

anyway, this week the baby and me are doing the same thing: focusing on gaining weight. The baby is adding on fat right now and that fat will serve to keep it nice and cozy warm once it's born (and okay, it will make it look SUPER CUTE too).  Over the next four weeks the baby will gain SIX TIMES it's weight. Oh my lord (i wonder what the hell THAT fruit will look like lol i'm kinda scared)



The placenta is also growing rapidly right now as well and it is an amazing network of blood cells and other stuff like that. The placenta is developing right alongside the baby and by the time the baby is born, the placenta will weigh one pound!

Baby's umbilical cord is thickening and getting stronger which is awesome because that thing is pretty vital to the baby's survival. The baby's bones are getting thicker and stronger too and are calcifying more and more.

The baby can now move it's head, mouth, lips, arms, wrists, hands, legs, feet, and toes! How cute is that! I wish i had a video camera hooked up and could just watch the baby move around all day, that would be SO amazing!



ohh this just in: the baby's sweat glands are starting to develop too. and if the baby has Ryan's genes they will be in FULL effect all the time. (let's hope it has my influence on this one)

Baby's finger and toenails are starting to grow (this explains why they trim them right away when baby is born - that's a long time to go with out a mani-pedi).



As for me, my uterus has moved up and is now about 1.5 to 2 inches below my belly button.  I should have gained about 5 - 10 pounds by now (i'll check back with you on that one, i haven't weighed myself yet today) and I should be eating about 300 more calories per day.

I can feel the baby move now but it's normal if i don't feel it every single day at this stage which is good because I didn't feel it yesterday and got all paranoid.

I might notice that my gums or nose will bleed fairly often and this has been true for me. It's totally weird and it was disturbing until I found out that it's just due to increased pressure because there is more blood in my body now. I also might have some changes in my vision which is due to the pressure as well. The vision problems should correct themselves after the baby is born.

So yay there we go! baby at 17 weeks!

Doula or Dontcha?

lol i feel so clever for my post's title right now ;)

anywayyyy today I want to talk about something exciting that Ryan and I did over the weekend!  We found our Doula!

What is a doula? 

Well, according to the definition given to us by DONA International (doulas of north america):

"The word "doula" comes from the ancient Greek meaning "a woman who serves" and is now used to refer to a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after birth.." (www.dona.org)

We've been describing a doula as our Birth Advocate and the individual who will be there to support us throughout our labor and delivery process. She will also be a part of our prenatal process and she pays us one post-partum visit too. A doula is an amazing birth diva, basically.

Why is a doula necessary?

For us, having a doula is a necessary part of our birth for several reasons. First is because neither myself nor my husband has ever had a child before (that I know of lol) and we really felt it would be helpful to have someone there who has been a part of many births, who knows what is "normal" and what isn't, who can help me through the tougher parts of labor and who just support us on the journey.

Second, I wanted there to be someone who is on my side during the birth process.

Let's face it, at a hospital I am just one of dozens of women who will be there that day.  I am not their main priority (imagine that!) and therefore it's easy for them to treat more like how they see me: just another patient.

But for me and Ryan obviously, this is a HUGE deal. We are individuals and this is the birth of the most important little person in the world: our BABY. Nothing matters more than making sure that everything goes okay for us and our little baby.  We may be a number to a large organization but we are certainly individuals to ourselves and our baby is a little individual too and we want to make sure we are receiving the kind of care we need and that we feel we deserve.

That's where our doula comes in.

Before giving birth, it's common nowadays to write what's known as a Birth Plan. A Birth Plan is basically just an outline of what you would like to have happen under ideal circumstances. Of course, as is true of everything in life, things don't usually go according to plan, we know that but we still have definitive wishes for how we would like things to happen and what criteria we would like our caretakers to utilize when making decisions for us.  Out doula can help in this arena because not only will she support us in writing our birth plan but she will be the one who makes sure that the doctors will be following it to the best of their abilities during the labor and delivery.

