Weeks 19 & 20

Woohoo! We've hit the halfway mark! We are 20 weeks away from meeting our girl, and my goodness, SO very excited about it.

Weeks 19 & 20 have been easy breezy. I would say 90% of the time now, I enjoy being pregnant. My exhaustion has leveled off. While I'm still tired at the end of the day, I don't feel completely exhausted and drained like I was before. I'm only waking up ONCE a night to pee instead of 2-3 thanks to my uterus moving up in my belly some (I know this will most likely be short lived, but I'm enjoying it for now). I have a definite bump at this point, and people are constantly congratulating me and asking me questions about the baby. I've had a few people touch my belly randomly, which was something I was unsure about if it would bother me or not, and it actually hasn't at all. Because of the rapid belly growth, I had some pretty bad pains a couple nights in a row. I don't know how to describe them other than it felt like my muscles were being shredded by a sharp knife. Pleasant sounding, right?  I would get up and try to walk and stretch but nothing could quite take the edge off. Thankfully, that only lasted 2 days and now I only get uncomfortable if I sit or lay in one position too long. I'm pretty much exclusively wearing my maternity clothes. My other pants can still be worn with the belly band (most genius invention ever, by the way), but they aren't super comfortable. These days, comfort is of utmost importance to me, so I choose to wear the same pants 2-3 times a week. My residents (who lack any type of filter whatsoever) have yet to make any remarks, so I'm still in the clear. 

Andrew and I began looking at things that we want to register for last weekend. It was fun to look, but also slightly overwhelming. BabiesRus is insane. I just cannot believe there are enough baby products to fill a huge wear house of a store completely. I'm trying to keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of parents before us have successfully raised a baby without all that crap, and not to let the process overwhelm me. We did pick out our infant seat, stroller, and pack-n-play...so fun! 

Baby girl is now about the length of a banana, and around 11 ounces. She is swallowing the amniotic fluid frequently these days and because her taste buds are developed, she can apparently taste flavors of what I am eating. How crazy is that?! I'm feeling her kick much harder than ever before now. It's real slugs instead of fluttering. She tends to move around a lot during meals and when I lay down at night to go to sleep. Her kicks can be clearly felt from outside of my belly, but she has yet to show off for Daddy (or anyone else for that matter). I will tell Andrew "hurry! she's kicking hard!!" and the second he puts his hand on my belly, she decides to call it quits. I sure hope she cooperates and kicks her dad in the hand soon, because I'm pretty sure he's starting to think I'm making it up. Last night I could feel that she was laying completely on the right side of my belly. I pushed on her to try and nudge her over a little and I felt her turn around. It was the craziest thing I have ever felt!! I still can't help but smile and giggle when I feel her move and kick me...it's just so amazing. 

In other news, baby girl has a name! A first one at least. We are still debating over a few middle names, but I'm in love with the name we have chosen for her and I already feel like it fits her perfectly. It's so fun to be calling her by her name now. We will share once we make a final decision on her middle name. It is special and beautiful and I'm just so happy about it. 

It seems as though I have resigned to taking weekly belly pictures on my phone now. I at least got Andrew to take one for me this week (so I could send my sweet in-laws a picture of the cute outfits they got me for my birthday). I'm hoping to continue taking pictures with an actual camera, but like my last post said, life has just been a little hectic, and we haven't made time for it. 

19 weeks: 

20 weeks: 

That concludes weeks 19 & 20 update! See you tomorrow for week 21. Except, probably not because lets be honest, I'm pretty terrible at updating these on time.