25 Weeks

Life has been really interesting this past week. A lot of stress at moments and a lot of really good things. The awesome part is that the wedding is shaping up nicely and we're full steam ahead on things! Seriously though, we have our reasons for doing it this way, but I don't think I could plan an wedding AND be pregnant again. It's just not cool to do both at the same time. I'll make it through but I think with how fast everything happened it's not quite as fun as it could have been to have a whole year or so to plan everything out and then have Chloe come later. But that's life. Crap happens.

I do REALLY miss my mom during all of this. I needed to look up my ancestors for part of the wedding and I realized that I needed to update her record on Ancestry.com. :-(
I try to keep telling myself that there was a reason (whatever that reason may be) that she left how and when she did, but I can't help but feel like it really just isn't fair. I miss her hugs and her realness and her willingness to go anywhere and her ability to alway be awake whenever I needed to call her and all kinds of things about her. Mourning SUCKS.

I have vows to finish. *Eep*

Chloe seems to be doing well despite the crazy person she's inside. Been kicking away like she wants out. It's not time yet though, lol. It's going to be interesting when she's out...I wonder if she's still going to be this active or if she will have worked it out of her system for a while. My appetite kicked up a gear too. I killed two slices at Zucca this week and I got all the way through a pick 2 salad and baked potato from Wendy's without taking a break one night. I just hope its all going to the baby and I can still fit my dress next week!

Switched the navel ring color on ya...because I lost
the bottom ball, lol

This week for Chloe:

• 13.5 inches and more than 1.5 pounds...getting bigger
• Her nostrils are starting to open so she can practice breathing
• Blood vessels are forming under her skin and filling with blood, which will start to color her translucent skin
• Her wrinkly skin is smoothing out as she plumps up
• She's growing more hair (awesome...heartburn time...)

Well, it's pretty safe to say that next week's update will be late...I'll be running around getting ready to be a married lady! 

24 Weeks aka 6 MONTHS!

I am entering into my sixth month of pregnancy. I wont officially hit the third trimester for another couple of weeks (probably at the exact moment I say "I Do" lol) because, again, somebody LIED when they claimed this lasted 9 months. It's 40 weeks. The doesn't come close to computing equally. Anyway, I've been in better spirits this week than the past few. It really hits me how much little stuff reminds me of mom though, especially stuff on tv and things people joke about around me without thinking.

Still getting bigger and bigger. I know it's going to kick up a few notches soon too, which is kind of scary to me. I already feel like a little cow. I know I don't look it, but that doesn't stop me from feeling it. Went to the doctor on Wednesday and heard her heartbeat again, all nice and strong and healthy. Next month's checkup is the test to see if I have gestational diabetes. Even though I have been given advice about how to pass that test, I'm still a little anxious about it....I REALLY don't want to have to change my diet for that. My blood pressure was on the low end of normal, so that's good I suppose.

I think I figured out why my sources (What to Expect and Babycenter) are so different when it come to lengths. One of them measures total and the other from crown to rump. Makes sense. I think I'll stick with the total length one.

This week for Chloe:

• She's almost a foot long and 1.5 pounds.
• She's gaining about 6 ounces a week...fattening up nicely (and making me eat like a mad person!)
• Lungs are steadily developing and making cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help her air sacs inflate when she pops out
• Sounds are being taken in (and I really hope I can get cool fetal speakers soon!)

I've been monitoring my belly button ring to make sure it hasn't been migrating or rejecting. I think it's okay so far, but I'm preparing for the possibility that I may have to go ahead and take it out :-(. I need to look for retainers for a lot of my other piercings too so they wont yell at me for having metal in my body at the hospital. I think most of them will be fine without the bar/ring there, but I'd rather not have to get help putting a bunch of things back in if  I don't have to.

Two weeks until I have a hubby!

23 Weeks

5.75 months! It's really hard to believe that I'm almost 6 months pregnant. The time has flown by incredibly fast. I guess work and the wedding are keeping me pretty busy though, so no wonder. I would think that maybe I'd be bored after the wedding, but we have to move at the end of June and then I'll just be planning for/thinking about Chloe all the time.