I really thought this was important because I didn't want Ryan or my mother to be responsible for memorizing a list of procedures that we didn't want or experiences we needed modified for our needs. I wanted Ryan to be able to be as stress-free on our baby's Birth Day and I wanted my mother to get the chance to just be my mother. I didn't want anyone to feel obligated to have to monitor what anyone else was doing. Plus, like i said, we have no clue what the hell is going on anyway and i have the feeling that in such a potentially intense situation like giving birth all of those things we've committed to memory will just go flying out the window.

So that's another thing our doula will do for us. She will make sure that the doctors aren't deviating from the birth plan too much.

For example, I am hoping to have an entirely natural birth (laugh all you want! my mother had natural births with all four of us and my sister had a natural birth with both of her kids. i'm not sure about my other sister though). I don't even want anyone to OFFER me any pain medication. I will specify this in my Birth Plan but if for some reason a nurse decides to take it upon herself to bring by the concession stand of pain meds anyway, my doula will usher her right out of the room for us. Problem solved.

Overall a doula is going to help us create the kind of experience we want for our birth. And so it was important for us to find a doula that we connected with.

Enter in Amy Owen, our newly acquired Doula! We had the pleasure of meeting with her on Sunday and it was an instant connection for us.

Amy totally understands my approach to this birth. She is on the absolute same page as me and even better, she gave me so many great ideas.

I described to Amy that I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible, she was enthusiastic about this decision and gave me a list of why this is a really desirable approach to birth - especially a birth at a hospital (there is less time for unwanted interventions if you do most of your laboring at home as opposed to laboring in a hospital room).

She went on to describe the ways in which we could make the birth experience our own. Things like music, lighting, the setting, aromatherapy; elements that allow us to really define the experience for ourselves. It hadn't occurred to me that I could set the stage that I wanted for my experience. If i wanted a holistic and beautiful atmosphere, i could create that.  That sounds much more lovely to me than the florescent experience being offered to me through hours spent at a hospital.

She also discussed the fact that this is a Birth Day Celebration and not something to be anticipated with fear and trepidation. We can look forward to the birth, we can choose to embrace it, to be thrilled when it happens and to get through each contraction knowing that 1. they will end and 2. at the very end our little baby will be in our arms. It will be his or her birthday! and that IS something to celebrate, isn't it?

It certainly is. 

So needless to say, we are snapping Amy Owen right up and we are thrilled to be doing so. I'm feeling better already about things. My compulsive need to "have a plan" for everything is temporarily satiated and I am really excited about what these next weeks and months hold for us.

Up next for us: determining where exactly we will be delivering our little bundle of joy. I'll of course keep you updated on that one as it progresses.

But first, we have to move. And you all know how much I just looooooove that process lol. Saturday can't come and go quickly enough.

Quick Public Service Announcement :)

If anyone wants to be listed in my Blog List on the right hand side please let me know and we can add each other to our lists!!

Yay for blog networking! lol

Get Excited!

I am getting excited because tonight is the season finale of Biggest Loser and, well, i am addicted to this season.

For a moment i just want to ramble and say how much I hope Koli got ~*America's Vote*~ and will be moving on and able to compete in the final three. I reallllllly want him to get a chance to have that confetti rain down on him.

And then i hope Sam wins the at home challenge. Because I love Sam. A lot.

Does anyone else hate that he's with Stephanie? I just don't get the combination. She's so reserved and quiet and doesn't seem to have much drive and he is...well, the opposite of all of those things.

Anyway, sorry to write a whole post about BL, i couldn't help myself. I'm a junkie for that show.

Go Grey Team!

and while I'm gushing over TV and making a completely mindless post, I just want to also mention how EXCITED I am for tonight's Glee!

It's GAGA WEEK!

 cannot wait!

i have a real update to write later but I just wanted to stop by and gush about television lol 

be back later!

Starting to Show

so i think it's officially official: I'm starting to show.

