28 Weeks

Happy Birthday to Jose, my awesome husband and daddy-to-be!

For his birthday, I’m making him a little girl. Hope he likes her!

Along the road to Hana, Hawaii

At 28 weeks, I am officially in the third trimester. Wow! I can’t believe we will be meeting our baby girl in less than 3 months. The first trimester seemed to go really slowly because I was anxious to get to 12 weeks and see a healthy little baby on the ultrasound. But the second trimester just flew by.

Size of the Baby: The internet sites have started to diverge a bit on how big she is at this point, but the consensus seems to be 15-16 inches long and about 2.5 pounds. As if to confirm those numbers, I had a doctor’s appointment and ultrasound last Thursday, and they measured baby girl at 2 lbs 5 oz — right at 50th percentile.

Weight gain/loss: “The 28th week is the beginning of the last trimester. You will be gaining weight quite rapidly from now until childbirth.” Well, that is awesome. At least the weight of the baby herself is starting to be a more significant contributor!

The doctor showed a gain of 19 pounds when they weighed me at my appointment last week, and the weight was 2 pounds heavier than my scale at home read that morning which is what it’s been the whole time. So 19 pounds by their count, and 17 by mine.

Maternity clothes: Yep, wearing them. Strangers are commenting on the impending baby on a regular basis now, including the woman behind the deli counter at HEB, who said it looked like a boy. When we told her it was a girl, which has now been confirmed by two separate ultrasounds, she looked extremely skeptical and said “hmm, still looks like a boy.” It made me laugh.

Sleep: I can’t complain much. I’m sleeping on my side and switch back and forth a couple times during the night. Sometimes I wake up and my shoulder or arm has fallen asleep, but that’s the only real annoyance.

Movement: Alllll the time. She is an active little girl. Most of the time it’s cool, except when I’m in a meeting and get paranoid that the people around me will notice my weird twitching belly! My favorite is when she reacts to Jose — if he starts talking to her, she’ll start wiggling around within a minute or so almost every time.

Food cravings: For the past several days I have been hungry ALL. THE. TIME. Is this how it goes from now on? I am seriously going to gain 50 pounds in the last 12 weeks if I am this hungry all the time. Ugh. But in positive food-related news, I passed my gestational diabetes test with flying colors. No GD for me! Hooray!

Best moment this week? The ultrasound last Thursday! That’s the last one I expect to get. While we were looking at her face, we saw her open her mouth just a little which was soooo cool. We also saw her roll on her side in response to me rolling onto my side. Way to mirror your mom, little girl.

What I miss: Sleeping on my stomach. And not having to pee every hour.

What I’m looking forward to: Buying stuff — seriously! Up to this point, the only things we’ve bought are a couple onesies and a few books. Our Babies R Us trip over the weekend made everything start to seem a lot more real and with only 9-12 weeks to go, August will be here before we know it. While I know it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we don’t have everything done before she arrives, there’s definitely a minimum set of baby gear that needs to be acquired.

Milestones: Now that I’m in the third trimester, I go to the doctor every 2 weeks. Fun times. Other results from my two doctor’s appointments last week, on top of the ultrasound and the negative on gestational diabetes, include the fact that I’m not anemic, my blood pressure was great at 108/62, baby is currently head down, and all of her limbs and organs looked great on the ultrasound. (We even saw her brain. Neato.)