I'd really like to just Amazon Prime my baby now, please.

There are very few things in life that we have to actually wait for. If I wanted to take a spur-of-the-moment trip for the weekend (and had the finances to do so) I could buy a plane ticket and be airborne within a couple hours. Between Hulu and Netflix, I can watch a plethora of television and movies "on-demand." With a wi-fi connection and computer (or even just a smartphone on its own), I can go from wondering something to finding the answer in mere minutes. I can purchase almost anything I'd want and have it within two days with Amazon Prime.

So this whole notion of waiting 9 months for our baby is a little . . . uncomfortable.

Even when I tell myself, "You're halfway through!" or "Only 20 more weeks!" I still think, "Seriously? 20 more weeks? We still have months left to go?"

Even when I remember that we're creating a human being from very little raw materials (that 16 weeks ago the baby was the size of a poppyseed and now it's the size of a banana, etc), it still feels like a terribly slow process. For realsies? The baby isn't even a pound yet? After 18 weeks of gestation? What's it been doing all this time? There's really nothing else I can do to grow this baby faster?

I spend too much time looking ahead to what will happen in the coming weeks. There's a vlogger that I like who had her baby in the summer of 2011. I enjoy watching all her videos and had thought that I would watch her weekly vlogs in accordance with my own weeks (watching her 13 weeks pregnant video when I was 13 weeks pregnant, etc). Of course, since her baby was born over a year ago, I know how the story "turns out" but it's still fun. But . . . it's pretty hard to stick to just one at a time. I find myself saying, "Well, I'm 20 weeks pregnant now, but in her vlog she was talking about what happened during the timeframe from week 19-week 20, so if I want a preview of what I can expect in this coming week, I should really go ahead and watch her 21 weeks vlog . . ." And it just snowballs from there. Suddenly, each week I'm watching three weeks ahead, and at this rate I'm going to be watching her 6-month postpartum update by the end of my pregnancy.

I feel like it's the second trimester doldrums around here. After the anatomy scan on Friday, there won't be many big developments for awhile. But what's tough is knowing that the waiting is going to get so much harder! I'm already having trouble sleeping and feeling sore all the time. And I feel huge. Being uncomfortable as I get bigger is only going to make me more impatient for Bambin@ to arrive.

Sigh.

I'd even pay for the one-day shipping, if I could.

Halfway to Bambin@!

Today I am 20 weeks pregnant! 20 down and 20 to go. I'm not positive about how I feel about this milestone.

A 20 week baby bump (plus a steak dinner). 

Reasons I feel like this isn't such an accomplishment:

1. Because pregnancy is measured from the last menstrual period, I don't feel like I am "halfway" through my pregnancy quite yet. In another week, I will be halfway through gestation (since conception didn't occur until about two weeks into the "pregnancy.") And since the positive pregnancy test didn't come until I was 4 weeks pregnant, I don't feel like I'll really be halfway through until I'm 22 weeks or so. Is that crazy? I guess I just feel like I'm somehow "cheating" by counting the weeks when I didn't even know I was pregnant -- or the weeks before Bambin@ had even been conceived. I guess it's a little silly, since the baby could come late or early . . . there's nothing to actually say that any of these milestones are really the halfway mark. 
2. Ever since about 17 weeks, I've already been thinking of myself as "about 20 weeks along." So to actually make it to 20 weeks feels like it should have happened awhile ago. 
3. There hasn't been any real change in baby movement for the last three weeks or so. I'm still just feeling the little taps and flutters here and there. I feel like, by now, I should really be feeling some more pronounced movement. :-( 

Reasons I feel like this is a really big deal:

1.  I'm halfway through my pregnancy! Because both of our parents have "countdown" plaques, it's kind of exciting to know that, from this point forward, the numbers for the weeks remaining will all be lower than the numbers we've already hit as "pregnancy milestones." So for example, last week I was 19 weeks along and 21 weeks to go and next week I will be 21 weeks along and have 19 weeks to go. That's pretty spiffy. 
2. I'm starting to feel more comfortable with having the belly. When I think of myself as being in the middle of the pregnancy, rather than early pregnancy, I feel more okay with the fact that I have a protruding bump. 
3. Our mid-pregnancy ultrasound is next week! 

It's hard not to be impatient, though. Especially since we're here in Florida visiting with Amanda, who is so much closer to the end than I am.

Mandi looking adorably pregnant.