Yesterday was a big milestone for me, I wore a total maternity outfit!  And i think i definitely looked pregnant although i might be in that stage even still where strangers don't know whether i'm fat or not. That's not my favorite stage to be in but that's okay.

I snapped some photos of my "starting to show" belly so i'll share them with you guys here:

(please note, these were taken late last night with a webcam so the quality is not the best!) (PS i would like to also point out the stacks of boxes in the background! we have made much progress with our packing!! hooray!)

and then a close up just for kicks:

i think my husband is afraid to admit that i'm starting to show. Yesterday when i put this outfit on i said, "wow i really look pregnant don't i?" and he was like "i dunno, it still looks pretty hidden to me!"

i think he thinks this is the same as the "do i look fat in this?" trap but it's not! I WANT to look pregnant, I AM pregnant. I know i look different than i used to and if i finally look pregnant that would be GREAT to me because people would know i wasn't actually just letting myself get huge lol

oh men. maybe someday they'll learn.

maybe not, though.

:)

Packing Day (dun dun dunnnnn)

so yea, today is packing day. can you feel my excitement oozing through your screen?

Packing day. The day that everyone who ever plans to move again dreads.

Sometimes before I knew we were moving again, I would look around my apartment and laugh to myself thinking "ha-ha! we won't be dealing with all of this STUFF again for quite a while!" And somehow that would bring me some kind of temporary high or weird feeling of elation. Crazy, I know but the thing here is that Ryan and I have moved....3 times in three years and this will be our FOURTH time in three and a half years. That officially sucks.

So it's no wonder that today I kept the covers pulled up to my chin for as long as possible once I realized that it was, indeed a new day and that unfortunately Saturday this week didn't mean "yay! what do we want to do today??" but instead had a much more ominous outlook: Packing.

Ryan's mom is coming over to help which is really nice of her. She whipped us into shape when we first got here and were unpacking so it just seems pretty fitting to have her here on this end of it. The Departure end.  The Packing End. The annoying, stupid, boring, tedious, takes-forever-i-just-want-it-to-be-over end.

So okay, as much as I would like to prolong this experience even more (okay and really I want to sneak away with the xbox and continue kicking cowboy ass in red dead redemption) i have to go and help my husband who has diligently begun the packing process already (he's so great).

At least he's fun to pack with. He just discovered a large drawing i had done that was being *stored* in our closet:

"look! you're outside!!!" hehehe he's so cute

okay, UGH, wish us luck. And please, if you're the praying kind, offer up a prayer to the Packing Gods on our behalf. We could seriously use it.

16 Week update!

Hey hey loves! So today I am officially 16 weeks pregnant! That means i'm in my 4th month! weee!

this week the baby is the size of....



an avacado!!

Weird, right? Lol but still! Wow!

and remember, that means that it's the general length of the baby, that's what we're comparing the fruit to, length.

The baby is now approximately 4.3 to 4.6 inches long (also about the length of a tube of mascara) and weighs about 3.5 ounces - the weight of an apple!

The baby is able to hear my voice now because the little bones in the baby's ears are growing and developing! YAY! I've started singing to the baby already but i really need to learn some more songs.

The baby's eyebrows, lashes and hair are really filling in now as well as the tastebuds developing as well.



in the womb, the baby's facial muscles are continuing to develop. It can now squint and yawn! How cute to imagine it yawning in there!! oh my gosh!

The heart is now pumping 25 quarts of blood through the baby's system per day - that's impressive! The skin is still translucent and if you could see the baby right now you'd still be able to see all the veins. As the next few weeks progress, the baby will be developing layers of fat and the skin will become less see-through.

If we were to do an x-ray right now, the babys bones would show up! Also the baby already has well-formed fingernails :)



an ultrasound can now pick up the baby's sex (though unfortunately for us, we still have to wait until June 9th to get ours done! can't stand it! lol).



so there we have it! that's the baby at week 16!

