Five Months

Everything is going well.

People ask how I'm feeling, and the short answer is: tired, hungry, and urpy. Urpy, you know what urpy is, right? Urpy is when you feel like you ate too much, and your belly is pushing into your esophagus, and you probably should burp or something but you can't. Not exactly heartburn, but close, just full and roly-poly and kind of achy. It's the strangest thing, feeling full, when you're actually hungry. It's how I feel nearly all the time.

For me it's extra-challenging because I have a small appetite to begin with, and I admit I'm not eating everything in sight. The urpy feeling doesn't help at all. I'm often completely turned off by the thought of eating until I have a couple of bites. I keep catching myself feeling crappy and realize that I'm actually hungry but couldn't tell.

Not being able to bend at the waist without feeling like you're getting punched in the gut is really, really annoying. I just recently started forcing myself to sit down to pull pants on. It's hard being so encumbered when I'm used to being swift and flexible.

I think this is more of a pronounced problem this time around because poor Theo is getting the brunt of it. We're both used to having me run around with him, and now, running just feels awful. Even 30 seconds of light jogging takes some determination to get through. Come to think of it, why would I have any reason to run at all, back when I was pregnant with Theo and working? I try to substitute with speed walking instead and sometimes that keeps him happy. I try not say "I can't run because I'm pregnant" as I don't want him to develop any animosity in that direction. I can't say how glad I am that we waited this long, allowing him to develop the independence to play without me always keeping up.

Otherwise, he's still very excited about the baby. He loves to pat the belly, kiss it and give it raspberries. We talk about it and I got some storybooks from the library about new babies. It's all very joyful and fun to explore the idea of a new person in the house.

All the testing has come back happy and healthy. (I don't want to say negative or positive as that's confusing with the various tests - suffice it to say everything came back good.) It occurs to me I never did a gender announcement here, though I'm sure word has gotten around in other ways. It's a GIRL, definitely a girl, both the genetics testing and the visual check have made this official.

I went in this week for a diagnostic ultrasound, which my OB performed. She's apparently really good with the machine and would rather do it herself. She checked absolutely everything, including parts of the brain, angles of limbs, shape of the lips, nose and chin, development of major arteries and the stomach cavity. I've gained about 8 pounds and the baby is in the 37th percentile, perfectly great for someone my size.

So yeah, doing great, and at 5 months already. As Theo came early I'm already feeling way too close to the due date. We still have so much to do...