Week 24: Baby’s the size of a grapefruit!
We’re at the six month mark! And me and Sirena have kept ourselves mighty busy this week. I’m in my second-to-last week of student teaching at my first placement (6th grade Ancient World History) and I’ve been in charge of the class just about every day–it’s been a lot of fun albeit pretty stressful with having to plan instruction for three weeks total (we’re on Ancient India). Also teaching related: this past weekend I went to an amazing conference on “Critical Thinking for Teachers” hosted by The Foundation for Critical Thinking and I learned so, so much. I was so appreciative of the opportunity given me by the university I work for to participate in this conference on their dime and not only do I now have a ton of good stuff to use in the classroom, I also have a great starting point to work on my own thinking since I (along with many others) have a ton of work to do! 🙂
At the conference I had another “first” in this pregnancy–I had a random stranger ask me if I was expecting. This is the first time that someone I didn’t know noticed the bulging belly and thought it was appropriate to ask if I was pregnant (definitely a touchy subject for some because I know that some women have been asked if they’re expecting when they’re not…oy!). And over the weekend we had another “first”–Sirena got her first piece of mail! It was a book mailed to her directly and the funny thing is, we’re not really sure who it’s from! So if it was from you, come out of the dark so we can thank you properly. 🙂
She still kicks me all day long (I don’t think I will ever get tired of feeling her kick me!) and I got a good video of her squirming around in there. I know some people find pregnant bellies weird (I’m kind of one of those) but now that it’s happening to me I’m so intrigued by it all that I can’t help but share the quirkiness with family/friends here.
Here’s a link to a 20-second YouTube video of our little grapefruit alien making herself comfortable. There are two good shakes of the belly on this video.
Belly shots!
She seems to have gone through a pretty big growth spurt this week as the belly is making some major progress! When I’m walking around I definitely feel more weight in the front and sometimes have to walk holding the bottom part of my stomach because it seems so heavy. I can only imagine what it will feel like at 39 weeks like our good friend Kim (and Frank) are at right now!!
Lola ran up to me as I was taking these shots on a self-timer and dropped her ball at my feet then sat down and looked up at me. That girl pretends to not be photogenic but, as each week’s post proves, she sure is a ham!
Other pregnancy updates
- Total weight gained: Not sure! Of course the bathroom scale we’ve had since we got married 5.5 years ago decided to go kaput this week so I’m not sure how much we’re weighing at this week. Until next week…
- Updates on the baby’s room: It’s still slowly coming along. Remember the leak we had in the second bedroom a few weeks ago from the big rains we had? Yeah, well, it’s still not fixed. The maintenance guy has returned this week and hopefully (fingers crossed!) it will all be taken care of by this weekend. We did make a big baby purchase a few weeks ago, though, that I can’t wait to unveil when we can actually put it in the baby room: a beautiful dresser/changing table! And hopefully we’ll have a crib by the end of the weekend as well (thank goodness for craigslist!)
- The (dis)comforts of pregnancy: The past few weeks I’ve been woken up every other night with some pretty massive leg cramps–not only the typical charlie horse but simultaneously I get a cramp in my calf, in my shin, and in my toes…! I also seem to still have an actual belly button but each week it gets more and more shallow. Me and Kevin still can’t imagine what it’s going to be like without an actual belly button when the belly gets big enough! Here’s hoping I don’t get an outie. :-/