Overall, it’s been a good week. On Monday, we went back to
see the obstetrician, and had a much better visit than last time (not that last
time was horrible - I just felt like I was being scolded about my
"excessive" weight gain). This time, at 18 weeks and a few days of
pregnancy, I'd only gained a pound since my last appointment, which brings my
total weight gain to five pounds.
I felt pretty good about that, and apparently the doctor agreed, since the
first thing she did when she walked in the room was offer her congratulations
and her hand to shake. "That's great. What did you think changed to cause
that?" So I told her what had changed since last time (and these ideas
were pretty much the same ideas I had about why I had gained more
weight than she wanted me to last time) - I'm only sleeping 8 hours a night
instead of 12 or 13, I'm not feeling like puking whenever my stomach gets
anywhere near empty, and I've got a lot more energy in general. My
"diet" secret!
My blood pressure is also pretty low, and she said that my "urine looks
good." Heh. Also, Geoff got to hear the heartbeat this time. It was still
amazing to hear it, but it didn't wow me as much as it did Geoff, I don't
think, since he'd never heard it before. "That's the coolest thing I've
ever heard," he said afterward. "It was so fast!" He smiles a
lot more now when we talk about the baby, and my belly. I think he feels more connected to it since
he’s heard the heartbeat. I did, too.
They also took blood from me downstairs in the hospital's lab. Seven vials of
blood. It's a good thing she didn't warn me in advance that she'd need to fill
seven, or I might have freaked out. As it is, I just said, weakly, while she
was on vial six, "that looks like a lot of blood," and she smiled and
nodded.
My dad sent me some money to spend on maternity clothes, and it only took half
of the money to pay for my Old Navy order. My maternity clothes from Old Navy
arrived this week, and I'm feeling a lot better about my clothing situation.
Everything that I ordered fits! And I even like all of it! This
weekend I'm going to visit my mom, and after I told her how much trouble I had
finding maternity clothes, she has apparently scoured Muncie, looking for sources of clothes for
me. We're going to check out a consignment store there in town, and maybe make
a trip to Indianapolis,
too.
In my new maternity clothes, and with my expanding belly, I've noticed a lot more glances at my midsection. Yesterday I wore a knit turtleneck, and at least ten or fifteen people here at work must have glanced, surreptitiously (but obviously, to me), at my belly. It was strange but kind of nice - the more obvious the pregnancy is to other people, the more real it feels to me, too.
Yesterday I made an appointment to have an ultrasound - we'll be going in on Halloween, when I will be exactly 22 weeks pregnant. We're both pretty excited about finding out whether it's a girl or a boy!
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