Baby!

Jen's Baby Updates: Week 24

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Wow, 24 weeks! I am 6 months pregnant! OK, I know that I keep saying that this is taking forever, but as always, looking back on it makes it seem like nothing. I am just as excited as the day that we found out we were having a baby, and it is so much more real now!

My relatives were teasing me about how long my updates have gotten, and that they aren't as baby-focused as I originally said they would be. Well... the baby isn't really doing much, so I figured that I should write about myself to keep these updates interesting! I'm more interesting than any baby, aren't I? OK, probably not.

My mom always teases me that I was jealous when my cousin Brett (now 11) was born, because suddenly my sister and I weren't the center of attention at family gatherings anymore. We love him, though, so it is worth it!

Anyway, I will make an effort to keep these baby related, but still give context. Now that the class is over, they should be shorter, because no one wants to hear about the details of my real job... it is really only interesting to me and my co-workers (and our customers).

My belly is becoming public property. By which I mean that I'm now showing enough that people assume that I'm pregnant, and automatically reach for my belly to pat the baby. This has only happened two or three times, so far, but I've heard that it gets a lot worse. So far it isn't bothering me, because I like to show it off. I'm not cranky and constantly uncomfortable yet, though, so we'll see how I feel about it in the last months. According to my sources, pregnant women generally find it very irritating when strangers or acquaintances touch their belly without asking. It has been suggested to me that if people do it, I should reach out and put my hand on THEIR belly, just to show them what it is like!

Top

Development

Midwife Visit

Movement

Symptoms

Exercise

Other Babies

Gifts

Names

Miscellaneous

Movement

He's getting stronger! I thought he felt pretty active one night at belly and he actually gave me a wide-eyed incredulous look at one of the kicks! My mom got to feel him, too!

The baby was so active on Christmas eve as we were lying in bed that we both were just fascinated, and stayed in one position for a long time just enjoying feeling our baby moving around. It is still amazing.

He's moving right now, in fact, as I'm writing this. Maybe he knows I'm writing about him!

Friday night I went to Holly's house and talked about the website she'll be hosting on my server. The baby was very active, and I had her put her hand on my stomach, but she didn't get to feel him move. He's still a little elusive!

Symptoms

Late Morning Sickness?

I actually vomited on Christmas day. Lovely, eh? I had gone for a walk across the lake with Travis, his brothers and his dad, and it left me extremely winded. I headed up to the house as soon as we got off the ice, and told Travis he didn't need to come with me, but he insisted. Good thing, too. I just wanted to sit down, and was just about gasping for air. I sat down on a post up by the house, then sat on the ground, at which point Travis basically hauled me up and made me go inside. He had to take my boots off for me because I couldn't bend down in all my winter gear and my stomach already felt unstable. I made it to the bathroom, but it was still unpleasant.

We worried for a bit that it was morning sickness setting in late, but I have felt fine (other than this cold I've got) since then. It was just a strange reaction to exerting myself in the cold air, I guess. I'm shocked that walking around on level surfaces counts as 'exerting myself' these days. Where is that treadmill?

Insomnia

I am still not sleeping, mostly due to the itching, but not always. On Christmas Eve I only slept for a few hours, and it was all in the morning. I have no idea what was wrong that night... I wasn't itching and I wasn't worrying, I just wasn't sleeping.

I bought a humidifier because my mom says that might help the itching, and I'm going to try to only wash my hair every other day instead of every day. I probably won't be able to stand it, though. I've been using dandruff shampoo, though my scalp is just itchy, not flaky.

One possibly pregnancy related symptom that I've experienced a few times lately is leg cramps! I've only had one serious one, because I've managed to stretch out most imminent ones before they actually hit. The bad one happened while I was sleeping, so I didn't feel it coming. Supposedly this sort of thing starts happening around the sixth month, so I'm right on schedule.

Other People's Babies

We went to lunch with our friends Mark and Kat on Monday. They are a little ahead of us... their little girl is due next week, though they are hoping that she'll show up sooner! They are naming her Kira Nerise, and have been calling her that for months now. I hope that we figure out a name soon so we can call him by name! I have liked the name 'Kira' ever since I saw 'The Dark Crystal'.

I didn't think that Kat looked huge, though she is certainly bigger than me. Her belly did make my meager belly seem a little insignificant. It was really good to see them again... they have resisted all of our efforts to get them to move to Dayton so we don't get to see them as much as we'd like to!

They took a Lamaze class at the hospital, and they both said that it was very useful. I haven't heard about any Lamaze classes here in Dayton... and in fact had not thought that it was still around! All I've heard about are Bradley classes. We still don't know what we're going to do, but I'll be looking into it.

Hmm... it occurs to me that people might start to avoid me, knowing that if they do anything with me that they will be immortalized in my Baby Updates!

