A Diary of Pregnancy.11

25 weeks:

~ The baby's kicking just strong enough for Francisco to feel it regularly now. The other night the baby was in rare form and we spent an hour feeling his kicks together. It's even better than feeling them alone. Then we watched some fun youtube videos of babies and then a National Geographic video about how babies develop. (Babies in the womb can open and close their eyes! And do weird stuff like lick the inside of the uterus. And even, it seems, silently cry when they're unhappy. Can you imagine if you could hear them??) Fascinating--I want to know everything he's doing in there, and this helped a bit. Our favorites:



This one is soooo bad that it's hilarious (I also love the chosen background music--this doctor appears to be quite a character):



I've probably shared this one here before, but it still makes us laugh so hard:



What I really want to know and haven't been able to figure out is how much is he moving in there? Like, is he doing backflips all the time, or does he mostly just stay in one place and kick his feet and wave his arms?

26 weeks:

~ I feel profoundly grateful to anyone who, whether meaning it or not, tells me that I look so good for how far along I am. (Must remember to tell every pregnant woman that I meet that.)

I find the whole aspect of gaining weight while pregnant to be surprisingly tricky. I don't think that I have that many body issues compared to a typical American: I've never been particularly thin; I accept my big-bone-ed-ness, and am proud of my strength. I try to dress in ways that don't accentuate my not-flat stomach.

But pregnancy is complicated: You hear horror stories about how much weight women gain and how hard it is/impossible to get rid of all the weight again after the baby is born. Things that particularly concern me, like varicose veins and many other things that are too delicate to mention here, worsen the more weight you gain. Plus, for me, the very thing I've been working to avoid for years and years--my stomach expanding--is happening to me. And you look different in every outfit--huge in some, barely showing in others. It's a bit of an adjustment and a struggle to be okay with these changes to my body.

And obviously it's really important to gain enough weight during the pregnancy so that the baby is big enough--low birth weight is bad. So I eat basically constantly (I haven't been hungry for a second since I've been pregnant; I eat even when I'm not particularly hungry). I haven't gained as much weight as the internet says I should have, but the midwives haven't fussed at me at all, so I figure it's alright. Plus, I think I had plenty of body fat to start with.

Anyway, worrying about it doesn't help anything at all. And I'm sure the most important point is to eat the right things--like plenty of protein--which I'm striving, and I'm sure failing, to do. This is all an exercise in trying to make good decisions and then trusting my body. Which is hard for a control-freak to do.

~ Mini-rant: When I was fussing about the fact that I wanted a girl and I was having a boy, someone said to me, "I never cared whether it was a boy or a girl, just as long as it was healthy." I know it's just a saying, but it bothers me. Of course I want my son to be healthy; I want him to never have to suffer. But the truth of the world is, in different ways for everyone, we all suffer--this world is a valley of tears, as the prayer goes. When we welcome a baby into the world, we welcome him in full knowledge that he will suffer, but that there is also a meaning to the suffering.