All is good at 22 ½ weeks pregnant! When we left for the holidays I was 20 weeks pregnant and just starting to show. So I packed a couple of maternity pants and a few maternity tops, but mostly just roomier normal things. And then I exploded. I think my abs just totally gave up. I went from looking a little chunky to very, very pregnant in what seemed like days!! My weight gain has been strong and steady. 22 ½ weeks down and 22 ½ lbs up. Yikes! I’ve kept up a lower-pace workout regimen (I ran basically every other day the past two weeks), but I am voraciously hungry. (And my husband is a total enabler—“if you’re hungry, it’s because your body wants you to eat!”) I shudder to think how big I would be if I were not working out or if my diet were any less healthy. (And it hasn’t exactly been super healthy the last few weeks. I confess I have been hitting the treats hard over the holidays.) But enough complaining about weight gain. This is a GOOD problem to have! And I lost it all before and I’ll be able to lose it again. (It only took me… five years….)
The big news is that we finally told the tiny man he’s going to be a big brother. (It was going to be impossible to put off any longer—as I mentioned, I have gotten HUGE recently.) As expected, he was NOT super excited at first. It went something like this:
Total silence, looking back and forth between us. [Shock]
When he finally spoke, “no you’re not.” [Denial]
Then, “I don’t want a baby brother.” [Pain]
Then, “I thought you weren’t having another baby.” [Anger]
Then, “Can we give him to another family?” [Bargaining]
Then, near tears. [Depression]
Then we just let him think about it. And (thank goodness!) he warmed up to it. When we dropped him off at school, “this is the best day of my life” [Acceptance/hope]
Yes, he cycled through the textbook 7 stages of grief. In about an hour. Poor kiddo!! We expected he would cycle through them again a few times, but so far his viewpoint has been 100% positive ever since. He’s proudly told anyone who will listen that he’s going to be a big brother, and when I went to his class to help with their holiday party, he brought all of his friends over to me to see my at-that-point-still-just-a-little-bump tummy, telling them his baby brother was the size of a potato and was swimming around in amniotic fluid. (Yes, I’m probably going to get some angry emails from other kindergarten parents.) So, other than a very tense 10-15 minutes or so, it went as well as I could have possibly hoped!
What else? Oh, this is one busy baby. As I think I previously reported, I started feeling bubbles at 15 weeks, my hubby was feeling kicks on the outside of my tummy by 18 weeks, and I was visibly seeing big kicks on the outside of my stomach by 19 weeks. (I’ve read that second-time moms feel movement sooner, and thin women (which I WAS when I got pregnant—notice the past tense) tend to feel kicks sooner. And position of baby/placenta and general activity of baby all play a part in when/how often mom feels movement. So my experience is earlier than normal, and I think earlier than with my first.) Since then I have been feeling this baby log roll every day, multiple times a day. He’s nuts! I remember feeling/seeing kicks with my first little guy (and one time with my anencephaly pregnancy), but based on my memory this baby is MUCH busier than his older brother. I mean it’s like a 24/7 dance party in there. I actually got a little worried at one point and looked to see if there was any literature suggesting there can be TOO much movement. What I found did not concern me, but does suggest a few things (and take these with a grain of salt)—active babies in utero might turn out to:
· cry more
· have a higher score on a brain maturation test
· have better control of body movements after birth
· be more unadaptable and unpredictable
· be less easily frustrated at 1 year
· if a boy, be more active as a toddler
· be more independent at 2 years
· be more likely to interact with toys or strangers at the age of 2.
I told my husband all of this and he said, “uh oh. He’s going to be EXACTLY like his older brother.” All I could think was, “no, this baby is MORE active!!”
I have to confess, I am REALLY starting to believe this is going to work. (I mean, at this point, if something happens, it’s not a miscarriage, it’s a stillbirth. This is a real baby!) It’s pretty scary. And amazing. Really, really amazing.
my husband is an enabler too, haha! "Baby must be hungry, eat more!" I suppose it's nicer than the alternative. That's interesting about the active babies study. It sounds like overall it's a positive thing!
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