22 Weeks

22 Weeks in just two minutes...and WOW, is this baby strong! I'm just sitting here, watching Food Network (as I do for 75% of my shows) and baby is kicking me so hard it feels like my organs are squishing and takes my breath away. I can't believe he's so strong already! He's a good baby, where he only really moves a lot when I'm, you know, trying to get a bit of sleep, but right now he's wired and awake at midnight and going nuts. My entire belly is just quivering, some parts keep falling really low while others suddenly go up and down in a series of punches in a row. He's not just punching and kicking though, he's quite the gymnast as he's rolling around his entire body. His little feet keep squirming as low as possible, it feels like he's almost digging into my hip joints as low as possible. Any lower and he'd be in my leg! lol

I mentioned to Bill about the "jumping baby". Katie, confused as I sometimes call her my baby still, started giggling and jumping! Silly little toddler! When I mentioned a little later that baby was kicking me so much, she just looked at me confused like she was saying "what are you talking about, I'm not kicking you!" Poor kid, she understands so much and yet not enough!

This pregnancy is definitely different than with Katie. This time, my hair is YUCKY. I had the most amazing hair of my life with Katie. It was thick and beautiful and shiny, the very typical pregnancy hair. This time, my hair is stringy, it looks greasy just hours after I wash it, no matter what I use to wash it, and the hair not on my head grows so darn quickly. My complexion isn't the same either. With Katie, it was completely clear. Even if I ate all the chocolate in the house and more, I wouldn't get a single blemish. This time? If I have one square of chocolate, I break out all over. The old wives tales always said that girls steal your beauty, but not with me! I looked great with Katie, and look terrible with this little boy! I feel like I'm carrying nicer this time though, instead of chubby hips and a thick waist, it's mostly all up front. I seemed to have evened out with growth, I'm not too much bigger than what I was with Katie anymore at this time, and while I have gained more, I weigh less than last time.

I also discovered something today...this is my second/third time facing down labor and delivery and I find that even now, I'm still stupid and naive! But this time, I have a part of me that remembers enough to laugh at me. I know that labor, especially MY labors, are unbearably painful. So painful that it's just a haze, a hellish passage where I don't even know where I am or who I am or why I'm even in this much pain, but I'm pretty sure it's never ending and that it's going to kill me. I KNOW this is how it went. With Katie, the three hours of bone breaking pushing was almost more than I could handle. Even with Elizabeth, who I needed to still dilate for, have an 11 hour labor and push her out, it was hours and hours of hellish pain that I couldn't climb on top of. Each contraction ripped through me. And yet...I watch A Baby Story, and I watch these other women survive it. I cry as the baby is finally birthed and the mommy gets to hold their new bundle of love. And I think to myself "hey, I can do that. It's not THAT bad, plenty of women do it. And look what they get afterwards! I can totally do that. It'll be easier this time, maybe..." That's the cue for that little inside voice that remembers all of the above to start laughing, and even so, be it human nature to continue making more tiny humans or just really hopeful thinking, starts gearing up for the labor and thinking "I can do that." I'm honestly shocked that I feel that way, as until I started watching other women, I did nothing but dread labor. Labor means that even if everything goes 100% perfect, I'm still going to have weeks, probably two months or so, of a broken bone that's struggling to heal and I get NO meds for. That's on top of healing from a giant baby coming out of me and all the normal stuff happening, and possibly have my body do what it did last time and overheal myself so that I need parts of me to be burned and sizzled away (imagine the ring of fire internally which continues for hours! I cried when I had it done because it felt exactly that same way but for so much longer.)

I got my hospital bag out and started sorting through what I already have (currently - about 6 peri bottles, a little diaper sack filled with pads, and a moldable freezer bag, all things I have left over from last time) and starting to plan what I need this time. I'm thinking of my plan B (Plan A is a water birth at the birthing center) and how to make everything easier. We're moving our living room from the attic to the first floor so I can manage easier in the weeks after having baby (yep, we're uprooting 50% of our rooms, from the living room to the library, dining room, hobby room and nursery).

Oh wow, I've been writing for a while! I'm now officially 22 weeks...only 2 more weeks to go until this baby is Viable!!