Breaking News!

okay well i guess it's not so breaking to us, but since I forgot to update about it, it can be breaking news here!:

We've decided to move!

And to answer your questions:
Yes, we did just move into our current apartment in January.
Yes, we realize that it is only 5 months later.

Buuuut add to that equation a pregnancy that took us both at least somewhat by surprise only a month after we moved in and you'll see our dilemma.

Here's another equation for you (I am doing surprisingly well so far for being such a non-mathy person!): 1 bedroom + lots of STUFF + no closet space + a whole new person currently marinading inside my tummy + all the STUFF that said new person comes with = a need for somewhere else to live.

Soooo where are we moving, do I hear you asking? Well, I'll tell you! (duh):

We are moving in with my parents!

I'll let that one sink in for a second.

You feeling okay? Good.

So yes, we're moving in with my parents. Two adults, one little unborn person, a cat and two birds. Moving next weekend.

Why? Well there are several reasons. Most of them involving the obvious....

No, we're not masochists. The obvious is MONEY! DUH!

Ahhh money. That sweet, and evil little word that means so much in life (and yet ultimately means so little). Money, money, money.

See the thing is, Ryan and I realized that someday in the not-so-distant future we would like to own a home. And, after looking into it a bit, we realized that even if Obama does ship us $8,000, well, houses are still hella expensive. Hella Expensive, my friends. Especially considering one of us is a full-time student (when she's not on modified bed rest, that is).

And so while we could buy now (and we really did look into it), we've decided to play it a little differently and to go room it up with Mom and Dad and pay off our debt while simultaneously saving some ca$h towards our future.

Plus, there are other bonuses too:

1. My parents are awesome. Seriously, they are. They're not like typical parents...they are funny and light-hearted and legitimately enjoy having interesting conversations with you and they like to do fun stuff and they're just great to be around. All of my friends have always said to me, "I seriously love your parents so much! They're awesome!" and it's happened enough that I know it's true and not just one of those things people say.

2. My mom has had 4 kids. FOUR. that's a lot.  And, well considering that so far I haven't had any yet, I'm figuring out that I could really benefit from her wealth of knowledge. Plus, i will have people around to talk to all day when it's just me and little Baby L at home together.

3. We will be having our own space. Two spaces actually. Well, three if you include the bathroom.  See my parents have a pretty awesome house (now that it's been renovated from the fire that happened a year ago) and they have more space than there are people who live there now (just for now though, wait until we get there, all that space will quickly be filled up).  We will be having a livingroom space (that is the size of two former bedrooms which have been combined into one super-room), a bedroom and our own bathroom. So really, we will basically have the same amount of space that we do now. Only it's plopped down in the center of my parents house which is fabulous!

4. I'm a hustle-and-bustle kind of person.
This might seem like a weird bonus but I was raised in a very active household. There were forever people coming and going, weird things occurring, interesting events taking place and honestly, living on my own with just my cat and husband is not quite the same as being in the center of a busy family universe. Don't get me wrong, me and Ryan have a great time together but at my parents' house there are people forever stopping by, random things always breaking and needing fixing, funny stories always just waiting to happen. They have dogs and grandkids and all of my siblings and it's just a good time. I guess it just feels like home to me (duh, because that's what it is) and i'm really looking forward to going back home, you know?

So there we have it. Our big news!  Within a year we shall be wealthy home owners and in the meantime we get to spend that year having family dinner and hanging out with my rad parents and swimming in the pool.  I'm pretty pumped about it to say the least :)

Wish us luck though because I have a feeling that once I get there it might be easier to remember all of those scenarios that sent me stomping up the stairs and slamming my door when I was a teenager.

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Today is Ryan's birthady!  It's his first birthday as a future daddy although I'm not really sure how much that changed things, really. He got up and dutifully went to work like usual although when i kept pressuring him to play hookey and take the day off he refused so he could save days for when the baby comes.

