growing baby

Earlier this month, baby got his first item of clothing, a little red onesie with a robot on it.  Now baby can carry on Ilya’s legacy–Ilya liked to pretend that he was a robot from another planet when he was a ridiculously adorable and ultra-squeezable little boy.

For round two of our oldish news update, here’s a picture of me and Ellen when we were 23 weeks pregnant (last week).  I’m finally looking more pregnant!  In fact, people are starting to look at my belly when I’m out and about in that contemplative “should I ask when she’s due or is she just festively plump” kind of way.

I also saw my OB last week and all’s still good with my blood pressure, weight, and baby’s growth.  They measure my uterus height to see how well the baby’s growing.  Ilya and I want to donate the baby’s cord blood, so my OB said she’d look into how to do it at our hospital.  The doctor also gave me a glucose solution to drink before my next visit–she swears it tastes like Orange Crush–so they can do a gestational diabetes exam at that point (a routine procedure).

Now to the present: baby’s new trick is kicking my bladder.  He seems to find it very amusing!  And it is a good reminder to practice my kegels–otherwise we’ll be needing diapers for two in a few months…

The baby loves to bounce around in my belly–he’s really a wiggler!  I think he’s practicing his dance party moves so he can jive like his daddy, teehee.  Ilya has only felt a few wiggles though–no matter how crazy baby is being, he seems to calm right down as soon as Ilya puts his hand on my belly.  Hopefully Ilya retains those magical calming powers once the baby is born! 

The rest of the babyland news is strictly business–joyful, wonderful, new and exciting (to us) baby business, but business nonetheless.  We’ve figured out what our medical insurance covers for delivery, how we can use our medical flex account (we’re 95% sure they’ll cover the doula), chose a great doula (a professional labor coach), signed up for Bradley Method childbirth classes (a 4-week session beginning in October), and started putting together the baby registry.  We’re going to have some experienced parents look through our registries to see if there’s anything ridiculous we should take off or something vital that we forgot to add. 

Closing baby stats: according to babycenter.com, our little boy is approximately a foot long and weighs about a pound.  He’s come a long way from those sesame seed days!

A few days ago, I finally managed to feel the baby move — and have felt it on and off a few times since.  It’s nice and exciting to feel something lightly tap on the other side of that wall…

I just had my 20 weeks OB appointment and all is good.  My doctor’s happy with my blood pressure, the baby’s heartbeat, and my weight gain (8 pounds). 

We also made two new buys that I’m very happy about: 1) a 2-inch foam mattress pad so my hips don’t burn now that I have to sleep on my side all the time (I love the soft squishy foam!); and 2) a maternity bathing suit.  The maternity bathing suit is FABULOUS because I actually look pregnant when I wear it instead of just plump.  I’m going to wear it all the time now–to the grocery store, to UCLA, to the movies.  Who needs real clothing when there’s a lovely maternity bathing suit to be worn?

20 Weeks Pregnant

Ok, this is actually pretty funny.

I crave compliments!  I keep pestering Ilya for compliments and then complaining that the compliments weren’t spontaneous.  Terribly annoying, I know.  My mind says “poor ilya” but the rest of me cackles mercilessly.  Here, for example, are some missed compliment opportunities:

1. Why, Linda, what a lusciously achy back you have today!

2. I do love how that newly gray hair frames your face–just like a little gray angel.

3. My, what a gloriously ample tummy you have!  (The better to eat ice cream with, my dear!)

In more exciting (and pertinent) news–I can definitely feel the baby wiggling in there sometimes.  Here are the baby’s cravings thus far: 1) would mama please stop resting on her belly (grumble, grumble, wiggle, bump); and 2) a second serving of ice cream for baby, please!

For my birthday, Ilya got me a pregnancy body pillow.  It’s super comfy…a little too comfy perhaps.  As I was falling asleep last night with the body pillow, Ilya stuck his arm in around the pillow also–“just one arm,” he said.  Anyway, he kept “accidentally” tickling me until I gave up, let him have the upper half of the body pillow, and folded up the lower half of the body pillow for myself. 

Later in the night, as I was coming back from one of my bathroom breaks, I saw that Ilya had rolled over to my side of the bed and completely taken over the body pillow.  When I tried to climb back in to my side of the bed, he shooed me to the other side.  So I let Ilya hug the pillow and I slept hugging Ilya instead.  It all ended well–but tonight the body pillow is mine!

So I’m 18 weeks pregnant now (out of 40) and I’m feeling really great during the day. I have lots of energy (which is good since I somehow need to finish the diss in the next month), am enjoying my new maternity pants (elastic rules!) and feel all-around chipper. I do sometimes accidentally stretch my round ligament (thingie supporting uterus) and that hurts like heck; luckily, that doesn’t happen too often.

The past few nights, however, have been a different story. I can’t get comfy falling asleep! Plus there’s the icky nighttime heartburn. Given that I’m barely showing at this point, I’m a bit concerned about sleeping as I get bigger…we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, here’s a picture of me and Ellen–both of us are almost 18-weeks pregnant in the shot. I imagine these will just get funnier as we get larger and larger.

The past week or so can be given the name “The Trial of the Bump”.  Linda has been on a sort of a quest to ascertain that her belly is getting bigger because of the growing baby inside — as opposed to, say, ice cream.  There’s reason to be unsure, since we did consume a somewhat inordinate amount of ice cream, and our friends seem to be split down the middle — some saying “ooh, yes, I can definitely see your bump” and others saying “oh, and you’re not showing yet”.

There’s a small linguistic problem with the phrase “I am showing” that I wanted to explore too.  Normally, “to show” implies that there is something to show — “I am showing a house to newlyweds” or “I am showing you my toy”.  You need both the direct object (what you’re showing) and an indirect object (to whom you’re showing something).  In the case of pregnancy, the normal use of “to show” gets thrown out; it’s not necessary to show an object to anyone.  Showing becomes another adjective — not unlike saying “I am tall” or “I am pretty”.  However, there is an action being described, and an implied abbreviation of some full phrase, like “I am showing a pregnant belly to the world“.  So is it a special form of the verb that does not take a direct or an indirect object, or just an abbreviated phrase where the rest is understood from context?

Linda’s quite definitely showing, though, regardless of the linguistic difficulties.  While the frequency of ice cream ingestion must definitely be brought down, there’s an undeniable fact that there’s a very very normal, and ever-more-expanding pregnancy bump developing.