25 Weeks... Hello 3rd Trimester, Goodbye Stomach Bug!

Well the 24th week ended up being tougher than expected thanks to some strange flu-like symptoms including fevers, chills, vomiting and sore throats that plagued the Anderson household. It spared no one but Hucklebear, which basically means it took Michael and I out for a few days. That said, we're much much better now and moving on into week 25.

Week 25, baby will celebrate my birthday with me (in my belly), her first Halloween (in my belly), attend her first San Antonio Builder Guide Builder Rally (in my belly with all the candy that I'll plan to eat there), and begin painting her room (from my belly). Fortunately for her, I took two days off this week to allow for all this quality time!

This is also the week of the much anticipated glucose test. I'm certainly hoping that I don't find out I have gestational diabetes as we approach the holidays!!!

The belly at 25 weeks.

Me exasperated because I was trying to get the pants situated to take the belly picture and the camera died. Then the OTHER camera died. Either way, this is the belly at 25 weeks.

24 Weeks and Counting...Sewing, Showing & Growing

This past week I went to San Antonio for work and stayed through the weekend with mom to work on baby bedding. We made incredible progress over the weekend sewing virtually non-stop and have nearly completed our project. I will be attempting to finish the bedding up myself and I'm hoping this attempt is successful since I also broke down and bought a pattern for baby clothes on Sunday. Whoops! haha

Mom cutting out pieces on the bed - there was fabric everywhere for this project!

Me adjusting my shirt to prepare for MORE cutting. The belly really looks large here!

At 24 weeks, I regularly incite comments like "Op! Looks like someone has an additional passenger." as I worked my way through the security line at the airport and "You shouldn't be lifting that. Can I carry that for you?" And the belly continues to grow! It is noticeably harder now for me to bend over and pick things up, it's harder to roll over in bed at night and I am hungry all the time, but I can't eat nearly as much in one sitting because of all the space that baby now consumes.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated by the growth that is to come in the remaining weeks. I'm overwhelmed when I think about our baby being here in 112 days or less (that's right people, I'm still not hoping she'll be past-due but I do really appreciate all of you that tell me about your babies that came 2 and 3 weeks late) and excited about all of the learning that we have to do between now and then AND after she arrives.

I'm particularly amazed to think of her in there this week because my twin cousins Heather and Holly were born somewhere between 24 and 25 weeks and I feel like they give me a glimpse of what Baby Anderson must look like in there. They were so tiny with red skin that you couldn't rub because it hurt them, no visible nipples at all (which is why I found it fascinating that these are on Baby Anderson's development list for this month!), their eyes were still sealed shut and admittedly, they were still very unprepared to be in this world. However as unbelievably tiny as they were, they were in many other ways more prepared than you would expect for being born just over half way through a pregnancy. They were living breathing babies and with help from the NICU they and are now happy 1-year olds! So when I think about our daughter being that much of a baby hanging out under this swell of belly.... well, that is pretty amazing.

I look admittedly tired in this picture, but I wanted to hurry and take it early into week 24 for accurate documentation. The belly at 24 weeks.

23 Weeks and Counting...Hi-YAH!

Having never had to write out the noise that you would make when doing a karate chop, I'm not sure if "hi-YAH!" is the proper spelling, but it's my best attempt.

At 23 weeks on the dot, Michael felt the baby move. He's also seen the baby move my belly! So much of the time it seems that she is active when we're not together (e.g. when I'm at work, or happen to be up later than him) but Sunday night after Michael arrived home from his Vegas trip and we'd eaten dinner with Murray, Helen, Charlie and Cathy at Pappasitos, I sat on our bed and waited. Michael leaned on the edge of the bed waiting and watching and then he saw it - little bumps from tiny punches and kicks on the surface of my belly.

The growth spurt as promised a few weeks ago from our doctor has begun. I'm sure the pictures will only get more entertaining from here, but I share these because they're part of this crazy journey that is our first baby and because I know all who read this blog love us (big belly and all). Oh, and some of you may have made special request to see the belly button! haha

The baby is continuing to beef up for 23 weeks and as I travel to San Antonio for 5 nights this week (Wed. - Sun.) I am sure that she will grow even more and surprise Michael when I return home. Truthfully, it doesn't even feel like my body when I look at these pictures below because it's sort of surreal that this whole process is taking place separate and apart from anything that I am consciously doing for this baby. She grows on and the belly stretches on and for the most part I am still feeling pretty good!

