21 weeks!
Baby is the size of: A Pomegrante
Craving: Mexican food, sugary fruit juices and smoothies
Symptoms: Headaches, heartburn, aches and pains, frequent urination, trouble sleeping
Well I’ve officially been pregnant longer than I have to go! Time is going by so slowly. I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever! And I feel like I still have so much longer. It’s just now starting to feel like Spring, and I have to wait until mid summer!
It was a long and emotionally draining week. My family had to put our dog Baxter down and nobody handled it well. I loved him so much. We all did. He was so very loved and a part of our family for 12 years. I know he’s so much happier now and no longer in pain but it still hurts to think that he’s not there anymore. It really feels like my childhood ending. Although I know that really happened years ago, everything is different now. I’m married and expecting my first baby, my little sister Mollie is engaged and getting married this summer, my younger sister and brother are entering their last years of high school, they both have jobs, Josh is driving, and now Baxter is gone. He lived the best life. We always took him camping, hiking, and to cut down Christmas trees. We could let him off the leash to run around and he wouldn’t leave our side. He was diagnosed with Lupus when he was young and the vet told us he wouldn’t live past 6. Then he got cancer a few years later and beat that! He even jumped out of a two story window and fell to the ground, only breaking his toe. In the end, the only thing that took him from us was old age. He was such a fighter and we’ll love him forever.
It feels kind of weird now that we know the gender of the baby. I almost feel like maybe with the next one I could wait and be surprised but I don’t think Kurtis would go for it. There’s a part to it that’s really nice. I have a good friend who’s getting married just a few weeks after he’s born and I’ve been having such fun looking at little baby boy formal wear! And planning the nursery, picking out names, gender specific toys, etc. That’s all been really fun! So I see the benefit to doing it either way!
Kurtis and I started our registry today. I was really looking forward to it, but once we got there it was actually really overwhelming and stressful. Babies R Us is a giant, confusing, maze meant to crush your hopes and dreams. They lure you in with the cute baby clothes and then make you question everything you’ve ever known by offering 465 different bottles and 137 different strollers (a rough estimate). And we thought we were prepared! We had already gone in a few weeks ago to look at everything they had and I had been researching different products and brands like crazy online.
We have two different car seats that were gifted to us (one for each car), they’re different brands and we have a stroller that fits one but not the other. Do we need another stroller for the other car seat? Which type of swaddle blankets do we need? Do we also need sleeper sacks? Sleeper sacks are so ugly! Should we get gender neutral stuff so we can use it all again for the next baby? Or gender specific stuff because it’s cuter? Does his really need a bath thermometer? A hairbrush? What if he’s bald? WHY DON’T ALL STROLLERS WORK THE SAME? WHERE ARE THE BRAKES ON THIS ONE? HOW DOES THIS ONE FOLD UP? Why are the tops of bottles actually called nipples and why do we find that so funny?
OH MY GOSH BABIES NEED SO MUCH STUFF.
A few hours later we drug ourselves out of Babies R Us worn out and cranky. So we drove across the street to Krispy Kreme and that cheered us right up!
Then when we got home I started on our amazon registry. So much easier! The only downside is we couldn’t touch and see everything and test it out to make sure it was what we wanted. So all of the big ticket items (stroller, bath, high chair, etc.) are on the Babies R Us registry, and the smaller stuff is on Amazon. Everyone told us to start early because we would keep going back to add new things we find. Boy were they right! I’ve already logged on a couple of times tonight!
Then we started cleaning out the guest room/office to start nursery prep! We got the whole closet cleaned out, boxed up, and taken to the basement, then decided to call it a day and collapsed on the couch to finally relax. Hopefully we’ll get the rest done over the next few weeks and then we can start decorating.
It feels so odd to be getting some of this stuff done! We found out I was pregnant very early on (I was 3 weeks, 5 days along), so for a long time it was “too early” to plan anything. Now we’re actually registering for gear and planning the nursery! I’ve even bought him some clothes and they’re hanging in his closet! Still 19 more weeks before we get to use any of it though.
As for me, I’m pretty uncomfortable at this point. I’ve had some braxton hicks contractions, they don’t really hurt so much as they are uncomfortable. My tummy is getting big enough so that my back hurts when I’m at work all day, but it’s bearable. Luckily, I’m really not feeling sick at all anymore, even my heartburn and headaches have calmed way down, I’m mostly just uncomfortable! I have random aches and pains everywhere, it’s starting to get hard to sit down, bend over, etc. Oh, they joys of human growing. I shouldn’t complain too much though, because our little one is healthy so far and that’s all that matters.
Due to my anterior placenta, I only feel the baby move a few times a day, here and there. I feel him kick sometimes too but it’s very light. It makes it hard not to worry about him when I go a few hours without feeling anything, but I have to reassure myself that it’s normal and just wait it out. Hopefully soon I’ll be begging him to stop kicking me!
Here’s to the nitty gritty and actually prepping for babe to arrive! Over halfway there!
xoxo.