I spent some time with a good friend and mother last weekend and she asked me if I'd felt Chloe's hiccups yet. I was fairly certain that I hadn't, or at least I wasn't paying enough attention to discern a hiccup from a kick, but the other day I felt the STRONG! It was exciting to feel something new going on, but like every other change I'm going through, a little strange. I've realized that no matter how many manuals you read about pregnancy, not a single one of them tells you how YOU are going to feel about everything. I know it would be hard for something to tell you how you'd feel, so it makes sense, it's just really weird. There are people who are depressed and people who are just happy the whole time...but I haven't seen anybody who was just genuinely freaked the hell out every time something new happened. I know these people exist and that I'm not the only one. Oh well, if I AM the only one, HERE I AM! YOU'RE NOT ALONE (future freaked out nerdy girls)!

I'm becoming a bit more of a hand magnet, but people have still been courteous and will ask me first. The first person I don't want touching me who does so without asking better hope I don't have my knife with me that day...

Getting bigger and bigger and mo' bigger...

Other women who have been pregnant just look at me like "Really? You're almost 6 months? NOOOOooooo... I was a WHALE by then!!" So even though I personally feel like a small moon or cow people are making me feel good about it. What can I say...#skinnygirlproblems. I can tell there's more weight there though...my legs have been KILLING me at times. A cramp in my right calf woke me up last week and took half the week to go away! A friend recommended I have a banana a day, so I've been working on that. Good thing I like bananas.

This week for Chloe:

• She's now 8-11+ inches long and slightly over a pound. 
• I should be able to hear her heartbeat through a standard stethoscope now
• Her bones and blood vessels and such are still visible through her skin, but she's about to start fattening up, which will change that
• Loud sounds are becoming familiar to her (maybe I need to vacuum more so she knows it means chill out once she's here...)

I'll be a wife in three weeks!

22 Weeks

It's getting warmer (well, kinda) and I'm getting bigger...which means walking anywhere outside kinda sucks. It also doesn't help that I get everything for the wedding shipped to my job because UPS is SO unreliable about delivering things to my apartment. So I have a heavy bag I take to work everyday that has everything I might possibly need to do anything for the wedding or myself, lunch, etc...and every now and then a box or two. The good thing is I can park my car near the door to load/unload anything, so I use that to my advantage sometimes.

So far I don't have a lot of belly touching, which is great. It's also probably because the bump is there, but with every other physical attribute my nerd powers give me the ability to suppress it. I don't look 5.5 months pregnant, with clothes on at least. It's awesome. Not that I'm hiding it at all...I just have an overbearing need to be comfortable over fashionable.

Getting bigger...can't fit some of my jeans anymore

This week for Chloe (which, my sources of information are starting not to match up anymore, so if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Every baby grows a little differently anyway):

• She weighs about a pound and is 8-11 inches long, so small baby doll size.
• Her sense of touch is developing, so she's in there trying to figure out what's going on by touching it
• Her eyelids are still fused shut, but she can perceive light
• Her eyebrows and lid are well formed
• There's more hair on her head, but it has no pigment

Still loots of kicking and punching. I read somewhere that babies have to ability to literally kick the food out of your stomach. I am NOT looking forward to that!

21 Weeks

I swear I get bigger like every Thursday now. Overnight, just BAM, more baby is there, lol.

We officially decided she will be named Chloe Giovanni. :-)

This one is late because I was going through some things. Mom's birthday was Saturday, and I took Thursday and Friday off of work so I could process all of it. I really needed it too...I was starting to get really distracted at work and everything was making mad or frustrated or sad. I keep thinking maybe I should let the doctor know that my mood has been going downhill, but I've been waiting to see if it was just because of mom's birthday or if that's just the way it was going to be. It also doesn't help that I keep seeing commercials with numbers to call if you were on antidepressants while pregnant and your baby ended up with a birth defect. Those are just a tad scary, even though I know that sometimes you really do need the medicine for help. I also know there's a bunch of stuff I can do other than take medicine, like talk to people, exercise, listen to music, do crafts, write, read, play games, and/or go to church. So I did crafts. It worked well enough to distract me and I got some good stuff done.

A guy leered at me in the store yesterday and said something I didn't understand in Spanish...I couldn't tell ih he was being nice or mean about me being pregnant, but he was addressing the fact that I was. That's okay, I WILL be learning so I can teach Chloe...or at least know what she's saying after she's been hanging around the neighborhood kids if we stay in our general area of town. That guy would've been surprised had I said something back to him, lol.

No wonder the creepy guy said something...I'm showing!

This week for Chloe:

• She's about 11 ounces and as long as a carrot
• The MOVING and kicking and punching...I swear she knows things she isn't supposed to yet...like tae kwon do
• She's got eyebrows and lids
• She's tasting the stuff I consume now (which might explain the kicking, lol)

Wedding planning! Exhausting!