The most interesting thing this week was the regular ultrasound in Doc’s office 🙂 . We saw the baby and that was super cool, I want to look him every day.
The baby is now with the head upside-down. His legs are right on my navel, sitting in a Lotus pose and guess what we saw first between his legs 🙂 .
He has his hands on his face. We took time watching him in details and slowly, we could have watched him even more 🙂 .
The ultrasound needs to be at least an hour, also they can give me the end and I can lie down, move it around and watch. Fantasy and a lot of watching are required so you can picture some things, especially in different planes. This is why you need at least 1 hour 🙂 .
How do I Feel
Great, great, great! My mood is very positive. I’m more romantic and I’m showering My Love with love 🙂 . I’m very calm. I take things with such ease that I can’t recognize myself. I have a strong self-preservation instinct. I can identify if something will pass near me of a kilometer distance and I have a tactic how to avoid it in a millisecond. And in the same time, I stumble into the kitchen with my belly, because I forget I am in different dimensions, but I’m not alerted when I’m in the kitchen and I don’t analyse which is a danger and which is not 🙂 .
How Big Is The Baby
Statistically, according to the baby’s head, you can calculate its size. The check-up was in week 18 and 5 days, and the baby is big as for week 20, which means 347 grams statistically. I checked a statistic and in week 20, the baby is about 300 grams and 25 cm long from head to toes.
Halfway in the pregnancy (week 20, I am in week 19), the baby is only ½ from its length when born and only 1/10 of its weight. I.e. from now on, the baby will mostly get fatter 🙂 . My Love was born over 4 kg (9 lbs) and I wonder if I’m going to deliver a giant baby 🙂 .
Symptoms
I noticed that one big wart has become enormous! I try not to pay attention to it for now, but after delivery, I will get to it. I wonder if it’s because of the injections I have every night and that the wart is growing because of it. It’s of the type that are uneven and dark, not like smooth little balls.
My bellybutton is different. I can’t tell you what exactly, but it’s different.
My eyebrows are now curly and bushy; shall I expect a mustaches as well?
I can’t catch my breath from actions I didn’t feel before. This is normal. With the uterus growing, all organs are pushed upwards and there is less space for the lungs.
Food I Cannot Stand
There isn’t anything specific. Whatever I didn’t like before the pregnancy, I also don’t love now.
Food I Love
Salad, salad, salad! Welcome back leafy greens 🙂 . During the first trimester I couldn’t eat leafy greens at all, because I felt sick even of the thought of it. Even though, only by pure accident, I could get away with one or two and with pleasure. I still can’t understand why I hated salads then and for example, I wanted one once in 10 days.
Now my favorite one is some sort of green lettuce, baby spinach, parsley, pink tomatoes, cucumbers, a small onion chopped in bigger pieces, seasoned with olive oil, a bit more apple vinegar and a little bit of Himalayan salt. I can’t eat onion and I take it out of the salad, but I like to have it in. I liked this before the pregnancy, but I had a little bit of spring onion (I don’t put it now, because I can’t see it in the lettuce and I can’t take it out).
Nectarines are my big love this summer. I joke that I’m going to name the baby Nectarin 🙂 .
I wanted apples too and I managed to find such I like – sweet and sour at the same time.
I still favor everything sour. But I stopped with the jar of naturally fermented pickles. Oh, how I had them with nothing, mmm, yummy.
Here is a lunch of mine, I carry it in a plastic box (it doesn’t contain Bisphenol A (BPA)) with a cooler, super comfortable, light and with the ability to keep the food fresh for a long time. You can place the cooler in a freezer for the night and put it in next morning. Everything, except the cooler, can be washed in a dish washer.
3 scrambled eggs with a little bit of olive oil and 100 g spinach
2 huge apples, one I ate when cooking the eggs, because it wouldn’t fit in the box, they were really big
1 avocado that wouldn’t fit in one of the small boxes, and I put the rest with the eggs.
I put the apple in the bottom, below the cooler.
Afterwards, you put the cooler in. If there is no need for cooling, you can use it as a divider and it keeps the food on the top from falling in what’s in the bottom.
I put the avocado in one of the upper boxes and the eggs in the other.
Workouts
My workouts are super nice. I still work out with 5 kg dumbbells. Some exercises I do with 3 kg, because I include exercises for small muscle groups like biceps and triceps. In my other workout programs we don’t train isolated for biceps and triceps, because we do that together with the back and chest. But for the pregnancy program I take account in the fact that we are about to carry a baby afterwards and that happens by hand in the most times so I prepare the mothers’ muscles to be strong and resilient.
On the other hand, the second trimester we don’t do push-ups in the program and so the triceps are not left behind, I include isolated exercises. There are a lot of pull-ups in the pregnancy program, because with one exercise we put pressure on the chest, back, shoulder, triceps, even the booty if you combine it with a hip raise.
I film 4 times a week 2 workouts in Bulgarian and 2 workouts in English. Separately from that, I am developing workouts from which I do one whole, and take notes for the others, trying separate exercises and for the cardio I take video notes 🙂 .
I make up some cardio movements which I don’t remember afterwards so I film it with my camera for 10 seconds and then I watch it and decide what to use 🙂 .
I stopped with the jumps and intense workouts from the moment I found out I was pregnant, so don’t imagine some wild cardio 🙂 .
