For a while I was having a hard time facing 2 things: maternity clothes and the baby registry. They felt like such overwhelmingly daunting tasks and I wasn't able to face them by myself. Once before, I walked into Motherhood maternity, looked around and walked right back out. Jonathan and I set up the registry but I skipped over many sections that I found to be too much at the time. I just kept thinking "Maternity clothes? Do I *really* need them right now? Can't I just use my current wardrobe? The beband still works with my jeans... right? And what's up with the entire wall of bottles at babies r us? How many diaper bags can there be in the world?"
I think it was an unfortunate coincidence that I started to need more clothes and think about the registry during a very low energy period. Getting out of the house to do any chores seemed exhausting, both mentally and physically. And these seemingly non-important tasks were things that, in my mind, stuff that only *really* pregnant women did. Apparently the nausea, fatigue and positive pregnancy test months previously hadn't stuck in my thick skull yet. As a result, I dreaded completing these tasks and procrastinated them.
I bemoaned my inability to face clothes and the registry to some girls at work, who jumped with excitement and volunteered to help me. So we set a date. Preparing myself for battle, I rested all morning, packed an extra snack and Jonathan sent me off with a half caf mocha to babies r us. We got through about 85% of what I thought I wanted/needed to look at, which was amazing. It was much more fun and not nearly as scary as I originally thought.
The next weekend (after our anatomy scan) my mom came down for the weekend which was immensely helpful for many reasons. She brought down tons of baby clothes (that I used to wear!), blankets and gifts from friends. Non baby related, she also brought tons of delicious bread and tea. Saturday morning, we went out for breakfast, enjoyed the amazingly mild weather and then re-approached the registry, wrapping up a lot of the loose ends. We bought a few items (adorable swaddle blankets and a previously unseen changing clutch!) before stopping by target to pick up Downton Abbey on bluray. The rest of the night was spent consuming cookies and watching the show.
Sunday, Jonathan went up to Irvine for chinese new year buffet so mam and I tackled maternity clothes. A few hours later I came out with a significantly more comfortable and fashionable wardrobe. There was definitely at least one time when I was getting overwhelmed in the middle but I was talked off the ledge, and I'm definitely much happier for the purchases that I got, which will last well into nursing and post baby as well. We also had to pick up season 2 of Downton Abbey for that evening's activities.
I think the whole weekend of non-stop baby focus really helped kick my mind into the right gear: you're pregnant, accept it. I was amazed at how some of the few small changes really contributed to my overall well being. I was very sad when mam left, and the pregnancy hormones didn't help the parting one little bit.
I'm starting to really show, the belly is getting nice and round. Which consequently means that there's less room for my stomach. I need to start eating smaller meals! The past 2 weeks I've decided that I'm going to contribute the rolling movements officially to baby. So along with that, baby has been moving a lot this week. I think baby likes nutella and doesn't like it when I sit with my legs pretzeled up and against me. Sometimes I could swear that my belly looks asymmetrical in shape, like the left side sticks out more, then sometimes the right side will.
I realized I stopped reading or talking to baby for a long time. I heard that they can hear some songs in utero and recognize them after birth, so one day I started singing a particular song in the shower. I realized that rather than just singing in the shower, I was singing *to* baby, the way mothers do, and I immediately stopped. I'm not sure why. I think there is still a bit of disbelief that I am going to be a mother, that we are going to have a baby that is ours. This is a new identity, and I don't know how I fit it in yet.
Other new developments, I'm definitely having to pee more (and again with the constant thirst), my hair is feeling ridiculously thick, and I need to scale way back on the amount of food I can eat. Major plus though? I've been getting the urge to run this week. I'm going to go for a s l o w practice run this weekend, just to see how it feels. I've been walking about 4 miles every day to keep my exercise up at some level, but it is different than going for a nice jog when the sun is out :)
Well, this post is long enough!
-kameran and bp
Week 21 pictures:
Week 22 pictures:
No comments:
Post a Comment