Trying something new...

I have been e-mailing my mom for the past three months with updates on how my pregnancy has been going, and today it dawned on me, that this could be an opportunity for a nice blog. Plus, that way more of my family can be updated week-to-week and can do on their own time. (I am still trying to convince some family members to join the bandwagon and visit the blogging world from time to time!)

Anyways, here is this week's up-date, along with the weekly picture that I send to her. My updates aren't always this satiricle, but after writing two 8-page essays this week for my class, my brain is working a little in the left field and this was just what came!

So, hopefully this will be a weekly occurance from now on. Although I actually flip weeks on Saturdays, so I usually try to get her up-date out earlier in the week, but some weeks are later than others due to life happening and whatnot!

Here for your reading enjoyment: Week 23 Up-Date

"Okay Mom, so it is technically 23 and a half, but here it is!

As for an update, the smooth flat valley that once was my stomach, has now had serious geographical changes and is now an ever growing mountain. The view I once had of my knees, ankles, and toes is now obstructed by "Hoppy Hill" in my mid-section. Now all I can see are the ten little toes that I know will soon disappear to the nowhere land that my knees and ankles now live in. And I know that even they will go through their own transformations as my water table continues to retain more and more water and the extra water settles in my feet. But for now that has yet to happen permanently and only occurs on some nights, so my ten little piggies usually look like their normal little selves unless I have spent the day not drinking enough. (And with three kids at home all the time, sometimes you can never drink enough!)

My current tenant has taken up the fun habit of playing "Poke" with my former tenants. That is where one or the other will start by poking their opponent and then their opponent will poke back in retaliation. The game ends when I begin to feel like a human pinata or a bruised piece of produce and I cancel the game, call it a tie, and declare myself the winner of that round.

This current tentant is weighing in at a whopping pound and a half and is around 8' when he is curled in a ball. Which doesn't explain why I feel like I have swallowed a beach ball, or the 6 pounds over pre-pregnancy weight where I am hanging out, but it is good to know that he is over a pound. It was almost painful to look like this and think that he only weighed 6 oz! Now at least he is taking up more the weight and space than before! And even though I am only 6 pounds higher than I was 23 weeks ago, that doesn't take into account the 13 pounds I lost on the first part of this weight-gain, roller coaster ride... so his one pound weight gain and my 19 pound weight gain don't exactly even each other out! Add to that the fact that I weighed this much with my other tenents when I was much further along, and it can explain my apprehension at jumping for joy at only having gained "6 pounds." (Plus, the fact that if I really did jump for joy I am pretty sure I would wet my pants, and that is just not really an avenue I want to go down!)


My current parasitic tenant is a heavy drinker now, but then we already knew that because we caught him in the act during the ultrasound. He just glugged away like no one was watching ~ the ultrasound tech thought it was funny for a guy his age to already be drinking and assured us that his early drinking habit was just to help prepare his little digestive tract for later use and was no cause for alarm.

His inner ear bones are hardened now and he can hear sounds - which is very apparent whenever his older playmates run by suddenly screaming and laughing and I am the one who gets kicked for it! Whenever a sudden noise wakes him or startles him it is me who gets punished for it and I get a sharp kick to the belly button or backbone. It is fun sometimes to feel the reassurance that he is still doing well, but then (usually after I have had my fill of Poke and am already feeling thoroughly prodded and bruised) there are also times that it can be a nuisance.

Another recent development is his tendency to get the hiccups, although this may be due to his drinking habit. This is a common occurrence during the day (and night, and day, and night) and the opposing Poke players love to feel him hiccup. Unfortunately for me though, this usually starts another round of Poke, which, as I have already alluded to, isn't my favorite sport right now! (It has been a full day of Poke, so I may just be a little sensitive right now; it really is a fun game that I do enjoy playing as well)

On a sadder note, I had a disturbing day yesterday and today as I participated in a pregnancy rite of passage, of sorts. Yesterday I rotated all of my "normal" clothes out of my closet, not to be seen for quite a while, and I rotated in the smallest of my pregnancy clothes, in the hopes that I won't have to move to the next size up by the end of this trip. In a last ditch effort to hang on to normal, non-elastic panelled pants, I wore the biggest of my normal pants today. It was a cute little outfit, and I was pretty happy about this final jaunt with pants full of pockets, zippers, and buttons. But, at a bathroom break, one of the two buttons at the top popped while I was trying to get them off - I think it was at this point that I actually heard my pants pleading for mercy from me to take them off and let them be with their fellow cute pants in the plastic tote. So, today ended with me being resigned to the non-pocketed, dark-colored, elastic panelling up to your rib cage pants for the next 17 weeks, never again to torture a pair of cute pants in the same way I did today!

So that is my update for this week. There are 114 more days of me being a duplex... that is 16.3 weeks, 3.8 months, or 1 trimester and 3 weeks. I am not really counting down or anything, it is just interesting to keep track of!

Tune in next week, same time (maybe a little earlier if all goes well), and same place!
~Kristina~"