25 weeks

This has been the most emotional week thus far. EVERYTHING makes me cry.

Seriously. Everything.

And if I'm crying about something and I finally get myself under control and the tiniest little thing happens (one day it was finding sugar ants in the kitchen) I will LOSE IT all over again. My poor husband... He's so good at hugging me and letting me cry.

Jordan felt the baby kick this week! It was a really big kick and his response was, "Haha, WOAH!" I have tried to have him feel before and the baby has always stopped moving when he puts his hand on my belly (maybe it has something to do with the fact that his hands always feel like ice cubes) so it was pretty fun for him to be able to feel her.

My feet are still swelling, especially in the evenings. I bought a pair of slip-on tennis shoes this week because bending over to tie my shoes in the morning is becoming next to impossible! It's been really nice to be able to slip my shoes off while sitting at my desk at work. I had forgotten that our foot rests have little nubs on them, which feels awesome on my sock feet. :)

24 weeks

I'm still getting leg cramps this week - boo. I do think the calcium/magnesium is helping, as well as doing leg stretches before bed each night. But the supplements also caused swelling in my fingers and toes (not something I'm a fan of!) so I've started taking it every other day instead of every day (this seems to be helping).

I've had lots of people commenting this week that I'm small for being 6 months pregnant. I've been telling them that I'm BARELY 6 months so give me some time. Sheesh, people sure are opinionated! Some days I'll hear from a couple of people that I'm small and a couple of people that I'm looking bigger and I've decided that's like telling someone, "Wow, your hair sure is black!" or "My, your face is round". I mean, really. I will never understand why it's ok to share your every opinion with a pregnant lady when you wouldn't normally say something like that to just anyone. Luckily I'm not super sensitive about things like that!

My mom got to feel the baby move this week! Peyton was doing her acrobats (she does them most when I'm laying down or sitting kind of reclined onto my left side) and Mom was able to feel, which she thought was pretty cool. She sent a picture of her hand on my stomach to my sister, getting the response, "Sooooo jealous!"

My weight gain had started out pretty slow (I was always several pounds behind the low number in the "normal" range) but it started picking up recently. Now I'm right in the normal range, and I hope to stay there! Steve loves to guess my weight whenever we go in for an appointment. It's kind of eerie how close he comes to the correct number (even adding in the decimal place) since I don't often tell him my weight off of our scale at home!

One of my good friends had her baby shower this week and the activity was decorating onesies for her little man. (I'm totally stealing this idea for my own shower because it's soooo much better than awkward baby shower games!) She is naming her little guy Sam so I made this onesie for him. I was so proud of it and she told me that her husband LOVED it. :)

23 weeks

We have a very active baby! She kicks all the time, all day long. A lot of the time I can only feel her movements from the inside but in the evenings it's much more noticeable and strong. She definitely has wake and sleep patterns but some days it sure seems like she's awake more than asleep! :)

I started getting really bad leg cramps this week. :/ They have me "jumping" out of bed (no easy feat with all my pillows) to walk them off and they are PAINFUL. I've been eating bananas every day and I had several people suggest calcium/magnesium supplements so I've started taking those as well. Still trying to increase my water intake! (It's a never ending goal.)

22 weeks

This week I started noticing some mild acid reflux. It's mild enough that I can eat a snack or drink some water and be fine. But it's not comfortable!

I've also noticed my belly starting to get in my way, especially at work. Our office is really (really) poorly designed and we do a lot of squeezing around people and carts and more people and carts. I've also been very mindful to lift less, either making more trips or taking a cart for a stack of charts that I would have carried myself before. I have the guys move the boxes of paper to the back when they're delivered so I can put them away. I wonder what it will be like there when I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant and can't squeeze around like I do now!

Baby's kicks are getting much stronger! I can feel them from the outside now and Steve has been able to feel them more, which is fun. Peyton likes to do gymnastics in the evenings and I can watch my stomach roll, which Steve thinks is mildly creepy. ;)

21 weeks

I'll be honest - I let myself get about 8 weeks behind on posting and while I have notes for every other week, apparently during week 21 I wrote nothing down. So you get these two pictures to enjoy. ;)

I DO know that during week 21 I bought two tiny little dresses/skirts since we now know we're having a girl. :) I also spent some time reflecting on how much having your own girl makes you GAG at so much of the tiny baby clothes being sold nowadays! And I started planning the nursery a little bit more, though it probably would have been pretty much the same if we were having a boy. ;)

20 weeks... and an announcement!

