The third midwife appointment was yesterday. I’m not gaining weight yet, but the baby is definitely growing. I’m not sure what my expanding abdomen is filled with if it’s not adding pounds… air? Sometimes it does feel like a blown up balloon. Baby’s heart rate is 150, which according to the old wives tale, means its a girl. We’ll see about that… in exactly 3.5 weeks!

We booked our anatomy scan. The earliest we could get it is 19 weeks 4 days. I don’t know how I will be able to think about anything else until then! We will find out the sex, but I’m not sure yet if I will be posting it on here. We don’t want anyone in our real lives to know, because we just can’t trust some of them to not give us extremely gender-specific items. And I strongly dislike both the colours pink and blue. Especially in baby-pastel form. That said, I also dislike pastel yellow, so this may be a problem I can’t avoid. I wish more baby stuff came in rich, deep colours and funky patterns, like royal purple geometrics and teal chevron. If anyone has seen this style of baby apparel, please let me know where I can get some.

I have been doing a lot of staring at the bump lately, imagining what little bug looks like in there. The bump is starting to round out more (from its initial stages as a low hanging paunch), and with the roundness and firmness I am losing my view of the underside of the bump. I just realized that I have let my personal grooming fall to the wayside because I couldn’t see it! Not being able to see your nether regions while standing is pretty cool from a pregnancy development standpoint, but I should really put more effort into grooming, at least until the third trimester when I just don’t give a fuck how I look anymore (that is going to be SO liberating). For now I am motivated by my wife’s impending return from her Italy business trip. She arrives tomorrow, and I am going all Stepford Wife on her. I will not be a hairy beast, I will shower and actually wash my hair, and I will actually stock food in the fridge. She won’t know what hit her…

Purchases/Hand-me-downs

• Two clearance maternity shirts for me (last of the clearance winter stock at Old Navy)
• I made my first baby clothing purchase (my wife has bought some, but not me!) – a onesie on clearance for $5.
• Got the free sample from Honest Diapers. It came with 7 newborn Diapers (we are cloth diapering, but I don’t want to buy newborn cloth diaper covers) and a package of wipes.

Bodily Experiences This Week

• Headaches
• Uterine cramping.

Baby This Week

• Size of an avocado at 5 inches long from crown to rump and weighing 3-5oz.
• has eyebrows and eyelashes
• growing toenails
• heart is pumping 25 quarts of blood daily
• And the milestone I have been most excited about, little bug can hear us!