16 Week Bumpdate

The Bump:

Whoops, photo bomb by Gabby. She jumped in front of my phone right before the camera snapped and I snatched her.  The fact that she looks way more pregnant than me helps my self-esteem.

Here's the real bump picture:

 Here's a collage to compare with last week's picture.  Look, the bump shrunk!  I think it's basically because the bloat is going away, so this week it's less bloat, more baby.  On my birth month message board on The Bump, a bunch of other ladies say this is happening to them too.  Plus my outfit doesn't accentuate the bump as much this week.

I still look like I just ate a big meal or something.  I'm getting anxious to get to the point where I actually look pregnant!  Come on baby, grow!

Milestones:

The baby now has its malleus, incus, and stapes, the three bones in his or her middle ear.  Again, very exciting for a future speech path. like myself.  Although I've learned in all my classes that babies can't hear until about 20 weeks, all of my pregnancy websites that I read say that the baby is starting to hear now since those last pieces in the ears are in place.  So, I have no idea if the baby can hear or not.  My guess is that it can hear very loud sounds, but maybe some fine tuning will be done in the next few weeks before he or she can hear a lot of things?  I don't know.  Either way, it's very exciting to me!

Also, I had my monthly appointment last Friday, and we heard the heartbeat!  It had been 2 months since we saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound.  I was so nervous it would take her awhile to find it and I would have a panic attack, but she literally stuck the thing to my belly and there it was:  that beautiful whooshing sound!  158 beats per minute.  According to the old wives tale, a quicker heartbeat (above 150 bpm) means a girl and vice versa.  Of course, I know there is absolutely no truth to that old wive's tale, but it's fun to think about anyway!  

Symptoms:

• Nausea is gone, but I still threw up once this week. How is that possible?  I have no idea.  It literally hit me out of nowhere, and I was fine afterwards.  I keep saying the baby is just saying, "Hey, I'm still here! Just wanted to reassure you!"  Ha!  I trust you, baby,  please, no more reassurance!
• If I sit in the wrong position for too long, I get these extremely painful pinching feelings in my lower back when I put my weight on one side.  I talked to my cousin who experienced the same thing early in pregnancy, and she said it's probably sciatic nerve pain due to weight being pushed on it by the baby.  Oh the joys of pregnancy!  Honestly, this pain is a million times better than first trimester nausea, so bring it on! 

Cravings:

• Just call me Phoebe Buffay, because I am craving meat!  At least I'm not a vegetarian like her...not even close! I've been craving burgers again.  Also, Luke made brunch yesterday, and I could not get enough bacon!  Normally I don't even care for bacon (which Luke thinks is sacrilege), so that was weird.  Also, Luke was due to pick up a wing platter at 5:00 yesterday for a Super Bowl party, and at 11:00 after church I was so hungry for wings, just knowing I was going to eat some later!  It was torture waiting all day for them.  I feel like a dude.  And someone at school who has two little boys says craving meat instead of sweet things means I'm having a boy!  So one clue points to girl, and one clue points to boy.  

Aversions:

• I can't think of a single thing that doesn't sound appealing right now, so the roles have completely reversed! I went from craving nothing and having aversions to everything, to craving everything and having aversions to nothing!  I have to say, it's much more fun on this side of things.

Fun Stuff:

• I wrote about this on Facebook already, but on Saturday I was sitting on the couch completely still, writing a blog post, and then sneezed the most violent sneeze ever.  Right afterwards I felt bunches of little twitches in my belly.  I guess the strong muscle contractions of the sneeze startled the baby or woke him or her up or something!  It was so funny!  I've had a lot of people tell me they didn't feel their baby until week 20 or beyond, but I am almost positive this is the baby I'm feeling.  On Friday at our appointment, the doctor pointed out right where the baby was (just below my belly button) and that is right where I'd been feeling all the little flutters and twitches!  
• We officially scheduled our anatomy scan, which is the ultrasound where we will find out the gender!  It's scheduled for March 1 at 8:30 AM, so we can go straight in, first thing in the morning and get the news we've been waiting so long for!  I joke that I think it's a girl, and I for some reason can't picture anything other than a girl, but I think that's mostly because I didn't have any brothers or very many guy friends growing up, so all I know are little girls!  But I would be so happy with a little boy too!  And I know Luke would love a little buddy to throw a football around with, and take to Indians games, and teach how to play the drums (of course, I'm sure he'll do all those things if it's a girl, too!) I don't want to give the impression that I will be disappointed or at all not excited if it's a boy!  I will be so over-the-moon happy no matter what!!  But I just want to know what it is, so I can start making plans and daydreaming!
• Speaking of dreams, holy cow.  I've heard of pregnancy dreams, but never really believed they were a real thing.  Let me tell you, they are.  Here are just a few of the dreams I've had lately:
• This one is not pregnancy related, but I had a dream that Gordon Ramsey was my dad.  Clearly, this girl has been watching too many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares!  Anyway, not only was he my dad, but he was possessed by a demon.  I mean, perhaps that is not so hard to imagine with Gordon Ramsey, because he is terrifying.  But yeah, it was the weirdest/scariest dream I've ever had!
• A few nights after that, I had a dream that at 15 weeks pregnant, my baby was pushing it's hands and feet against my stomach, and pushing so hard that my skin would stretch really far, and I could see the entire outline of those little hands and feet.  At the same time, my skin was somehow kind of transparent, and it was really creepy and kind of disgusting!
• I've had two dreams that the actual baby was born. In both dreams, the baby was a girl. In the first one, I was asleep while Luke signed the birth certificate, and he named her Petunia! I woke up (in the dream) and was so furious because...what a horrible name! In the second dream, we named the baby Aubriella.  Kind of a mash up of the names Aubrey, Brielle, and Ella.  I thought the name had been completely constructed by  my subconscious, but after telling some people about it, found out that I'd probably heard it before because my cousin's cousin on the other side of the family named her little girl that.  So I must have shoved the name into my subconscious and forgotten about it!  Dreams are so weird.

Wow, this post got really wordy.  I guess I had a lot to say about week 16!  Onto week 17! We are getting dangerously close to being halfway through this pregnancy!