Awww!

And as it turns out, once Ryan's boss found out it was his birthday, he let him go home early for the day so that was totally awesome too!

As for his actual celebration, it was a pretty good year even if his birthday DID fall on a weekday (which we all know, of course, universally sucks (fun fact: every year mine and Ryan's birthdays fall on the same day...so therefore since his birthday is on a Wednesday this year, i know mine will be too (don't believe me? look it up! October 27th! and now that you know my birthday date i expect many gifts lol jay-kay))).

Anyway, back to Ryan and his bday: he was greeted fresh out of the shower with a breakfast bar illuminated by a single birthday candle (and my melodic voice at 6:45 AM singing "Happy Birthday"). He also was met with several little "Happy Birthday, Ryan!" signs scattered around the house in strategic locations (the bathroom mirror, his computer screen, his shoes, on the day-to-day calendar, on the front door, in his wallet (with directions telling him to make sure he gets something nice to eat for lunch!)). Zoey (our little cat) even left him a note in between her food and water bowls! She is thoughtful, that little furry monster.

When he got home, Ryan told me about a video game he had just heard about and because it sounded awesome I quickly convinced him that we should go get it for his birthday! It's called Red Dead Redemption and it reminds me a lot of the Grand Theft Auto games from days of yore. Although it's more like GTA in the Wild West in the early 1900s which is just as awesome. You just basically ride around and go on missions and stuff like that (well so far that's what it seems to be basically, though there IS a plot line of course but I'm a meanderer and like to deviate from those and go explore). Basically, it's super fun. It's filling up  our fix until Fable 3 comes out sometime hopefully soon (I hope it comes out before the baby gets here because lord knows I won't have time to really play it once there's a baby attached to me 24/7!) but it is one of those games that seems to be very time-consuming. Like Ry said, you can't really sit down with it for half an hour and expect to get much done. that's okay though, it's a "let's play video games all weekend!" kinda game which is always fun (and which, i have a feeling, will summarize our weekend together this weekend as well lol).

Video game geeking out aside I think that his birthday was a success! Ry opened his gifts, we went out for dinner, I sang to him (again the poor thing) over a peanutbutter-cup cupcake and now we've been spending the rest of the evening taking turns playing xbox and being on our computers! lol it might not sound fun to most but for us it's completely an awesome night.

Ry isn't too big on birthdays anyway...not like me. I'm the spoiled youngest child. I still get a gift from my parents for my HALF birthday every year so you can imagine my perspective here on birthdays. They're important and it's important to me that the people I love feel important on their birthday. Unless it might make them uncomfortable if i go all crazy over it so i do refrain in some situations but Ryan is not immune lol

Hell, I'm kinda already planning the baby's first birthday party. It's hard to do it too much because I don't know the baby's sex yet but there are definite ideas floating around in my head and there may or may not already be a potential list of photographers. I don't mess around, y'all! And let's not get started on my plans for the baby's real BIRTH. That's the first ever birth day and I have some cool ideas! (don't worry, I'll share them later)

Anyway, this is rambling enough, I just thought an update was in order because it's only once that you turn 29 (unless you're a woman and then you turn 29 about 40 times i believe). So Happy Birthday, Ryan! I love you and I am wishing you a wonderful day and a fantastic year! You are my everything <3

PS i promise i am done changing my layout for a while. A friend of mine on livejournal recommended this site to me and this layout is pretty much exactly what i've been looking for. I will do my best to abstain from changing it up on you all again! Sorry!

green acres is the place to be

I decided a while ago that since i'm on this modified rest (due to my subchorionic hematoma) that I would, as I'm allowed to start doing things more and more, start taking myself on little dates throughout the week.

then a friend of mine (Shauna from the journey into parenthood) suggested that I look at it as taking me and the baby out on dates together! Of course this was even BETTER and it makes me more excited. Kinda like I'm out there showing the baby stuff and we're already having fun little bonding experiences, even though it's still in my tummy.

