What's funny is that I feel absolutely ENORMOUS, but I don't really see much change in the pics. I guess I've just been big for a while now! We had our anatomy scan last week and that went really well. Andrew is doing great and was measuring a few days ahead of schedule. All of his organs, etc looked good too, so that was quite a relief. My blood pressure was great and I hadn't gained any weight on their scale. All great news! I found out that I have an anterior placenta, which basically means that the placenta attached at the front of my uterus and is blocking me from feeling much movement at all. I started feeling flutters from Andrew early on (around 11 weeks!), but the past few weeks I barely feel any movement at all. It makes me really sad because that's the part of pregnancy that I love the most! The tech told me that he is quite an active baby - she could barely get all of her measurements because he was moving like crazy! She also said that maybe it's a good thing that I don't feel all of his moving because I would just be kicked like crazy all day :) Still, I'm really looking forward to feeling bigger movements hopefully in the next few weeks. If anything, just for the reassurance that all is well!!
I've been struggling the last few weeks. This pregnancy has been physically easy on me, but more difficult emotionally. Abby is going through a very whiny, clingy phase and it just drains me. We've transitioned to one nap, and by naptime I am just completely and utterly spent. I catch up on house stuff and then usually end up napping myself because I'm so exhausted. I've also just been feeling really lonely lately...even a bit disconnected from Dave. It's not a great feeling. I can't pinpoint why I even feel this way, I just do. Pregnancy is so isolating. Everything about this time around just feels so different. Not that I'm not happy to be pregnant, because I truly am. I think it just partially stems from the fact that we tried for so long to get pregnant the first time and I wanted to be pregnant SO badly. This pregnancy was really quite a surprise to us both...and that same initial excitement just isn't there. I'm mostly terrified of what life alone all day with two kids will be like, when some days it feels like I'm barely surviving with just one!! It sounds terrible to say, but it's true. And yet, I know that I'll survive and we'll be just fine. Abby really is such a good girl, I'm just struggling these days with her new found attitude and defiance. Hopefully she'll go back at least a little bit to her sunny self soon. I know that I need to put myself out there more and really foster my female friendships. That just feels hard right now, for some reason. Even playdates with other mom friends are mostly spent chasing our own kids around, plus most of the other stay at home moms I know already have two kids and have their hands very full. I keep reminding myself (daily, it seems, lately) that this stage of life doesn't last forever. It's really such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Abby won't always need me or want me as much, and then I'll miss her baby days. I know all this. Tonight I would just love nothing more than to sit out on my back patio with my sister and a bottle of wine and chat and gossip until the sun is long gone. Or go rollerblading with my friend Jessica and talk about everything and nothing like we used to in the old days. Of course, none of that will be happening tonight! I know that I need to take care of myself, physically and mentally. I keep going back and forth about whether I would benefit from signing up for a prenatal yoga class or something like that. We'll see. In the meantime, it's time to stop feeling down and keep my chin up. I want to enjoy this summer and the last few months I have alone with my baby girl during the day.
In other news, I'm nearly finished with Andrew's nursery! As soon as we found out we were having a boy, I got right to work. I just knew that I wanted to get it done before I got any bigger or more uncomfortable. So, we consolidated closets and got rid of a lot of stuff. Then Dave's desk and bookcase went into the guest bedroom, and my desk and sewing stuff went down into the basement. I repainted the whole room and closet, and caulked and painted all of the trim. It was quite a job! After that, we went to Ikea and got all the furniture, plus pulled the changing table and glider from Abby's room. I found some blackout curtains and sewed some cute window valences and then found a ton of decorations to go with some stuff we already had. The theme is a sports nursery and I really love how it turned out!! I just have to make a mobile with some craft supplies I found and finish sewing his quilt and then it will be completely done and ready for baby! We still need to get a few things, like a sound machine for his room and another camera for the video monitor system, but I'm trying to keep things pretty sparse this time around. I'm hoping to borrow lots of clothes from friends of ours who have an older boy as well. The less we have to buy, the better! Here are a few pictures of the nursery (poor quality pics from my iPhone but they will have to do because editing pics on my computer right now is a total nightmare!):
I think that's all for now. I'll have to do a very belated 16 month post for Abigail next!
