It’s kind of hard to believe that I’ve already been pregnant for SIX months.
There have been a couple of requests for pictures of the bump. It really only got obvious in the week before Christmas so there aren’t many and they aren’t very good but here you go….
from Christmas day.
from New Year’s Eve.
ok… so ultrasounds are amazing but also a little on the creepy side. We don’t have a scanner so even though the babe will be undergoing monthly and then eventually weekly ultrasounds, I can only post pictures occasionally.
Here’s a few that we have so far…
Seven weeks… they don’t look like much but that’s a baby… 
That white blob in the second one – not the head. That’s the yolk sac. Gross, huh?
Twenty weeks… a bit more baby like… 
the traditional ultrasound view but the baby wouldn’t turn profile (hence the slightly alien-y look).
So the tech turned to what we like to refer to as “the creepy baby pictures” – yes, we think it’s creepy even when it’s our own kid – the 3D ultrasound. 
Don’t look at me.
Who turned on the lights? We know that it’s just an illusion but it does look like there’s a light shining in there.
now those are better…
Oh and after all the debate, we decided to not find out what we’re having.
So the books and websites say that you should start feeling your baby move sometime between 16 and 20 weeks and describe it as fluttering or similar and that it can be somewhat hard to distinguish from hunger pangs or gas.
I’m at 19 weeks right now and I’d say that the flutters started about 1-2 weeks ago. I described it to my mom and Will as feeling like I had a cell phone on vibrate going off deep inside my belly. weird.
This week I started feeling what I would call real movement. It started Wednesday night lying in bed. I know what hunger and gas feel like – this wasn’t either of those things. Just small little bumps and nudges. again weird.
But now that I’ve noticed, I’m feeling it all time! It’s like I’ve got an alien moving around in there. It’s just amazing and weird to realize that there is someone independently moving around inside me. I’m not making it happen – the baby’s just moving around on its own. CRAZY.
So now I wonder what the baby is doing in there….
Is it uncomfortable and shifting positions?
Is it testing its limbs?
Is it just playing around?
Amazing. Crazy. Very very weird.
P.S. This is why I probably had the thought that the baby is moving around because its uncomfortable:
Baby Center – 19 weeks.
P.P.S. Will is super sad that baby’s still too small for him to see or feel anything :(
We lost motivation for a couple of weeks and didn’t make too much progress but we’ve been back on the ball this week. Several of the things that we have left are, unfortunately, kind of major-ish undertakings.
But I promised pictures… way more interesting than my lists…
First up, Will refinishing the top to the coffee table…. our first major undertaking. Ok, I say “our” but given my state, it’s not a good idea for me to be playing with paint stripper (even if it was soy-based and organic), standard latex paint (we used the paint that had been used before to match everything else – no low/no-VOC paint) or polyurethane sealant, so Will did all the work.
I have to say that this stuff (Franmar Soy Gel Paint & Urethane Remover) was really cool! You just slop it on, it bubbles the paint, and then it pulls up in, actually, really gross wet sheets.
I have no pictures of the rest of the steps – repainting and then sealing – but suffice to say, it’s back to it’s original gorgeously painted surface. I’m glad it finally got sealed. It actually never got sealed in the first place so hopefully it will stay nicer longer than before.
My major project (besides organizing and culling which are always my main jobs) was in the bathroom. Last year we had a bit of an incident wherein we had to replace our medicine cabinet but unfortunately, our previous model had square corners where the new one has rounded corners. This fact left us with essentially craters in each corner resulting from decades of layers of paint and glaring white corners in the midst of my black wallpaper. So Will did a spackle job and I got out the black paint and got to work to make things at least less obvious.
setting my boundaries
black paint is kind of scary to work with
finished!
Now for some random pics…
We have the list up on our fridge so that we have the physical satisfaction of crossing something off and it’s in our face. The basement in reorg progress.
The tools took over the apartment. They only got put away on Monday.
We lived without a coffee table for the better part of a week. That sucked. This is all the crap I cleared out of the bathroom closet so it looked “roomy and spacious.”
Our nicely cleaned out hall closet. All the eBay stuff as it was until Monday when I started moving out into the dining room so that I could catalog it all.
Preparing a bunch of stuff to get put down in the basement.
that is the question.
The sex of the baby that is.
1 September 2010
Besides the worries about miscarriages, are we going to be good parents, eating right, and all the rest; my biggest internal conflict is whether to find out what we’re having when the time comes at 20 weeks.
I think Will will just let me decide and go with whatever I want – he’s sweet like that – but I’m not sure what I want.
On one hand, I’ve always wanted that “It’s a ____” moment after giving birth.
But on the other, I really like to plan and I can’t plan if we don’t know what we’re having.
Hence – conflicted!
Apparently the new thing is to have a “sex party” – no, not like that. It’s a party wherein the sex of the baby is revealed to all – parents, friends, and family – all at the same time. It involves the technician writing boy/girl on a piece of paper, sealing it in an envelope which then gets given to a baker with instructions to either color the cake or the filing pink or blue so that when it gets cut in to, all is revealed.
Seems weird to me.
But also kind of a cute way to celebrate the news.
