From the front
And from the side. In the future, I'll wear a shirt that is not the same color as the wall!
Week: 19
Baby Size: 5.25-6 inches. It's about the size of a large mango and weighs in at about 7 ounces. You know the baby book is running out of things to say when they tell you "your baby will increase its weight more than 15 times between now and delivery". You mean I won't have a 10 oz baby? Thanks, baby book!
Gender: This Friday! Baby and I have had some serious talks about being cooperative so I don't go crazy. Mostly that relates to making sure all the parts are in the right place and functioning normally, but it also applies to the money shot.
Maternity Clothes?: How much do I love maternity pants? They are the greatest invention ever. Not only are they stretchy, they have no buttons or zippers! Just pull on and go. Amazing. I still have some of my pre-pregnancy shirts that I can wear, but I'm mostly in full maternity gear nowadays.
Sleep: I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night, but that was the case pre-pregnancy too. With the field trip on my mind (see below) and all the things I needed to do to prepare, I'm actually not too surprised I'm having trouble. I'm hoping things get back to normal now that the trip is done.
Diet and Exercise: I managed 3 days on the treadmill this week. Brian and I also had a fight about my heart rate when I run being too high. The OB told me in the beginning to stay between 140-150 and everything should be fine. I never actually worried about monitoring it, since a lot of other people on the message boards I read said their OBs just told them to do what they've been doing. I made the mistake of e-mailing one of my very in-shape friends and asking her what she did during pregnancy and she told me that she stopped running at the very beginning because of her heart rate climbing too much. I compounded my mistake by mentioning this to Brian. He completely freaked out that I was starving the baby of O2 when I ran, and I needed to stop right away (I should say this was exacerbated by the fact that I had used some toluene that night in lab without gloves--toluene is a known carcinogen, and in large doses can cause birth defects. I used 1 mL). He went to REI and bought me a heart rate monitor the next night. Turns out that I get to about 166 when I run at my usual pace. If I slow down a bit, I'm only at 150, but that only holds for 1 lap--it rises to around 160 the longer I run. We've compromised and agreed that I will run one lap (at the slower pace) and then walk a lap (on an incline, so it's not as wussy as it sounds). I'm not thrilled with this--I ran the entire first trimester so any damage that running would do has already been done--but I'm humoring him. As I mentioned in my last post, my running days are numbered anyway, so I may as well start phasing it out now. With the alternations, I'm still managing at least a mile on each day running, so it's really not too much less than I was doing. I'm still using the heart rate monitor (I actually really like it, as it gives a good workout report) and keeping an eye on things. Poor Brian--I've made him sound like a jerk, but he's just concerned.
Movement: Brian's felt it too! Baby was kicking my left side and I put his hand on there and a couple of seconds later he looked at me with big eyes and said "Oh!" It was very funny. I feel movement pretty much every day now--usually just taps on my lower left, but sometimes I feel it roll over or stretch out. One night the taps started on the lower right and then tracked across the middle to my lower left where they stayed. Seems like baby has a favorite side. I really only feel the taps when I'm sitting still, but the rolls and stretches I've felt while standing. I get the taps especially in the car where the seat belt presses in, and about a half hour after I've eaten. It's really cool, but a little freaky at the same time--things in there aren't supposed to move on their own generally :)
What I Miss: Being able to work out with no monitoring. I'll get over it, but it is kind of annoying that I can't just take care of myself.
What I'm Looking Forward to: Still finding out the sex--it's coming (I hope)!
Best Moment this Week: Brian feeling the movement.
Pregnancy Body-New and Exciting!..maybe: My hips are definitely letting me know about it when I first wake up in the morning. I think I need a pillow for between my legs--that's supposed to help a lot. My belly button is continuing its sojourn to the outside world too--I won't be an inny for too much longer.
On Wednesday, I looked down after my shower and thought "where the heck did that come from?" Suddenly, seemingly overnight, I had developed a belly. I had noticed the expansion before, but this week it really seems like things are popping out more than they were. I know to everyone else it still doesn't look like much, but for me, it's hard to ignore.
Baby Milestones: According to the baby book, all the major systems have finished developing by now, and all that's left for the next few months is to gain some weight and let everything mature. That makes sense--otherwise they wouldn't schedule an ultrasound to look at overall anatomy. It's cool to think the baby looks like a freakishly skinny version of what it will be when it comes out!
Food Cravings: Still berries and chocolate. I had my usual Friday night ice cream, and then last night we went to Vick's (an awesome ice cream shop here in Sac), and I got some chocolate mousse ice cream. Oh my gosh, it was so good!
How's Dad?: Besides being super overprotective, very well! Home Depot has apparently decided we're not cool enough to get the bathroom flooring when they told us we would, so the bathroom remodel drags on. He got the cabinets sanded and stained and the walls sanded to paint instead. He's really making great progress, and it's going to look amazing when he's done. We're both half expecting the tempranillo grapes we're waiting on to be ready to go next weekend, so that'll push things off further. He's anxious to be done, as this is taking a ton of time!
Tid Bits: We had our field trip with my Intro Bio class yesterday, and it was a ton of fun! We went to a park not too far from the campus, and the students were responsible for catching and documenting several species of wildlife in the lake and the woodlands near the lake. I supervised the woodlands kids (since it had the most shade), and they all really seemed to think it was pretty cool. They had to measure the size of trees and tag them, and then look count and measure all of the plants in a meter squared parcel of ground around the trees. I did this with my summer students as well, and loved how it gave them a chance to work like "real" biologists and see what biology is like in the field. They have to write me a report, give a presentation on what they found, and upload their photos and notes to a common website to give to the park personnel. Baby did just fine--I only felt some pains if I bent over a lot, so I started making my students bend over for me :) I also made them carry everything for me. I don't usually use pregnancy as an excuse, but was happy to that day!
My Chem for Nurses class is going well too. Despite my use of carcinogens without gloves, the labs are really fun and easy, and I think they are really helping the students learn the concepts I teach them in the lecture. I'm going to miss teaching in person this spring! University of Phoenix is also going well. I'm having trouble keeping up the positive reinforcement that they insist on for their instructors (sometimes you're just wrong, and I think you have to deal with that!), but overall it's going fine. It will certainly get easier the more times I teach it!
The last thing is Beau's allergies. My cat has had allergies the entire 9 years I've had him, and they've always been worst in the fall. This year, he's taken things to a whole new level. He wheezes with each breaths, sneezes constantly, and sleeps all the time (even for a cat, that's excessive). In the past, I've tried giving him allergy pills, but if I do manage to get one down his throat, he will immediately vomit it back up. If I put it in a treat, he will eat the treat and leave the pill behind. This week he was so bad that I bought some of the liquid children's medicine and tried giving that to him. He only swallowed some, but then he immediately vomited and started actually foaming at the mouth to get rid of it! I've never seen a cat so hard to give medicine to in my life! Brian tried to mix some of the medicine with wet food (which worked with Snowball), and he wouldn't even touch the wet food. I'm pretty much done trying to help him out, but I feel so badly for him! Do any cat people have suggestions of anything else I can try? Is there some injectable allergy medicine that I don't know about? I hate to watch him suffer, but I've literally tried everything to get him to take this medicine!
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