24 weeks, 3 days along the road to Hana, Maui!
Size of the Baby: About 13-14 inches long (the size of an eggplant) and 1.5 pounds. I love how quickly she is growing now! Hard to remember that at our first ultrasound in December, she was only the size of a sesame seed.
Weight gain/loss: I can hardly believe it, but I didn’t gain even a pound in Hawaii despite eating PLENTY of tasty food. So overall gain still stands at ~14 pounds. I’m hungry more often, but I also feel full more quickly, so overall I guess I’m eating about the same number of calories that I did before.
Maternity clothes: I stopped by the maternity store at the mall on Friday afternoon before we left on vacation since I had a coupon and they were having a sale. Score! I got 2 pairs of maternity jeans (I only really need one pair, but they were buy one, get one free) and 4 tops (2 for work, 2 casual) for about $100. Not bad at all. So I’m doing pretty well in the clothing department at the moment. The only real issue is that a lot of my normal t-shirts aren’t quite long enough anymore. (And by that I mean that while they’re still long enough to cover my belly, they’re not quite long enough to cover the oh-so-attractive elastic waistband on my pants.)
Sleep: I slept a lot on vacation, but I also woke up a lot. I’m not sure if it’s pregnancy or just that I was in an unfamiliar hotel bed. I officially can’t sleep on my stomach anymore — no matter how I try to arrange myself, it feels too weird. I’m most comfortable on my back, actually. I know you’re not supposed to spend extended periods of time flat on your back, but I figure if I start cutting off circulation then I’d feel that somehow, so I don’t worry about it too much.
Movement: Jose and I might be taking a little TOO much pleasure in harassing our baby. He likes to talk to her and try to wake her up, and I usually resort to poking my belly until she starts reacting. (Sorry, kid.)
One of the funniest moments in the last week was one evening in Hawaii when we were back in our hotel room relaxing. We had just shared a big ol’ Hawaiian shave ice and the syrup was REALLY sweet. Must’ve been the sugar, because baby was going CRAZY in there. At one point, Jose was talking to her and she kicked right where his face was touching my stomach. So basically she kicked him in the face. Ha!
Food cravings: Mmm, shave ice. I want some more. I searched for “shave ice Houston” and found this place in Kemah and League City (in retrospect, I have seen their little shack on 518 before but never stopped) but I can’t tell if they are open. I hope they are!
Best moment this week? Driving to the top of a volcano. Snorkeling in Hawaii and seeing 3 HUGE sea turtles. Driving the scenic road to Hana. Visiting a lavender farm and a goat dairy. Yeah, it was a pretty awesome week. Not awesome: coming back to “real life.”
What I miss: Nothing. You will all be happy to know that I satisfied my goat cheese craving last week after finding out that the Surfing Goat Dairy on Maui does pasteurize their milk. It was delicious and I was only sad that I couldn’t bring any home since we had no way to keep it cold.
What I’m looking forward to: Car shopping this weekend! Yep, we’ll be getting a new vehicle sometime in the next few months to replace Jose’s Hyundai Tiburon. Both of our cars are 8 years old, so this summer was already seeming like a good time to preemptively replace one of them — and on top of that, neither one of us is really interested in trying to wrangle a baby into and out of the back seat of a low, 2-door sports car. We don’t have any super solid ideas of what we want — we’re not even sure whether we want an SUV/crossover or a sedan — so we may end up doing a lot of test driving.
Milestones: Baby’s hair (if she has any) has color! I am VERY curious to know what she’ll look like since Jose has the typical Hispanic brown eyes and black hair, but I’ve got blue/hazel eyes and brown/dirty blond hair. I was born with hair, but Jose was a bald little baby. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
On the negative side, I experienced my first bout of (mild) swelling in my feet and ankles on the flight back from Hawaii, despite wearing my compression leggings again. Since I had no issues on the way over, I’m guessing it was just caused by dehydration and extreme lack of movement on the return leg — we took a red eye, so I slept basically the whole flight, didn’t drink much water, and only got up once. My feet returned to normal a few hours after we got home and have been fine since. I don’t anticipate flying anywhere else before baby arrives, so I’m going to be optimistic and hope that’s the one and only time my feet will swell.
Katie says
The shaved ice place off 518 is open! Fred took the girls there the other day and said it was awesome!