18 Weeks

One week of therapy. That's all it took for me to pick up a cold from my lovely little students. I've been obsessive about handwashing....the first thing everyone has to do before starting speech therapy is wash their hands, and I've been wiping down the table with Clorox wipes about 10 times a day. Still no match for the mighty kid germs, apparently. Being pregnant with a cold is no fun, because I really can't take any of the good medicine that would make me feel better. It hasn't knocked me out completely, but I'm really looking forward to breathing through my nose again.

I haven't mentioned whether or not I've been feeling the baby move, and that's because I'm still not 100% sure. I think I've been feeling it for the last few weeks. It's a similar feeling to what I felt around 12 weeks, but feels a little bit more like concentrated jabs and twinges, rather than the continuous rolling type of sensation I felt back then. I guess the closest I can come to describing the feeling is that it's almost like a very light muscle spasm a couple inches below my belly button. So maybe I'm feeling my little sweet potato sized baby....I don't think I'll be completely convinced until I can feel it from the outside.

This is a very big week, because we go on Tuesday for our BIG ultrasound, when we should hopefully find out if we're having a boy or a girl. I am so excited to see the little one again....it has been 7 weeks since our last ultrasound and so much growing and changing has happened since then. It's funny, my belly still looks pretty small....I always pictured myself waddling in to the office with a huge belly by the time we got to find out the gender. All my belly growth is still really low, which makes sense because I don't think the uterus reaches belly button height until around week 20. But to me, the result is that I look like I'm just getting more of a spare tire around the middle, rather than a true baby bump.


Since I want to have full disclosure when it comes to my bump progress, you should know that for this week's and last week's pictures, I pulled my yoga pants down below the bump, which just lets it stick out there in all its bump glory. When I'm wearing pants that come up higher on my belly, it gets kind of compressed and I look much less pregnant. I know before long, nothing is going to hide this baby! Two more weeks and he or she will be the size of a cantaloupe...I doubt there will be any hiding that!

Stay tuned for (hopefully) the big gender announcement on Tuesday!!