Steps
This week* I walked less, because I had a lot of work on the computer and many meetings for which I used transport. I usually go above 100 000 steps for the week. I track the steps with a Fitbit wristband, and I aim for a minimum of 15 000 steps a day. I have days with less than 10 000 and I usually use the weekend to get back on track with 20 000 steps a day. Then I go to the South Park in Sofia, the way there is 3000 steps, I walk around in the park, getting back is 3000 steps as well and during the day I walk to here and there and I get 20 000 this way. However, after so much walking, I feel my feet tired and I dream about my Love’s massage. It’s great!
*The weeks of my pregnancy are from Wednesday to Tuesday, whilst the Fitbit wristband tracks from Sunday to Saturday, so there would be some difference between what a week is, but I don’t think it matters. I just mention this informatively.
Weight
I especially measured myself for you yesterday and today 🙂 . I’ve gained about 4.5 kg (10 lbs).
I would like to share something about gaining weight during the pregnancy. There were some expectations towards me like ‘Oh, you won’t gain almost anything’ (why not, I’m pregnant, shall I lose weight?!) or ‘You’ll only get a belly’…
I gain weight all over the boy 🙂 . Since week 7 I started gaining some fat, which made me very happy, because I know it is a symptom that everything is okay this time. I have saddlebags, which I didn’t had before, some cellulite on my booty (cellulite is fat that seems like holes, depending on how the skin holds the fat), my thighs and arms are not so cut out. I gain fat mostly in the lady parts – booty and thighs. Which is awesome! It’s considered healthy for the baby if the mother gains between 3 and 5 kg fat during the pregnancy. There is also gaining weight because of the increased amount of blood, amniotic fluid, placenta, breast, the baby itself, etc.
I’m not worried by gaining fat and I don’t plan on paying attention to it. Be happy about my new cheeks 🙂 .
Sleeping
I sleep quite well, regardless of the many bathroom visits. After every visit I start a new dream. I dream a loooooot and really strange things. I had a new dream about the delivery.
Labor is about following a crib that has a cocoon. One day the cocoon was now a blanket and a head and arms were showing from it. The baby was born 🙂 .
I don’t know how my dreams have the topic of labor; having in mind I don’t picture it. Whenever a thought for the labor comes across, I tell myself that everything will be great and that I will welcome it calm and positive. I.e. I don’t imagine anything specific; I just have a positive mind about it.
I started a program for a natural and painless hypnolabor, but I’ve done just 2 sessions, and that is something I have to make time for and do every day. You practice self-hypnosis, relaxation and meditation. The method is by Jerry Kein. I will write more when I get better. For now I only had a few looks at it and slightly tried it. The information says that 4 weeks practicing is enough and this is probably why I’ve been slacking it 🙂 .
Stretch marks
I don’t have any, except the little lines I used to have before the pregnancy. I fanatically rub myself with oils and butters twice a day. Fingers crossed for me not getting any stretch marks!
What Is The Baby Doing
I still can’t feel him, but Doc promised that next week I should begin to feel some movements. I feel him as a whole. I think I felt it when he turned upside-down – the turning was to the right side. I.e, I felt a stretch from the right side for 2 weeks. Now that’s stopped. Sometimes I feel a bigger pressure somewhere, but not a movement. So, I can’t wait for specific movements 🙂 .
On the check-up we saw that he is calm and sleeping with his nose in his hands. He sits with his legs bend before him (something like a Lotus pose).
Interesting Stuff
I got back my passion for cooking, oh, yeah! During the first trimester I forced myself to cook for a week, but then I found that’s a no-go. And now I want to cook, to develop recipes, to make art…
Mood
Sweet, positive, romantic, female, caring. Songs and movies make me cry more than they used to before.
Do I Miss Anything
I would like to jump around when working out, but I don’t due to security reasons.*
*There are women that can jump and run while pregnant, but I feel this is not my thing right now. Jumping and running are not counter-productive during a pregnancy. It’s individual to every pregnancy. It depends if the woman run and jump before the pregnancy and how the certain pregnancy is going on.
Advice I Get
People that rarely see me tell me ‘Be smart’, ‘Take it easy’, ‘Be reasonable’… and things like that… It’s good that the people around me don’t treat me differently or like I’m sick.
I don’t think I’m the only pregnant women that is bothered when people treat me this way.
Looking Forward To
(The fetal morphology is now done, I tell all about it in the post for week 22)
Fetal morphology. I still haven’t did my research where, but I expect it to be a long ultrasound, which is my favorite 🙂 Doc said not to do 3 different fetal morphologies (like I shared in week 17), because I will get 3 different points of views, which is not good for my mental health 🙂 . Also, it’s not clear if it’s healthy to have ultrasounds so often.*
*If there are mothers, that are obliged to do ultrasounds more often, please don’t panic. You’re doing the best you can in the situation you’re at! I think my Doc just wanted to change my mind on doing 3 fetal morphologies.
Shopping
I got more butters for stretch marks.
Another pair of pregnancy jeans. I thought that I can go with just one pair, but when one morning it was still wet and I wondered what I’m going to wear, I made the decision to get a second pair. I have 2 pregnancy t-shirts, so I’ll have 2 pairs of jeans, too. The second ones are a little bit shabby; it would have been nice if they are ripped, as I don’t have such (I haven’t stumbled upon a pair, which fits me well).
This black top is my fancy one. If I’m sitting on a table, you can’t tell I’m wearing jeans and I pass for fancy dressed. I got it just to have if I need to wear something that is not sporty. And I will be able to wear it after the pregnancy, I like it.
Questions
Were you dreaming while pregnant?
Ideas for me? What will I need?
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