Baby B

How on earth am I already 17 weeks along?! Goodness, time really does fly.  Monday is our big ultrasound. The one where they count the fingers and toes and make sure all the body parts are there and accounted for.  Oh and also the teeny tiny thing about finding out whether we're having a boy or a girl!!!  This morning Matt asked how long we had until our appointment to find out the sex. He was excited when I said it's THIS coming Monday!  The hope is to find out and then keep our lips sealed until Christmas.  I'm not sure we can do it! But we'll try our very best. It would be so fun to share the big news in person with our families all at once.  I heard of the cute idea where you order cupcakes filled with either blue or pink frosting. You serve the cupcakes and everyone takes a bite at the same time!  I sure hope we can keep it a secret so its extra exciting come Christmas time!

Overall my first 17 weeks have been, well, fairly easy.  My biggest challenge was finding foods that didn't completly repulse me for the first 10 weeks.  I couldn't be in the kitchen or anywhere near meat.  Matt was a rockstar and cooked meat for me. I was okay with beef once it was cooked but looking at it raw, yuck!!  Chicken has been the enemy throughout my entire pregnancy.  Some say it was because I ate copious amounts of chicken prior to being pregnant. Others would argue it's just a pregnancy thing- some things sound good and others don't.  It's crazy to think I loved chicken so much before you sweet Baby B, and now I can't stand the thought of it! Hopefully I'll enjoy chicken again after you are born :)

Weeks 10-14 were filled with the most awful headaches I've ever had.  If I didn't wake up with a headache I'd develop one during the day or even worse I'd get one right before bed and lose sleep over it.  I tried every remedy (safe for pregnancy of course) that I could think of but nothing seemed to give me much relief.  I visited a chiropractor 3 times but still got headaches in between visits.  That's when I decided to try a prenatal massage.  It was a lifesaver!  My first prenatal massage relieved a lot of the stress and tension I felt in my shoulders. The therapist said that blood flow was restricted due to my "rock-like" shoulders and she wasn't surprised I was suffering from daily headaches.  I was headache free for almost a week after that first massage! Halleluyah!

My second massage was a different story.  I visited the same therapist but what I thought would be another relaxing visit turned into a whole mess of added stress.  She massaged, with a fair amount of pressure, my lower back as well as did some reflexology on specific pressure points. After reading up on prenatal massage I found that you are supposed to avoid the lower back, especially with any sort of pressure and you are not supposed to target pressure points connected to the uterus. My therapist had done both! I was a boohooing mess the morning after my massage worried I had done something to cause harm to my sweet Baby B! After a frantic call to my nurse she reassured me that as long as I wasn't bleeding, cramping or experiencing any out of the ordinary symptoms, I should be fine.  Lesson learned! I will still continue to get massages (because really they do feel amazing) but I'll be very specific about which areas I want her to avoid.  Whew, catastrophe averted.

Week 15 and 16 were for the most part uneventful.  I felt pretty normal and other than being a higher temp at night (hubby calls me his little furnace) and needing to get up at least once a night to use the restroom, I felt great!  We've had to turn the air up at night. We were at 73 and now we are at 71.  Matt says the baby must have inherited my "furnace gene" :)

Baby Bump:  It's been a very common question in my pregnancy, when is your baby bump going to arrive?  Up until week 16 a stranger would have no idea I was busy baking a sweet Babe in my tummy.  But after a weekend trip to visit Aubry and Drew in Houston I came home to hubby saying, "are you sticking your stomach out?"  I responded, "nope! We grew a baby bump over the weekend!"  It's so fun to finally be showing a little.  Although at times I wonder how on earth I can double in size!  As long as baby is healthy, grow I will!

I have another prenatal massage scheduled for tomorrow. I can feel the tension building back up in my shoulders and I have a headache today.  I've also been feeling some pain on my lower left side of my pelvis as well as some on my left side (I've heard it might be sciatica pain?).  I'm hoping the massage will help relieve some of it. The lower left side pain could be round ligament pain from my uterus growing and stretching.  Apparently Baby B will double in size from weeks 15-20! It's incredible how so much growth can occur in such a short period of time. 

I am still in awe at all that happens in my body each day.  God is amazing.  I can't wait to meet you sweet B!  Love, Mommy and Daddy