Gifts

I'm glad that I've been listing gifts here, though I did think about it a lot before I decided to do so. My aunt Teresa said that she was planning on giving me the "Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go!" book, but saw on here that I had already received it, so sent "The Fourth Trimester" instead, which was incredibly interesting and useful... tells you all about the time no one talks about... the first few weeks after the baby comes!

We received a lot of gifts this week, of course, because it was Christmas! People were very generous! So, despite what I said in the previous paragraph, I'm not going to include a list here, because it would take too much space. Maybe I'll write up a separate list and put it on the web site later.

Not really gifts, per se, but Troy (Travis's brother) and his wife Karen gave us a bunch of baby stuff, under the condition that it not ever be returned to them. I didn't recognize some of it (I'm sure I'll learn), but there is definitely a stroller, a walker type of thing, and a bunch of what they called 'baby shims', which is (I'm sure) not the proper name. They are used to prop the baby up while he is sleeping so he doesn't end up on his face, I think. It was so nice of them to do that!

Names

No new names. We're playing with calling him Xander, to see how it feels. We'll keep you posted!

Miscellaneous

Driving

The car ride to Michigan and back was not overly comfortable. It wasn't bad, but not as nice as when I'm not pregnant. I know that I'm not very big yet, and it is going to get worse, but still... I'm having trouble sitting upright because I feel like I'm crushing him (and my internal organs). In the car, I had my seat tilted pretty far back. I could probably drive that way (Travis was driving) but it would be uncomfortable. I also find myself leaning backward in my chair at work to keep my torso pretty straight.

Funny Quotes

My grandmother asked me, "What have you been with your time lately?" Her memory isn't very good, and she never remembers that I'm pregnant, so I said, "Well, I'm pregnant!" and she said, "Well, then, I know what you been doing _some_ of the time!"

She is very excited that the baby is due on April 20th, because her birthday is the 19th. She keeps telling me to have him a day earlier so he is born on her birthday. There seem to be a lot of birthdays in April, so lots of people are hoping for our baby to be born on their birthday.

Travis is amazed at how big I am. Whenever I walk by him he reaches out to touch my belly, and often rubs it in a circular motion while chanting, "rub the buddha, rub the buddha". Very funny!

A New Car!

Sunday, Travis and I bought a new car! His pickup truck has been an excellent vehicle, and has not given us even a moment of trouble through the 10 years that he has owned it, but it isn't really a good family car. Is it even legal to put a car seat in a pickup truck? There is no back seat! Besides, we have the GM mastercard, and they are changing the rules so our earnings won't be as valuable pretty soon. So, we went to the dealer on Saturday, signed a bunch of papers on Sunday, and will be picking it up on Monday. Travis moves quick on this sort of thing.

The car is a Pontiac Vibe, which is kind of a mini-SUV. It still gets good gas mileage (29/33), unlike most SUVs, but has more room than either of our cars. It is not huge, which is good for us, and it was very reasonably priced. It has the new LATCH system for carseats, which is supposed to be a more secure and simpler mechanism for installing carseats. My pregnant friend at work (who is having a boy as she had hoped, by the way) told me to look for that option. The car is charcoal gray, which I think is an ideal color for Travis.

Treadmill

The treadmill arrived on Saturday, so we picked it up and brought it home. I reorganized and cleaned my office to make space for it, but Travis wouldn't let me help him bring it upstairs (he's so protective) so we'll wait until someone else is here to help.

Traveling

Christmas was excellent! It was really nice to see my family again, because I hadn't seen them much in such a long time, and Thanksgiving didn't really count because there were so many people there that there was no calm interaction time. We stayed with my parents for two days, and just played games and talked and enjoyed being there. My grandparents were there, too, and I haven't gotten to spend that much time with them in years. It was perfect.

We got to see my high school friend Charlie (he now goes by Chuck) on Tuesday. I saw him last summer while Delia and Lorna and I were on our road trip on the east coast, but before that I hadn't seen him since undergrad! It was his birthday on Christmas Eve, so we took him to lunch at Cottage Inn, which is Travis's favorite Ann Arbor restaurant. It was fun to see him again!

On Christmas eve we went to the traditional Doom extended-family Christmas Eve gathering, which always has excellent food... I ate so much! I thought that my stomach would get smaller, but I still seem to be able to eat vast quantities of food. I spent most of the time talking about pregnancy and childbirth with Karen (my sister-in-law) and several other relatives... it was really interesting. I learned a lot about what to expect!

We were with the Dooms on Christmas eve and Christmas day, which would have been a lot more pleasant if I hadn't felt so awful. I started getting sick (just a cold) on Christmas eve, and it hit full force by the next morning. Normally I really like to play with Draven (my nephew), but I had no energy and my head was all stuffy. I barely got any dinner down, which was probably good, considering the aforementioned puking. The mashed potatoes tasted really good, though! I do love mashed potatoes. Anyway, Travis had a good time, because he wasn't sick, lucky guy.