Week 21 – Yay for body pillows
June 4, 2006
In my last post I whined a bit about how uncomfortable I had been feeling. I had been trying to alleviate some of my discomfort with some pillows that I already owned. I finally broke down and purchased a body pillow, which surprisingly helped quite a bit. My round ligaments are still giving me a bit of trouble, but not usually until I get home at night, and I find that on days where I’ve been more active I’m obviously more sore/tired. Zach continues to be quite useful in the helping me out department when we’re at home. He never complains about getting me drinks or food or helping with the laundry (as long as helping with the laundry means switching it from the washer to the dryer). My allergies have been acting up a bit recently, but I’m avoiding taking any medicine for now, in the hopes that I’ll recover from the worst of it soon.
The baby continues to kick, and I’m feeling the movement pretty regularly. The only problem is that the kicking is not in any predictable pattern, so I haven’t been able to get anyone else (specifically Zach) to feel any movement. Every time I put his hand on my stomach in a place I think the baby might kick, the kid stops moving for a while, and Zach eventually gives up. I’m not sure how to solve this problem – everyone asks if Zach has been able to feel anything yet, but I’m not sure how to get Zach to feel anything, since there is no way to predict where to feel movement… If anyone has any suggestions, I’m happy to try them!
At my doctor appointment this month they started to ask me if I had felt the baby move yet. I wanted to remind both the doctor and nurse who asked me that the baby did have a significant layer of fat to kick through on my stomach, so I’m not really expecting to feel the kid for the next week or two. 16 weeks is generally the earliest one might feel movement. Although I’m not feeling anything yet, the baby is definitely moving. When the nurse put the dopplar on my stomach to listen to the heartbeat, the kid kept moving away from her. She had to chase the kid all around my stomach trying to find a spot where the baby stayed still long enough for us to hear the heartbeat. Eventually she caught up with the baby, and the heartbeat is somewhere in the 140′s, which is apparently still good. We’ve got the sonogram coming up in a few weeks, so hopefully I’ll be able to post a picture of that soon. I’m a bit worried that if the baby won’t cooperate for the dopplar, he or she also won’t cooperate with the sonogram, which could be rather frustrating for us parents who would like to know where it is a he or a she. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the baby won’t have its legs crossed! 