26 Week Update

What happened to week 25?  I skipped it. Moving is intense, emotional, and invasive. And while I am grateful beyond words to the many people who made it possible, I needed time away from being exposed and chatting about my inside bits.

How pregnant are you? 26 weeks--6.5 months pregnant. Eleven to sixteen weeks until we meet our healthy and fully gestated Bugbear!

Relate this pregnancy to objects we tend to eat or other daily stuff. Bugbear is just awkwardly sized at this point. S/he's probably around 13" long---the length of a small pineapple or an English hothouse cucumber--and weighing around 2 pounds now. The placenta is roughly equal in size to Bugbear, though it won't grow much more, while Bugbear will.

Tell me some random stuff about the Bugbear.  Bugbear's circulatory system is now fully functional, and his/her lungs continue to develop and practice breathing. His/her eyes may be opening, and s/he will start blinking sometime in the next two weeks. The eyes themselves still have very little pigment so that they're blue right now, though they will probably change later in life. The neural pathways that will process sight and sound are developing, and though s/he obviously has no way of attaching meaning to anything yet, familiar sounds will be recognizable after s/he is born, and his/her responses to light will become more developed over the next few months.

The hair on Bugbear's head, if it exists, still lacks pigment, but will start developing it over the next few weeks (like eyes, the color may well change). The lanugo hair that covered his/her body earlier is starting to come off, and will be mostly shed within the next 6 weeks. S/he has been developing sweat and oil glands, and those are now functional. The bits of shed skin and oil that s/he is creating become part of the amniotic fluid, which is now replaced every hour.  

What are you doing with/for Bugbear that's new?  Now that Michael can reliably feel Bugbear kick, we're taking time for them to "play" each day.  I still can't tell the difference between his/her head, butt, and back, other than that they all feel hard-ish and are not the things that kick/punch/dance; I do spend time when s/he's quiet kind of poking around, wondering whether I can actually tell what things are, or I just want to be able to tell.

In spite of Bugbear's lack of input, we've also purchased all the fabric for a crib skirt, fitted and flat sheets, teething guards, pillows s/he won't get until s/he is older, a hanging book nook, storage boxes, and probably some scrap fabric toys. None of it is made yet, but it's available.




Tell me how you feel physically.  I've gained 16 pounds, and every ounce of it is hanging out on the front of my body. I feel huge; I cannot fathom gaining another 10 pounds by mid-November.

I love that I'm still able to work out, but I've had to switch to more aerobic and weight lifting and less yoga because the relaxin is killing my joints. If I stretch too much, which happens unintentionally in some of my favorite poses, I feel like a marionette, limbs just hanging out of my joints and uncontrollable. It's really unpleasant, painful even, and will wake me up; so yoga is weekly instead of daily, and I'm getting accustomed to it even as I don't like it.


In news of the physically weird, I've started getting nosebleeds while sleeping, which is really common during pregnancy, but also disconcerting.




What are you craving? A night where I sleep straight through without waking. Or lots of zucchini sauteed with onions and topped with cheese and tomatoes.
 
Are you crazy emotional?  Yep.

Tell me how you feel otherwise. I'm starting to get excited for my classes to start in September, even as I'm nervous about how pregnancy will impact my abilities to be a strong student. Even as things have settled down in some respects, life is still stressful and unpredictable, full of moments that we just can't plan for, which wears on us. I get to see my mom next weekend, which is super exciting, and hopefully will be refreshing in spite of the million things that we have to get done.