Speaking of which, we're having oodles of fun down here, and this is perhaps the best way to celebrate 20 weeks. Just hanging out, lounging at the beach . . .

Ben and Mandi enjoying the ocean.

. . .  and putting together baby gear! While Mandi was at work yesterday, we put together her swing and bouncer, which are adorable. I can't stop patting the soft fabrics.

Our grand accomplishments!

We also got to visit her birth center and a baby consignment sale where we both picked up some good finds. Can't wait to meet both our babies!

Rough day?

Yesterday was a bit tough on us. 

It started on Tuesday evening actually. I was talking on the phone with my sister when I started coughing. And coughing led to throwing up. Needless to say, I had to hang up on her and make a break for the bathroom. 

It wasn't a pleasant experience and when I looked in the mirror, I saw that I had lots of little red dots around my eyes and on my cheeks. This was not unusual. Burst blood vessels with vomiting has been an unfortunate side effect of the morning sickness. 

But the next morning was a bit more unusual. While I was getting ready for parent-teacher conferences, putting on my cute maternity dress and smiling in the mirror, I saw that I had a dark red splotch across the sclera of my eye. Apparently I'd suffered from a subconjunctival hemorrhage (a broken blood vessel in the eye) as well as the red spots on my face. I was going to be spending the entire day making eye contact with parents and students during face-to-face meetings . . . and I looked like I belonged in the haunted house that had been constructed in my classroom the previous week.

So then I showed the eye to Ben and he started researching what (if anything) I needed to do. 

Ben has what's called recurrent vasovagal syncope, which causes him to faint when confronted with certain types of stressful situations (like feeling pain, seeing someone in pain, reading about medical phenomena . . . you may have some idea of where I'm going with this, and yes, we've already decided that we will be hiring a doula to help us through labor). Usually he recovers in about 15 seconds, but it's always a little scary to see someone lose consciousness like that. 

When Ben fainted yesterday, I didn't realize right away what was happening. I thought he was just a little dizzy. And unresponsive. And then I ran over to see if he was okay, started shaking his arm, tapping at his face, calling his name. 

To make a long (it felt like an eternity) story short, he didn't recover in the usual amount of time and so I started to fear that he was having trouble breathing, or was having a seizure, or . . . I don't know. In a few more seconds, I was on the phone with 911 -- and I was a mess. 

I had always assumed that I would be awesome in a crisis. That I would be the one who clearly and concisely yelled to the accident victim, "Can you hear me?" and then called to a passerby, "You call 911, I will check vitals and begin first aid!" Or, better yet, who put 911 on my speakerphone while I simultaneously delivered top-notch first aid and communicated effectively with the emergency dispatcher. 

In real life, I was simultaneously trying to revive Ben by propping up his head (apparently the exact opposite of what I should be doing) and asking him if he could hear me while the emergency dispatcher was trying to ask me for my address. In response to her question (which I had not heard at all over my own voice), I began to tell her what was happening with updates every three seconds to let her know what new noises he was making or colors he was changing to. 

I learned an important lesson about myself. I am an absolute basketcase when someone I love is in trouble. 

As you may have gathered from the tone of this post, my husband did recover. In fact, he recovered while I was still in my minute-long conversation with the dispatcher. And despite the fact that the second thing he said after, "I'm fine, I just fainted," was "I can't see!" (which was not at all reassuring to me) within a few more moments he was almost back to his normal self and his vision was restored. 

I was pretty shaken up for the rest of the day. And for the rest of that day I started most of my conferences with a jittery explanation of why I looked like I was bleeding from the eye and also why I was forgetting the names of most of the people around me. 

Luckily, everyone is sympathetic to a pregnant lady. 

Slow Ride

One of my current goals, on par with "keep the house clean" and "eat your vegetables" is to spend time on us as a couple.  I give the other two examples because it's something I always know is a priority and it does happen most of the time, but it often slips when anything big is going on.

As we talk about the fact that we're starting a family, and that we're the process of aquiring these new identities as family members, more specifically as parents, I really do want to keep the spirit of what made our time together as "just us."

Last night, I met up with Arden after her shift ended, and we checked out the new Egypt exhibit at the Science Museum.  It was not as significant as the big touring exhibits that have come through, but it was a lot of fun and had some good info.  We wandered around, chatting together, then splitting up, and so on.

Not once did I wonder about where Bambin@ was.

As it was the kind of evening that would be very difficult to have post-partum, I think it was rather perfect.