20 Weeks! Halfway!

Originally written October 5, 2017

Size of Baby: Baby J is the size of a banana, 6.5 inches and 10.1 ounces in weight! Yesterday at the anatomy scan, they were estimating Baby J actually weighs 12 ounces right now.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: 172.5 , up 12.5 pounds so far. Yesterday at my 20 week check-up with Dr. Martin, I asked if I was in the normal ballpark for weight gain at this point, and she said yes. So I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.

Best Thing This Week: Seeing our beautiful baby girl at the anatomy scan. She kicked, flinched, and flung an arm around, possibly in reaction to the ultrasound wand pressing on her. And we got to see a zoom in on her little nose and upper lip. I know I'm biased, but it was the most beautiful little upper lip I've ever seen.

Maternity Clothes: I finally feel comfortable wearing some more form-fitting things that show I actually have a bump. Yesterday I sported a black t-shirt dress with a big, light yellow scarf draped around my shoulders and down my belly.

Movement: I have felt baby a couple of times this week. One afternoon I got hungry around 3:30, so Ashley and I walked to Arby's to get mozzarella sticks. As soon as I ate them, I felt baby girl kick quite a bit. Right before the appointment on Wednesday Ashley grabbed me a grilled cheese sandwich, as soon as I finished eating, she gave me a few kicks, which was so comforting on my way to the doctor appointment. On Thursday, the day after the appointment I felt Baby a lot. I think it's because I had just seen her.

What I Miss: Sleeping on my back. My hips are getting sore in the night from being on my side.

Cravings: Bean and cheese tacos. Over the last 2 weeks, I've probably gone through 10 cans of refried beans.

Symptoms: Heartburn. The wrist brace from Amazon has been helping with the carpal tunnel.

Best Moment this Week: Getting a good report from the maternal fetal medicine doctor.

What the Doctor Said this Week: Baby girl looks healthy. She was in the 39th percentile for size at 20 weeks, which is perfect. He said ideally you would want somewhere between 10-80th percentile. If she stays on this projectile, she should weigh between 7 and 7.5 pounds at birth.

He told me I have an anterior placenta, meaning it's in the front. There is nothing wrong with this, it's like being left handed or right handed. It just means that I'm not going to feel baby as soon as people with a placenta located elsewhere. When she kicks or moves it has to be strong enough to go through the placenta, uterus and then up to my skin.

Through the last 5+ years, I've collected a few outfits for our baby. My gut intuition that I would have a little girl has ended up being correct.

Moments with Dave: Camping while pregnant! We finally had the perfect weather the weekend of September 29th to go camping, so we went for it. Not only was it special, because it was our first time camping while pregnant. But when we woke up on the morning of September 30th to enjoy the sunrise, we also got to remember our first Baby J who would have been celebrating their first birthday with us if they had made it through the pregnancy and been born on their due date, September 30, 2016. We didn't really get sad, but we talked about how excited we were when we had our very first positive pregnancy test in January of 2016. We were soooo surprised and didn't imagine anything wrong happening with that pregnancy. We were just 100% delighted.

Here are the pictures from our camping trip.

What I'm Looking Forward To: Seeing all of my family in Houston and going on Dave's and my last big trip together before baby girl arrives!

Verse I'm Clinging to this Week: I was super anxious about the anatomy scan this week. So I carried this in my heart all week leading up to it.