(I also learned that the baby can hear me now and it can hear Ryan if he talks to it through my belly. I am going to start making it a playlist and I am collecting books to read to it as well!).

But anyway, the whole point of THIS post was to show you all the photos from my first date on Thursday!

It wasn't a big deal and it really only lasted for like 20 minutes (I'm still supposed to be taking it easy and building up how much walking i do and stuff) but it was fun and i got some good pictures!

I went to a local farm/petting zoo!

I didn't do the petting zoo part but instead i basically just toured around and visited with the animals and took their portraits. It was a good first date and I think it went well. I will probably call myself and ask myself out again ;)

here we go, photos of the farm:

here's the turkey that i named Mr. Feathers

my friend Billie the goat (i'm so creative!)

i like his beard

pretty little sleeping pig and friend

they even had a reindeer! and it tried to kiss me! (okay or stick it's tongue out at me but i choose to believe this was an act of love)

glamor shot

this lovely little Llama did not want to be left out

isn't there just something elegant about her? i totally think so

on my way out, Mr. Feathers was looking particularly dramatic so i snapped one more shot of him. I think he was sad to see me go! lol

so yay, there we have it! photos from my first adventure :) more to come as i continue on this exciting journey!

Anatomy Scan!

So we've scheduled our Anatamy Scan (fancy word for ultrasound that will tell us the baby's sex) and the official date is: JUNE 9th!!

that means as of June 9th we will know what the baby's sex is and we will all be able to start buying and making things that will cause the child to look at photos in the future, roll their eyes at me and say, "mom what were you DOING to me??"

and i will just grin to myself because i will know that it was SO CUTE to dress them in pink frills or blue and white pinstripes. Just you wait and see.

Garage Sales are Love

I've gotta get Ryan on board with going Garage Saling with me. I've been told enough times now (and have witnessed first hand!) just how great it is to get "Baby Stuff" at garage sales and now I'm sold and want to go scour the neighborhood for good deals.

Specifically on my list: a glider.

Don't know what a glider is? That's okay, I didn't either until recently when I was at Babies R Us and was exhausted because my purse is so heavy and my back hurts because I haven't been able to get my lower back adjusted since getting pregnant.  Tangent aside, i discovered a glider in these circumstances while looking frantically around the store for somewhere to sit. And not to be dramatic or anything but seriously, my life has never been the same since sitting in that glider.  It was THAT comfortable.

This is a glider:

found here at Babies R Us for $199 lol

it's a regular-enough looking chair with a footstool, right? Wrong! That's where the magic fools you! The best part of a glider is that it does what it's name suggests: it glides. and get this part: THE FOOTSTOOL GLIDES TOO! 

If you haven't had the amazingly amazing experience of sitting in a glidey glider than i totally pity you and I assign you the task of heading out to a baby furniture store right now and climbing into one of these chairs. And I suggest you bring some coffee and a snack because you won't want to leave for quite a while. 

here i am at 11 and a half weeks pregnant hanging out in a glider and yes, me and my friend found this noteworthy and photo-worthy enough to document because gliders are awesome

It is soooo relaxing. And I must have one. 

And therein lies the problem. 

See, not surprisingly because this is the culture that we live in, these chairs are priced ridiculously high even though their amazingness IS amazing. As you can see, the one I posted above is $199. That's insane (especially when you take into consideration that for a first baby you have to buy/acquire everything that a baby needs. This list includes but is not at all limited to: a crib, a carseat, a stroller, a swing, a changing table, a dresser, toys, diapers, creams, diaper bags, all kinds of things! Adding another $200 to that bill (even if it is in the form of a glider) is not something to scoff at and it's not something to do without really thinking about it! Most of those big ticket items are over $200 themselves! So given all of that and despite their wonderfulness, these gliders seem just out-of-their-minds expensive to me). And even worse is that when i saw the price for the one i linked you just now and i actually thought to myself, "hmm $199...that's not so bad!" because I've seen worse! Way worse! 