23 Weeks from the Side

23 Weeks from the Front (plus one cute Hucklebear!)

The Original Baby: Huck has learned to jump up.

Huck, our original and first baby, has always been a jumper on people's legs. He just wishes he could get up to your face and give you a hug and a kiss... But there are other places where Huck cannot jump. He cannot jump into your lap if you're sitting on a chair. He cannot jump up on the fireplace hearth and warm himself by the fire. If you put him on the bed, he'll stand at the edge afraid to jump down unless you say the word "treat". People will try and coax him up onto the couch and it's like he doesn't even know what they are doing when they pat that space next to where they're sitting.

This, it turns out, has been a blessing, because Huck never gets on people's furniture when they dog-sit, he can't jump on the furniture and bother company when they come over invited or not, and because we rarely put him in our bed (except for infrequent occasion that he's just had a bath and we want to wrestle with him as he burrows under the covers) he never sits besided the bed begging to be picked up.That said....

There was an incident a couple of weeks ago where Huck accidentally bounced his ball onto the love seat. He cried at the ball from the ground and when I turned around for a moment I found that he'd jumped on the love seat and was laying down chewing his ball. I turned around for one second longer to put my computer on the coffee table so I could go over and make him get down and to my surprise he was walking along the built-ins BEHIND the love seat!! Since then we hadn't seen him get on the furniture, but in the last two days or so when his ball has gotten stuck up in Michael's recliner, on the couch and last night on the COFFEE TABLE (what?!) Huck has figured out that he CAN jump up there and get the ball himself. Now it's sort of become the game to GET the ball on stuff so that he can have the fun of jumping up to get it.

Yes, last night we found the dog that used to cry at his ball from the ground, standing in the recliner and crying at this ball on the floor! It seems that we have a little monster on our hands just in time for Halloween. Oh Hucklebear you are quite the stinker!

22 Weeks and Counting...Thumping Pumkins

Well, Wednesday is better than nothing for my weekly update! I am starting this post late at night on Tuesday actually (though I doubt it will be finished for days) and Michael has already gone to bed. I'm up working, but I just couldn't resist starting this post now because....

Last Wednesday, midway through week 21, we had our monthly checkup. Dr. Thurston listened to the heartbeat and measured my belly and assured us everything was completely normal even though I wasn't feeling the baby yet. Apparently the way the placenta is positioned acts as a big pillow in front of the baby, making it harder for me to feel her movements, blah, blah, pregnancy talk. Anyway, I think it was Thursday afternoon at work (the very next day!), when I was sitting at my desk and thought I felt her move... then again! ... and again! I didn't have this feeling of flutters, bubbles, or these other tickle-y sounding feelings that other people described. Instead, this felt like a thumping on the inside of a pumpkin and that pumpkin is my belly! Truthfully, I told Michael that it was like thumping a melon from the inside out... but I mean, it's October now - so, pumpkin it is!

As I sit on the couch she was moving around like a mad woman in there and I could even feel her when I put my hand on my stomach. And so, I ran and woke Michael up, put his hand on my belly and waited.... nothing,.... stillness... of course! Back on the couch she's up to her previous antics! SIGH. Maybe it will be another week or so for daddy.

The week by week developments now are more general because her main task is to gain weight. All of our resources compiled guess/estimate the following things for this week: she is sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day (JEALOUS!), she can now hear noise outside the womb, she is sprouting nipples (more on why this is fascinating later), her face is fully formed, she's growing tooth buds beneath her gums, and she is about the size of a papaya.

She's still got thin wrinkly, hairy skin - until her body pads up with fat - and the irises in her eyes still lack pigment. Now don't get me wrong, this is our precious daughter in there, who I am sure is just lovely... but it does sound like this week she's still got a pretty good look going for Halloween! haha

This week marks the first week that people have asked me when our baby was due and if I had an announcement. I am now CLEARLY pregnant to the world - and so much so that these people are brave enough to ask. Michael is still "just ready for her to get here" and is loving watching the growing belly thinking about his daughter-to-come. I'm not joking when I tell you that if you think daddies with babies are sweet, it will melt your heart to watch your husband preparing to become one. I definitely shed a tear at Target the other day three pages into a picture book with little quotes called "Why Daughters Need Their Dads".

Until we blog again....

22 Weeks (note the awesome maternity jeans that cover up a large portion of the belly and do a strange wrinkle thing in the back still because my belly isn't big enough to pull them tight)