26 Week Update

This week I noticed that my belly button has gotten noticeably shallower. And I can see in the mirror, but not when I'm looking directly at it, a very faint (so far) linea nigra reaching from the top of my belly to the bottom, and making a nice loop around both sides of my belly button.

This week also brought the first comments from people who didn't know about the pregnancy. Guess I'm starting to get that "classic" shape.

On our way home Saturday from glider shopping at Babies R Us I suggested something revolutionary...taking back some of the cherry furniture which we had gratefully evicted from our basement to the in-laws house if it would work in the nursery and they weren't using it instead of trying to search for new (or used) white furniture. Since only the crib is white, and the glider will have a cherry finish, and the twin bed (if it fits after all the other furniture is in) has a darker wood frame, it began to make both decorative and financial sense. Now we just have to figure out what is available that we can use! Of course, with a finished wood instead of painted dresser, we'll make sure to get a glass top to go under the changing pad to help protect it from not only sprays but product spills and other possible smears.

Pregnancy hormone moment of the weekend - wanting to cry when I realized that the eggs I had cooked for a neighborhood pot-luck on Sunday weren't peeling because they were undercooked and I didn't know what else I could make in the time left before we had to leave.

(Turns out I had just enough raw eggs and time left to make a devils food bundt cake from a box mix and was able to whip up the cream I keep for when DH makes coffee to serve with it. It turned out to be a big hit since the cake was still warm by the time dessert rolled around. And that's why I insist on cream and not that faux creamer stuff - it's so much more multipurpose. That and I grossed myself out in college by trying to substitute faux-creamer for milk in cereal. I really don't recommend it.)

Other thing - my depth perception has gone to crap. My ophthalmologist did say that my eyes might change towards the end of the pregnancy thanks to additional fluid and pressure changes. Example 1 - Bumped my head on the corner of my desk whilst chasing an runaway pen. Example 2 - Trying to cut some string to use to hold some items together for the yard sale and cutting air. Example 3 - I can't remember but I know there have been plenty of other times recently.

Surprising moment - I went to lean in to the mirror in our bathroom and was bounced back by my belly. See, our counters are something like 34" high, which is great for using the sink, but for a blindish shorty like me, it takes a bit of extra effort to reach the mirror and see my face clearly without my contacts in, even when I'm not pregnant. This time I thought I had managed to get up on my toes enough for the belly to clear, but I underestimated how far down the belly goes and how high up I needed to be to clear.

Yesterday at lunch I met a friend at Target and had fun with the point and click registry gun. It was great to get an experienced Moms perspective on the products and suggestions for things I hadn't even thought about wanting or needing since they weren't on the lists from AlphaMom (I'd link but they redesigned the site and I can't find ANYTHING! /Rant) or any other website or book. For the record, babies are freakin' expensive once you actually get pregnant. Just saying in case you weren't aware of that minor little detail.

Big doings this week is hosting the Bunco group on Wednesday night, so a flurry of cleaning and house preparations will commence tonight culminating with final prep ending about 6:55pm on Wednesday. My Mother is coming to help out and to learn about Bunco to use as a fundraiser for a woman's educational organization she is extremely active with, and I am unashamedly going to take advantage of her presence and willingness to help out with the cleaning and other preparations.

To file with the complaint department: There's a depression commercial out where a woman demonstrates using a wind-up metal toy how she has to wind herself up to get through the day; and I feel like that's me, except someone else has already wound me up with all the energy I get for the day and once it's gone, I'm done. And can someone please, please, please tell me why I'm waking up before the alarm goes off at 5 freakin' 45 AM? Because that's just cruel to only give me so much energy and also cause me to wake up at least 30 minutes before I have to!

In the further complaint department: my feet and ankles have started to swell when I spend too much time on them. For example, on Monday after spending the lunch hour on my feet, even after returning to work and sitting for the rest of the afternoon, my left ankle swelled up like an orange. It's even odder looking than cankles since my calf still narrows into my ankle before the swelling starts. I've been trying to get off my feet at home as much as possible but this shows me that I really do need to find something on which I can prop my feet at work! DH checked my blood pressure last night and it was around 100/64 or something like that which is still plenty low, so that's good. If it had been higher than normal I would have been on the phone to the OB stat! As of this morning my ankle is still a bit swollen, so I'm going to claim medical needs for propping my feet up on my desk to get them above my heart which shoud keep it from further swelling and hopefully help it to decrease! If it's not better by tomorrow morning I am going to call the OB - I have a feeling that it's just normal pregnancy stuff, but don't want to take any chances.

To finish up with some fun stuff - after I got up for the mid-overnight wee, I got back into bed, the younger cat situated herself to be under the covers before I pulled them up, and Little One had a prolonged attack of the hiccups. I felt so bad for her, but it was kinda fun feeling my belly bouncing up and down in a regular rhythm.