As of writing, I have 14 weeks to hash this out with myself and my wonderful hubby.
29 November 2010
So now we’re down to about 2 weeks – our sonogram is scheduled for 13 December – and we still haven’t decided.
I still like the idea of not finding out but then I don’t like the idea of being surprised with the first but then finding out in the future. I feel like it should be all or nothing – either we find out for all our kids or none of our kids. And I’m not sure that I can handle the waiting more than once.
There was a Baby Center blog post a few months ago that caught my attention on this very topic: 8 Reasons to Find Out Your Baby’s Sex. I identify most with 3 of her points…
I have admitted that I want a boy first. I’m not shy about saying what I want – I want any girls that we do have to have an older brother. Besides, then the family can relax because there will be at least the potential for another generation of Davenports (this comes from marrying the last male Davenport). So maybe we should find out sooner rather than later because then I can get over myself if we are having a girl first which tends to be the trend in both of our immediate families.
We have so much going on that we can’t plan for that it would be nice to have something that we can plan for and, let me tell you, this lady likes to plan. We still want to keep things fairly neutral – there won’t be any bright pink princess rooms or all blue with lots of trucks for us – because I don’t see the need to have to buy things new for future kid(s). If it can be reused the second time around, it should be neutral. Besides, my favorite color to decorate with – GREEN!
And thinking back on when I’ve bought shower presents for friends, it’s more fun when you know. It may be shallow but it’s true.
Bottom line: we haven’t decided but lately I’m leaning towards knowing.
So here’s poll because I’m curious what people think:
Ok, I’m not trying to make this into a baby blog per se ….
It’s just that I have a bunch of posts that I wrote sitting at my desk in the first couple of weeks that I knew I was pregnant in an attempt at calming all the thoughts that were catapulting around in my brain at very high velocity.
And because (a) they’re already written, (b) I can share them because most everyone knows, and (c) I don’t have to sort through pictures to post them, they’re easy to publish pretty quickly.
So no fear… I’m not going for “all baby, all the time.” At least not intentionally!
20 August 2010
Ok. I have a problem with secrets. Particularly if they are happy ones.
I just want to tell everyone!
Happy secrets are the worst because I end up feeling like I’m just busting at the seams to tell people.
I just want to shout from the rooftops: We’re having a baby!!!
It’s only been 2 days and it’s already driving me crazy.
I talk to my mom on the phone and she says, “Anything new?” And I respond, “Nope, nothing new” while my brain shouts, “Yes, only the best news you’ll hear for the next 3 months!”
We ran into a girl I met in grad school in the grocery store and we’re chatting about life and she says “How’s things?” and I say, “Good” when I want to say, “Freaking fantastic because we’re having a baby!” We get to talking about leaving the area and schools and she says “All things you have to worry about when you have kids, if you have kids.” Yup, we’re definitely having kids. That journey has begun.
I e-mail my girlfriends… “oh nothing exciting going on here.” LIE.
Knowing that we’ve been trying to have a baby, one responds wondering if we’re going to put things on hold since I’m thinking of looking for a new job and I have to respond that we’re just forging ahead and taking what life gives us.
I want to ask people what the deal is with the deli meat according to my doctor because, seriously, I don’t know what I’m going to eat for lunch and it’s going to be a few weeks until I can ask the doctor myself.
We have all this cider that I can no longer drink so Will thought, “oh we can try to pawn some off on my sister.” Oh wait, that’ll look suspicious.
It’s like on the surface nothing in our lives has changed but really we’ve been totally rocked down to the foundation.
I hate secrets.
Keeping good news to yourself sucks.
15 November 2010
Well, in the end after the first week or so, it got pretty normal not to tell people. The hardest was not telling my parents the whole time we were on vacation especially with my mom asking leading questions every couple of days (she swears she didn’t realize that she was doing it). Because we really didn’t want too many people knowing before I was at least 12 weeks along and we had certain people that we wanted to tell in person, it just kind of became a bit of a logistical nightmare as we tried to figure out how to make schedules mesh and see those people before we told the whole world.
Most people know by now though we haven’t made the “official” announcement on Facebook but I actually still haven’t told most of the people that I work with and for the most part, it’s not really bothering me.
It’s like there are so many other things to think and worry about that I’m not really thinking too much anymore about telling everyone in sight. I’ve also gotten paranoid that the more people we tell, the higher the chances will be that something will go wrong and then we’ll have to spread bad news. But then I just remind myself that that is, in fact, paranoid and not likely to happen and go on with my day and continue to spread the happy news.
Besides it’s been fun to spread the news.
Especially when we’ve been able to deliver it in person and see the reaction firsthand. We got an adorable Charlie Brown-esque dance from Will’s sister. My niece was a little confused for a bit – but that could have been more to do with my choice of words. My folks were just like “well, we already knew it” which I expected. I actually got slightly similar reactions from two of my best friends – ah, the people who know you best can always sniff it out, right? One of my nephews is already campaigning to have the baby named after him if it’s a boy – um, I don’t think we’ll do that.
And I discovered today that my extended family news chain is apparently broken as not a single one of my cousins even knew I was pregnant when I was soliciting baby name input (in the form of asking what everyone’s middle names were).