Halfway there!

This week was our big 20 week ultrasound and the even bigger gender reveal!

IT'S A GIRL!!!



Peyton Rhea Hanold

I don't have any ultrasound pictures that prove her gender as we apparently have an EXTREMELY uncooperative baby. ;) The ultrasound tech had me lay on one side, then on my other side, then with the head of the bed lower than the foot, then she would jiggle my stomach... and baby did not want to do what she was supposed to. But either way it was really fun to see her wiggle and squirm and to point out to Jordan her different body parts.

Jordan had bet me $5 that he would have a sister so that he would either end up with a brother or $5. ;) He wasted no time in reminding me that I owed him five dollars!

The day after the ultrasound when I picked Jordan up from his after school program I asked him if he had told lots of people. He told me yes, he had told his friends. One friend asked him, "How do you know it's a girl, did she come out?" He replied, "No, we saw it on the screen!" I asked if he thought about his sister a lot that day and he emphatically told me yes. I asked what he thought about and he said, "I just really, really wonder what she'll look like..." Even though he really wanted a brother, I could tell that he was extremely excited about having a sister and that he was doing a lot of thinking and processing in the days following the ultrasound.

A couple of days after the ultrasound we had our baby gender reveal party (something I wasn't going to do but my sister convinced me). We invited siblings, parents, grandparents and best friends and ended up with about 25 people in our house (no easy feat!). Jordan and I had blown up about two dozen balloons in pink and blue, each with a slip of paper inside. The idea was that every person would take a balloon in the color they thought was correct, and everyone would pop their balloons at the same time. Every piece of paper was blank except for one, and that piece revealed the gender. :) We had totally tried to rig it so that we could give the correct balloon to a "very important person" but in the process of rounding up the balloons the night before, we lost track of which balloon was the magic one! It didn't matter, my cousin Stacy ended up with the revealing balloon and that was perfect. :) (My mom did take a video and I will try to get that into this post, but it will take some time and I can't do it now because I'm posting on a break at work.)

Here are a few fun ultrasound pictures from the same week as the reveal, though these were done by my friend Aslan and not through our regular OB office.

"Oh, my forehead itches, I'll just get that with my toe..."

Tiny baby legs and feet are my favorite!

Here she is lying with her arms crossed over her chest and her legs scrunched up. Such a little acrobat!

19 weeks

Here we are, just goin' along! :) I like being pregnant. It agrees with me. I look at friends around me and think about how blessed I am and how easy I've had it. Sickness and problems have been minimal and most days are smooth sailing.

My biggest complaint this week (and it's actually a big one) is lower back and hip soreness. I wake up feeling fine and by 11am or so, I'm practically hobbling because my hips are so sore. There are times when I stand up at work and have to adjust my posture and my stance several times before I can even take a step because everything has locked up. Not fun! I have questions about chiropractic care on my list for my next doctor appointment. I don't know what Kaiser offers in the way of chiropractic but by golly, I'm going to find out. I also borrowed an exercise ball from my parents and I'm hoping that spending a lot of time sitting on that will help.

I've started sleeping with more pillows at night - one between my knees, another behind my back and a little tiny one under my belly. They don't always stay there and I still end up on my back a lot, but I try!

I'm still drinking TONS of milk. I probably go through about a gallon by myself every 5 days or so.

I lost half of my belly button this week! I've always had an innie (really, quite a severe one) and now the top half just blends right into my belly and doesn't go in at all. ;) I also have the very beginnings of the dark line above my belly button (can't remember the long Latin name of the line). I feel bigger in the evenings and some days I look in the mirror and go, "WHAT!!!!!" I love it but it's so surreal sometimes. :)

Baby is moving lots more these days! I would say I probably feel him/her 5 or 6 times a day and can easily tell the difference between baby movement and stomach gurgling (like when I'm hungry!). It's all the time now, not just when I'm lying down or sitting.

We find out the sex very soon!! Stay tuned this weekend for the big gender announcement. ;)