24 Weeks with #2

Size of the Baby: About a foot long and up 4-6 ounces since last week. It’s still hard to believe there’s a baby that big in there, despite the growing evidence (i.e. belly).

Weight gain/loss: I’m up another pound, so we’ll call it 18 total.

Maternity clothes: It’s funny how what I wear can really affect how pregnant I look. I have a couple shirts with ties that go right above my belly. I know they’re designed that way to avoid basically looking like I’m wearing a bag, but wow, they really make me look kind of large.

Sleep: I’ve spent the week trying to recover from an all-around weird night (and awful associated sleep) on Monday. First, Jose and I awoke to random rapid beeping coming from the living room at ~1 a.m. It turned out to be Emma’s rocket alarm clock (which we don’t actually use as a clock), which she had been messing with earlier in the evening and must have somehow inadvertently set the alarm.

Then, we were both woken up again at 1:45 a.m. by emergency alerts going off on our phones due to a tornado warning — and associated instructions to take cover immediately because tornadoes are hard to see at night. There was a small but intense thunderstorm cell just to the south of us (and moving north) that was bright purple and swirling on the radar map — kind of scary. We got Emma out of bed and grabbed her cot from her closet, and she slept in our master closet (the only large-ish place in the house with no windows) for the next 45 minutes while Jose and I nervously watched the weather radar. The storm dissipated before it reached us — thankfully tornado-free — and we went back to bed around 2:30.

As if that weren’t enough, I woke up again at ~5 a.m. with crazy stomach cramps. (I noted with interest that my stomach seems to be higher in my body at the moment due to baby taking over its usual location. Bodies are so weird.) I just laid there and they subsided after about 15 minutes, at which point I finally fell asleep again.

All in all, I think I got about 5.5 hours of sleep that night and I’ve been feeling it ever since.

(It didn’t help that Tuesday night featured 3 short wake-ups to similar emergency alerts due to a flash flood warning that kept getting extended. We’ve had some crazy weather this week.)

Movement: Frequent. Detectable from the outside. Possibly even visible from the outside when she’s particularly feisty.

Food cravings: Nothing in particular this week.

Best moment this week? I gotta be honest — this has not really been a great week. Poor sleep plus gloomy weather plus endless meetings at work have left me feeling pretty grumpy.

What I miss: This week? Sleep. I may have already mentioned that, but I’m tired, so I can’t remember. (Ha.)

What I’m looking forward to: I was thinking about Emma and how she’ll be as a big sister when I remembered that the hospital offers a class for siblings to prepare them for new babies — and since she’s turning 3 in early August, she’s old enough to take it! I plan to sign us up, and hope it will be something she’ll enjoy.

Milestones: We’re making good progress on moving our office upstairs to clear the front bedroom. We moved Jose’s desk up to the bonus room last weekend, and moved mine on Monday night. Those were fairly easy since Jose could lift them by himself and I just had to help guide to avoid hitting walls. But now there are several bookshelves to move, which will be harder since I’m not much help in the lifting-heavy-items department right now. Anybody want to come help us move bookshelves?