Pregnancy Ticker

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Week 26: Baby Got Back ... Pains

This weekend my cousin Mark took a few days off from Air Force pilot school to be married to his college sweetheart, Lexi in San Antonio. The wedding was beautiful and we got to see all of my Mom’s side of the family. Sunday, my Aunts hosted a baby shower for me and my Dad’s family drove in from the Kerrville area to join us. The shower was sooooo cute and fun and I now know that as of yesterday, my belly is 10 toilet paper squares round! The food was delicious: homemade chicken salad croissants, pimento sandwiches cut into heart shapes, fruit salad, pasta salad and my all time favorite: Cake Balls made by our cake lady, Annette, brought all the way from Houston. You haven’t lived until you’ve had one of Annette’s cake balls….maybe we should have done the toilet paper belly measuring game before I had three of them.

Speaking of bellies, It seems like the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy I wished for a baby bump so I could look more pregnant than pudgy. It seems like I started showing right at 20 weeks and this belly has taken off! Now I’m like “whoa Nellie! Slowww down!” I still have 14 weeks to go and the bump is growing at an amazingly rapid pace. It’s become increasingly harder to bend over and buckle the straps of my favorite summer wedge espadrilles (yes, I’m still wearing heels and am determined to right up until I deliver) and my back is starting to really complain about the extra weight it’s supporting. I’ve read that the ligaments and joints around the area where your tailbone meets your hips start to loosen so your hips can expand and it can be painful. Umm If I could relay a message to my hips, I would let them know that they really don’t need to be ANY wider than they already are. And I can definitely tell when Rob moves and hits my Sciatic nerve--that’s happened a couple of times and pain shoots down one or both of my legs. It’s really neat. This pregnancy really has been so much fun though. I loooove feeling him move inside me, there’s just nothing like it. Carlysle can feel him now too, which is so amazing for him, it makes everything that much more real (not like it wasn’t real from the minute the pee test screen showed a little blue cross, but you know what I mean). Besides the minor backaches, I really feel exactly like I did before I got pregnant, just with a bigger belly : )

Weekly Womb Workings:
Air sacks are developing in Rob’s lungs, which means it just might be possible for him to take a breath at the end of this week. The air sacks (technically called alveoli) will continue to grow for the next nine years. The membrane that keeps the alveoli separate from the blood vessels is now thin enough to allow for that oxygen–carbon dioxide exchange we call breathing. Other highlights this week:

The retina completes the development of its normal layers this week but he still can’t see anything because his eyes are sealed shut and it's really dark in there, but his eyes are now fully developed.

Brainwaves for the auditory and visual systems are detectable in his brain this week. That means his brain is registering things like sound and light. I’ll be sure to hit the classical music sessions extra hard from now on : )

I’m breaking out the sparkling grape juice—Rob has now completed two-thirds of his stay in Hotel Womb de Callie! Although I love being pregnant, I think I will love hanging out with my little meatball more. He weighs about 2 pounds and is 14 inches long head-to-heel, or about the length of a burp cloth. (Otherwise known as my primary wardrobe accessory for the next several months … good thing my Mom made me some really cute ones!)

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