When I was sitting in the gliders the last time I went (this is now a ritual for me and i've done this several times), I tried them all out and discovered that my favorite one (aka the most comfortable one in the store) was priced at $349. 

$349 for a chair and a footstool. Now that really IS bad.

and yet, there is a large part of me that's like "oh but it's sooooo worth it." because I am conned by the comfort and the way my feet glide at the same time as my butt. (but don't worry, i tell that part to STFU when it starts trying to convince me that absurdly expensive things aren't absurd. (I will let it get away with talking me into a Coach diaper bag but i put the breaks on when it's going all pro-$350 glider. (i know, the logic there might seem a little wonky but what can you do? I'm a sucker for stylish bags, I'm powerless.)). 

So ANYWAY back on track, this is where garage sales come in!

Last night we were hanging out with Ryan's brother and his wife and they were showing us the awesome things they had scored for their son that day at a garage sale.  And they mentioned seeing a glider as well!

For $35!!!  INCLUDING the footstool!

Obviously I had a minor conniption in my head. I was like SO EXCITED about this! Is it possible to get a glider for such a good price? Could I ever be so lucky?

And so I've made it my mission to do so.  I am going to find an awesome and comfortable glider and footstool and I am going to pay $50 or less for it. And I am going to do it soon! I just have to wait until after Ryan and I move at the end of the month and we finally have somewhere to PUT the darn thing!

I encourage you all to join me on my quest. It will be a long, perilous and dangerous road ahead but we shall reap rewards aplenty and will henceforth be known as Those Who Bought a Glider at a Bargain Price! And the world shall never be the same again.

15 Weeks!

this week the baby is the size of....



an Orange! whoa!

the baby is about 4 inches long and weighs anywhere between 1.7 and 2.5 ounces. I tried to find what weighs 2.5 ounces for comparison but i couldn't find anything sooo sorry about that lol :) another site compared the size of the baby to a softball though and that was pretty cool



the baby is very mobile and flexible in there, bending it's arms and legs, sucking it's thumb and doing all kinds of cool stuff. It's still covered in the Lanugo hair we talked about last week and now the hair on the baby's head is starting to grow as well (if it will be born with hair, that is...im suspecting that our baby will be, i had a ton of hair when i was born and Ryan has so much hair himself...i'm kinda jealous actually, he has fabulous hair lol).

anyway! the baby's eyes are still moving to their final position on it's face but the baby looks like a real baby now. The bones are calcifying in it's body and things are progressing as they should be!



The baby has four joints that are working great (elbows and knees) and at this point it's legs are outmeasuring it's arms (like they should be) so that means the baby is getting more proportional in there! that's good :)



The baby is breathing in amniotic fluid through it's nose and into the little "air sacs" that it has in it's lungs. the lungs are still developing and I believe that one of the last systems to fully develop in the baby will be it's respiratory system.

Even though the baby's eyelids are fused shut still, the baby can sense light! that is SO COOL to me! apparently if i were to shine a flashlight at my stomach right now the baby would squirm to move away from the light! how cool is that? (not gonna try it bc i don't really want to agitate the baby's eyes lol but that's still cool!)


(this obviously isn't mine but it's a 3D ultrasound of a baby at 15 weeks)

As for senses the baby is also developing taste buds this week, even though there's really nothing for it to taste in there yet anyway lol

I can start reading to the baby this week and talking to it and it might be able to hear me. I can't wait for the baby to be able to hear things...i am going to seriously talk to it all the time and play it music!

As for me:
I won't start feeling movement just yet but i can start to feel it anytime between 16 and 22 weeks usually and if i do feel something now it just might be the baby in there! I'm realllly excited to feel the baby move and I can't wait to figure out what it feels like!

I should have gained about 5 pounds by now (whoops, i've only gained about 1 since i lost weight last week) and I should be definitely looking pregnant to myself at this point (which i definitely do).

so there we go! Week 15!

