Weekly Update

What's going on? We found an apartment! Not only did we find an apartment, we found an apartment that will be great for us in terms of location, space, and affordability! The lease is signed and will be faxed tomorrow. This is a HUGE weight off our shoulders. Other than that, it's pretty much life as usual.

How pregnant are you? 18 weeks. I am beginning to really understand why people say that second tri is slooooooow. If you're a visual learner, I am this pregnant:

This is what seven pounds of weight gain looks like when it's because you're growing a Bugbear. It still sort of looks like a spare tire to me. But at least it's not all over fluff.

Relate this pregnancy to objects we tend to eat or other daily stuff. Bugbear is "the size of a small electric shaver," a sweet potato, or a deli pickle. My ute is the size of a cantaloupe, which explains my bulging belly. If you're a numbers person, s/he is between 5 and 5.5 inches long, and weighs between 5.25 and 6.5oz.

Tell me some random stuff about the Bugbear. While Bugbear's rapid growth is technically slowing down, s/he is still growing. This week, s/he's putting on more fat, developing myelin in his/her little brain, and practicing movement, yawning, and hiccuping. S/he is also beginning to store material in his/her colon for the first poopy diaper. I call 'not it' on changing that one! His/her bones are ossified enough that the little skeleton would be visible via ultrasound, and wee little ears are completely in place and sticking out from his/her head.

What are you doing with/for Bugbear that's new?  Michael and I are trying to take walks together in addition to my own workout schedule, so that's some motion that it supposedly likes. And Michael is reading to Bugbear at night as well, which is amazingly adorable. Sometimes the nighttime stories are cute; sometimes he bores us both to sleep with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

Tell me how you feel physically. Right now, tired. My alarm woke me from a dream this morning, so I've had that odd grogginess going on for a while. Overall, not bad. Other than a relatively benign migraine last night, I've gone three days without one, and that's very nice. And I'm finding ways to heave myself into a standing position without locking up my left leg or getting those shooting evil tingles, which is a very useful skill.

What are you craving? Seafood. I want fish, eaten with some sort of pasta and sauce on a deck near a river with a glass of cold dry white wine. Or cold but not icy shrimp with spicy cocktail sauce. Or even a mouthful of seawater with an accidental minnow in it.

Okay, prolly not that last one. But tuna salad on crackers just is not cutting it.

I'd also settle for a steak topped with boursin cheese and a big spinach salad.

Are you crazy emotional?  Yes. I swing between tears and rage, but I'm getting better at controlling both of them.

Tell me how you feel otherwise. I feel like I'm in a fairly good place this week. We've done a lot of research into childbirth prep classes, doulas, and other fascinating things, and I like that we know more and are closer to decisions about them. I also like that there are some amazing complimentary medicine centers in Chicago, and I'm excited to have chosen one that I think best fits my needs. I even found one that had a really interesting explanation of migraine causes in non-Western medical terms, which was so accurate to my life and personality that all I could think was the good ole medieval "I can argue no further." So I look forward to hopefully finding some Bugbear-friendly treatments that also help me in the long run.