a bony 28 weeks

Okay, so those of you have ever been pregnant are going to be able to understand this perfectly and for those of you have not, just try to follow the logic and see if it makes any sense to you. You know how measuring the time you are pregnant is one of the most confusing and unexplainable thing ever? They say you are pregnant for 9 months, but they also say it is 40 weeks long. Yet they measure each "month" by 4 weeks, which (according to my rudimentary math calculations) would equal 10 months! So where did that last month come from? I usually count by weeks, but when people ask me "well how many months along is that?" then they have me painted in a corner... I really don't know how to convert between the two! Add to that the old saying that you share half your brain with your baby so the mom is not as quick on her feet as normal, and that makes keeping track of nonsense numbers becomes almost an impossible feat. So, I have 83 days to go, which (according to the actual calendar) is 2 whole months, 3 weeks and 2 days. Converted though, the 83 days would be 11 weeks and 6 days (which is 2 months, three weeks, SIX days). And that means that I have already gone through 197 days of being pregnant, or 28 weeks, which according to the pregnancy 4 week-month makes me a solid 7 months along with only 2 more months to go (because you are only pregnant for 9 months, right?) Yet, January is still three months away - so where did that third month come from?! Do you see my point? And which way do you go by? I have been confused by this with each pregnancy and this one is no exception. Whoever planned this out was just toying with the emotions of pregnant women and was trying to make us feel even more awkward than we already feel having our bodies misshapen with a watermelon protruding from our abdomen. Or is it just me?

All this mathematical rambling is to explain why last week's post was called "At the end of 26 weeks" and this week's post is "A bony 28 weeks". The pregnancy math enigma has struck again. Somewhere along the line, I lost a week. In the good way though, if there is one. I would really rather find out I was actually father ahead than I thought than to find out that I had longer than expected! And that is where I find myself this week. I am actually 28 weeks along, and not the logistical 27 weeks that should have followed last weeks 26 week overview! Yippee for me, I guess. It really didn't change a whole lot, but it is nice to think I am father along than I thought last week :-)

And with my changing day falling on Halloween, I had Teagan take a picture of me in my Halloween costume - very appropriate don't you think? Now Hoppy can say that his first Halloween was in-utero! I saw an add for this shirt on-line, but it was $25. I don't think I have ever paid that much for a single piece of clothing in my entire life and I wasn't about to start just for a really cute Halloween costume. So I headed over to the DI, bought a black maternity shirt for $3 and took it home and painted it myself. And I think it came out pretty cute, if I do say so myself! I even put glow-in-the-dark paint around the edges of the bones so we both glowed in the dark! And the kids and I (yes, all of us!) painted our nails with glow-in-the-dark nail polish so we could have fun fingers as well. (the polish was pretty clear, so it didn't show up on the boys until it was night time, so they didn't look girly or anything!) Scott said I was going as an "Expecting Mummy", but Owen said I wasn't, that I was just a "Bony Mommy."

Finally, on to Hoppy's update - I'll make it brief since the rest has been so long! If he were measuring at 28 weeks (I still doubt he is though, the kid is HUGE!) he would be 16" long and 2 1/2 pounds. A little tiny brain scan would show that his brain waves slip into REM sleep, so he now has cute little baby dreams! His brain has been nice and smooth looking up until this past week, but he has started growing a lot of neurons, and his little brain is starting to get the normal grooves and waves that big brains have. His eyes now have color to them, although the real color won't be decide until he is about 9 months old, and he now has eye lashes on his little tiny eye lids. His bone marrow is producing large amounts of red blood for him now and his adrenal glands are kicked up into high gear to stimulate my hormones to start up milk production - yet another reason to feel a bit bovinish, wouldn't you say? And although I have added weight on, he is measuring out to be only at 2-3% body fat right now, but given his genetics and trend, I am sure the actual number will be leagues away from that when he comes!

I only blacked out once this week, and had 2 brown outs that I was able to turn around before they went black, so that was a happy thought! Although my black out was while I was in the car, so I had to pull over into a gas station and "rest" for a bit. I had the kids listening to their music while I took a break and because of that I have grounded myself like a wayward teenager and am going to seriously limit my travelling for a while! I also started getting charlie horses - which are so not cool!- while I sleep. I have been eating bananas, which are supposed to give you the potassium you need to prevent them, but yet they still came. I feel like my lungs have decreased by about two-thirds and I huff and puff whenever I roll over or move too much - adding to the "fat" feeling! I have slept on the couch most of this week to support my back and to prevent me from rolling over onto my back. I was waking up laying flat on my back with my legs numb and feeling like a turtle on it's shell - unable to roll myself over without grabbing onto the dresser to pull myself up. It is supposedly bad to sleep on your back now because the baby can lie on your nerves and/or cut off the blood supply to either your legs or to the uterus itself - so I am trying to avoid that :-)

Other than that I feel pretty great. I love being pregnant, and it is so easy to chalk any bad feeling up to "just being pregnant." And you can deal with pretty much anything for the relatively short time you are pregnant. Although a nine-year old boy had me in tears this Friday when he was rude and belligerent to me and told me to shut up after I sent him out of a game we were playing because he slapped Owen in the face. I had to go outside to pull myself together and remind myself that he was just a kid and I shouldn't cry over words ("sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me" except when my baby has been hurt and my other baby has kicked the hormone production into high gear).

So life around here is still pretty great. Hoppy still has no name picked out for him and Owen is getting excited thinking we are keeping that as his permanent name. Next Friday I go in for another appointment, this one includes the (yucky, disgusting, most terrible drink ever) glucose screening, so we can hopefully see if the blackouts are caused by drops in my sugar level or not. The kids are still doing school as usual, Scott starts morning shifts tommorow (4am-noon) which means that we will actually ahve Daddy home for dinner and FHE and scripture study each night... I don't know what we are going to do with ourselves! In the 10 years we've been married, he has only been able to be there for about 5 of our Family Home Evenings! It is going to be great! Ofcourse it does mean that bed time moves up almost an hour, but to have him home every night is well worth it!