20 Weeks

Holy moly, I'm halfway through this pregnancy! I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I think I'm ready for time to sloooow down a bit. So much to do in the next few months!

First off, here is a picture of my baby bump at 20 weeks, 2 days:

Cute, huh? ; )

I'm bigger at this point than I was with Owen, but that's normal for baby #2. Weight gain is around 5-6 lbs, depending on what time of day I weigh myself. : ) I felt baby kicks earlier this time around, too, which is awesome. With Owen it was around 20 weeks, this time around it was about 18 weeks. They feel stronger this time, too, which I think is also normal because everything has been stretched out once already (which is why you show sooner, too). The kicks can already be felt from the outside, but they are still pretty unpredictable, so no one but me has felt them yet.

On Monday, I had my 20 week ultrasound. I was so excited/nervous/anxious for it! Baby's health is #1 concern, of course, but I was also excited to find out what I've got cooking in there. I was hoping baby would be in a position that we would be able to see the all important "potty shot", and luckily, SHE was in the perfect position. That's right, I'm cooking up a GIRL! I had the feeling early in pregnancy that it was a girl. I don't know why, it's just what my heart felt. Pregnancy has been a little different this time around, so maybe that's why. Owen has been an easy child since conception. This time around I've dealt with:

-Nausea, almost every day of my first trimester
-Dizziness, to the point where I've almost passed out about a dozen times
-Sensitivity to heat from the sun. There have been multiple times that I've had to go lay down inside because the sun was just zapping all my energy and making me feel sick.
-Heightened sense of smell. If I had this with Owen, I didn't notice it. This time around, I definitely notice it, and I don't really like it.

But I guess that's about it. Otherwise, things are going very well. So anyway, at the beginning of pregnancy, I was convinced it was a girl and kept having dreams that it was, but in the last month or so, my dreams switched over and it was a boy every time. So when Monday rolled around, I was very undecided as to what I thought it was. I think deep down I thought it was a boy, but I wanted it to be a girl. I knew Ryan thought it was a boy, so when we went in for the ultrasound and the lady asked if we had a feeling, I said girl because Ryan said boy, and Owen said boy, even though that morning he had said girl. And when she found the right angle, even I could tell by looking at it that I was RIGHT! (Dear Lord, let it be right! I plan on getting rid of all of Owen's old clothes!) When the tech said it looks like a girl, I told Owen that and he argued with the tech! "No, it's a boy baby!" And he later told my mom on the phone that it was a boy. Little stinker. He's coming around, though!

The tech then went about her business, trying to find the right spots to get pictures of everything she needs. The only bummer is that the tech really can't tell you anything concrete about the baby's health. Everything has to be looked at by the radiologist. So we left there knowing (hopefully!) that the baby's a girl, but not knowing if she's actually healthy or not. On the bright side, it has been four days since then, and I haven't gotten any phone calls or messages, so hopefully that is good news. I do have a doctor's appointment on Monday, but I'm hoping that if there was anything wrong, they would let us know ASAP.

We took Owen with us the the ultrasound, which I thought was going to be a good idea, but looking back, I sort of wish we hadn't. I thought he'd be more interested in the baby, but he just wanted to play and eat and be sort of distracting for Ryan. Luckily, the tech and the student that was with her were really nice and didn't mind the little boy making noises and running in circles in the room, but I'm pretty sure Ryan was too distracted to really get to enjoy it (but on the other hand, I don't know how interested he was in the first place. Not because he's not excited or whatever, but it's just different for Dad's until baby is actually here). I also forgot how long it takes. We were in there for around an hour, and I think we were all getting a little restless. It's not very comfortable for me to lie on my back like that for so long.

We didn't get many good pictures because her back was towards my belly button, but here are a few shots from the ultrasound:

This shows her nose, lips, cheek and shoulder. The rest of her face is in shadow. Can you see it? Her nose is straight up from the yellow word "LIPS" and her lips are to the right of that. Remember, she is face down. This was to check for cleft palate.

3D pictures are CREEPY looking! Little "Skeletor" looks even extra creepy because of the angle the tech had to go at to get her profile. There's lots of fluid and stuff kind of distorting the picture a little more than normal. As you can see, it appears as if she's about to suck her thumb : )

That's about it for pictures. There are a few more of the 3D ones, but they are even more creepy and distorted than this one, so they aren't really worth showing.

So now I'm looking forward to Monday's regular doctor appointment to hopefully find out that everything looks A-OK! Wish us luck!