14 Weeks!

Hi loves! here's my 14 week update!



This week the baby is the size of....




A lemon!!

I know that this seems similar to a lime but really lemons are bigger than limes soo this still counts as growth lol

The baby is anywhere from 3.2 inches to 4.5 inches long and weighs 1.5 ounces (the same as an iPod nano lol). The baby is practicing stretching all the way out in there (so it's a good thing it's still so small i suppose). The baby is about the size of an average fist! (wow that's amazing)



This week the baby can move it's facial muscles. It can now squint, frown, grimace (this isn't really positive is it? lol why is it all the bad things?) suck it's thumb and Pee! hooray lol The neurons in it's brain are firing rapidly so the baby's facial expressions are also changing quite rapidly as well.

This next part is really cool so I will just quote it directly rather than paraphrase:

"A big development from this week onward is the development of lanugo. Lanugo is the fine hair that grows over almost your entire baby. The hairs grow in whirled patterns that follow the grain of his skin. These patterns later give way to your baby's fingerprints. The lanugo will be shed before birth and replaced by thicker, coarser hairs."

how awesome is that?



The baby has eyebrowns now but no eyelashes yet.

The finger tips are also shaped by the baby swimming around in the amniotic fluid. that's why no one has the same ones! amazing, huh?

The baby now moves it's muscles intentionally and isn't just jerking around out of control. it can think to move and arm or a leg and do that movement on purpose.



The baby has Tripled in size from just three weeks ago!! It looks like a real person in there, sooo amazing!

The liver is making bile and the spleen is making red blood cells! The baby's bones are solidifying more and becoming more cartilage like and it is starting to store up some fat deposits. The brain is now beginning to grow rapidly as well!



as for me nothing new is happening except that my uterus is now getting high enough that i either already am or will start to show soon. I can't really tell so who knows lol.

So there we go! 14 Weeks!

13 Week Update!

 13 Week Update!

this week the baby is the size of a...



Peach!

yay!

The baby is about 2.5 - 3.1 inches long and weighs about 20 grams now which is about the weight of 8 pennies! yay!  At our ultrasound last friday though the baby was measuring 4 days ahead and was already 3 inches long sooo our baby is probably bigger than that.

So there is some debate as to whether or not I am officially in my second trimester now. I've seen a few sites say that the second trimester starts at 14 weeks and then I've seen other sites say that it starts now at 13 weeks and then one other site said it started at 12 weeks. Soooo that's confusing. i have no idea honestly whether it's the second trimester or not lol

this ticker i have says that my second trimester starts today:



soooooo I'm going with that.

Now that that debate is over with we can move on:

The baby is now forming teeth (inside the gums of course) and vocal chords!!

The baby's proportions are becoming normal now too, the head is only about 1/3 the size of it's body now. (remember how a few weeks ago the head was 1/2 the size of the baby)



the baby can now make a fist and suck it's thumb!!! That is SO CUTE!

The baby's bones are being formed, and soon little ribs will develop! AW! The head and arm bones are also being formed too.  The baby's nose and chin are becoming more prominent and the eyelids are about to fuse together and they won't open again for about 4 more months (to protect the baby's eyes)


this slightly creepy photo is what a 3-D sonogram image of a 13 week baby would look like at this point

The baby's finger prints are developing this week and the sex organs are developed too. If it's a girl, she already has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries! whoa

Veins and organs are visible through the baby's skin which is translucent still at this point. The placenta is fully taking over hormone production now and is letting my ovaries have some rest!


here's where the baby is in relationship to me

As for me, not much of interest is going on. i might be gaining weight and soon i will definitely have to be in maternity clothes according to the websites (i can see that being accurate) but that's about it. Not too interesting! Oh and my blood is full of pregnancy hormones but duh i coulda told you that one lol

So there we go! that's 13 Weeks! the possible 2nd trimester week lol