If I Were Doing Weekly Updates...

...during this pregnancy like I have during my previous three pregnancies, I would, first of all, feel hopelessly behind!  I haven't taken a picture of my growing body every week, nor have I written a record of all that I've been thinking and feeling during each precious week of this significant time.

But I'm not going to feel guilty about this!  I'll do what I can; and even if I haven't been as consistent as I have in the past, I still have some pictures and some thoughts to write down.  So let's just call this the Weeks 13, 14, and 15 update, shall we?  ;-)

Oh, but these first two pictures are from when I was 9 weeks, so we could officially extend this update all the way back to Week 9, I suppose!  :)

The streamers were left from the decorations Jeff and the kids put up before I returned from Canada--a cheerful surprise when I wearily walked in the door after a loooong trip home.  But that's another story.  ;-)

To tell you the truth, I hesitate a little every time I post something about this pregnancy for one simple reason: I haven't told you the beginning of the story!  I have a post started that chronicles the first part of this pregnancy journey, but it's not done, so here I am publishing part of the middle of the book, so to speak, before the first chapter is even written.  So much for Julie Andrews' advice to "start at the very beginning, a very good place to start"!  ;-)

Let's talk about weight, shall we?  Back in the fall of 2014, I became concerned enough about the way my weight had crept up (or perhaps more accurately, the way my weight had not ever gotten as low as I wanted after Moriah's birth) that I started paying a little more attention to what I ate and how I moved and was able to drop from about 164 pounds to just under 160 pounds.  By Thanksgiving, I was in the 159.something zone...159.6 maybe, or possibly 154.4.  Something like that.  ;-)

But then...Thanksgiving.  You know how it goes.

And then all the festive foods leading up to and culminating in Christmas.  My opportunities for indulgence increased, and my self-discipline did the opposite.  The almost-5 pounds I had lost by Thanksgiving had found me again, so my weight when I discovered I was pregnant in early January was back to about 164.

But here's something I'm grateful for.  Probably because I was carrying some extra weight to begin with, my weight didn't go up at all during the early part of this pregnancy--and even went down some, hovering sometimes in the 162 or 163 range.  Even though I was feeling some nausea (more on that in a bit), I wasn't throwing up, so I wasn't losing weight because of that.  But my tastes had changed, and certain foods that I had really enjoyed before getting pregnant (tortilla chips from Costco, for example, which were something I had eaten every single day) no longer appealed to me in the least.  It was naturally easier to eat less and eat healthier (for the most part, although if you saw my late-night snacks of milk and Oreos, you wouldn't call it healthier!) after I got pregnant than it had before, and I was sure happy about that!

When I had my first prenatal appointment (on February 18), my weight according to their scale was 168 pounds, which didn't startle me in the least because my weight is always higher on their scale.  No surprise there, since at home, I weigh first thing in the morning before I eat anything, and I...ahem...wear fewer clothes when I weigh at home than when I weigh at my midwives' office!  ;-)  When I had my second appointment (on March 4), my weight according to their scale had actually dropped to 166.5 pounds (and my blood pressure was down to 126 over 80, an improvement from the 142 over 78 I had had at my first appointment).  

Here at home my weight didn't really climb above 164 until 13 weeks or so, when I started seeing weights of 164.4 and so forth, although sometimes it dipped down below 164 again.  I don't weigh every day, so I'm not really sure what my weight is at now, but I'm not concerned.  Really, the only reason I spent this much time writing about this is because I'm guessing it might be the first time in my life when I've been able to basically go through the entire first trimester without gaining weight!  ;-)

Even if I wasn't gaining weight, however, I was gaining girth, as these (slightly blurry) pictures that Josiah took of me when I was 13 weeks and 5 days prove!!  ;-)

The time for maternity clothes has come, although some of my non-maternity clothes are big enough or cut just right so that I can continue to wear them.  For the most part, I'm actually really enjoying the clothes I can wear now; I guess after 5 previous pregnancies that required maternity clothes, I've collected enough that I like and that can be worn comfortably at different stages of pregnancy (and believe me, the maternity clothes that fit me at 16 weeks don't always ever fit me at 39 weeks, so it helps tremendously to have, even within the category of maternity clothes, different sizes!) so that it doesn't feel like much of a hardship when my regular clothes no longer fit.  In addition, I've been blessed through the years by people giving me some maternity clothes that have become some of my favorites.  So for the most part, I'm having fun with my changing body shape and my transitioning wardrobe!

The hardest part of this stage of pregnancy is fatigue--specifically, the way my energy sometimes gives out suddenly and drastically, sending up in smoke my grand plans for all I was going to accomplish!

The only other hardship, and it's a small one, is some lingering nausea, which almost always hits me, not in the morning, but late at night.  I don't have it as consistently as I did a few weeks back, but it still shows up from time to time, especially as my stomach gets empty as the hours since supper tick away.  I have found, however, that milk and Oreos do the trick of calming my stomach.  Jeff recently found some Peppermint Oreos (probably left over from Christmas) at Sharp Shopper (our no-frills, discount grocery store), and they have been particularly effective at helping my nausea - haha!  :)  And Jeff, in his sacrificial kindness, has been contenting himself with plain ol' Oreos when the cookie urge hits him, so that I can have the peppermint ones - what love!  :)

The other newsworthy item I should mention in this update is that I *think* (I don't know how to type my uncertainty any more effectively than starring, italicizing, making boldface, and underlining!) I felt the baby move at 14 weeks.  I know that's early.  I also know it's possible.  But what I don't know is whether it really was the baby moving.  I like to think that it was.  ;-)

I think I felt the baby again when I was 15 weeks, 1 day...then perhaps again later in the 15th week, a day or two ago.  But even with those occurrences, I didn't feel any amount of certainty that it truly was the baby and not the normal gurglings of an abdomen.  As always, I am eager to feel more obvious movement from the baby.

And oh, I am also eager, eager, eager to once again hear my baby's heartbeat and know that life remains in my womb.  My next appointment is coming soon--next Wednesday, as a matter of fact, which happens to be my birthday!  I can't think of a better birthday gift than hearing that treasured sound of my baby's heart beating strongly.

I can hardly wait.  :)