My Big Fat Belly 2.0 - 23 Weeks

How far along: 23 Weeks, 2 Days.  Can’t believe I’m halfway through the 6th month!!!

Symptoms:  Nothing other than the belly!  Gah I feel like it’s poked out SOOOO much the past couple of weeks!!  Oh and I took a look at my 22 week belly post with Carter (I didn’t do one at 23 weeks).  There was quite a list of things under symptoms.  You can see it here.  It basically involved lots of back pain, being out of breath all the time and I even said “overall unhappiness”.  I can tell you with 150% certainty that this is because of the lack of working out with Carter’s pregnancy.  I don’t feel a single bit of unhappiness or discomfort this time around (at this point at least…all that discomfort will come in the third trimester I assure you).  Working out as much as I do this time around has made pregnancy SOOOOOO much more bearable!  I’m interested to see if I can keep up this pace throughout the end of the pregnancy.  I’m really hoping I do.  I would love to see the effect on the delivery and labor.  They say if you exercise regularly, your delivery and labor will be smoother than if you don’t workout.  Definitely didn’t have a “walk in the park” labor and delivery with Carter so maybe this time around Garrett will pop right on out after a couple of pushes!

Maternity Clothes:   I’m pretty much full on in maternity clothes.  I do still wear several non-maternity shirts and non-maternity workout clothes.   There’s a few pairs of jeans that I wear that I can shockingly still button.  They’re my old size 8 jeans.  I can button them and they’re comfortable as long as I’m standing up, but if I sit down, having them buttoned squeezes on the uterus too much, so I will unbutton them and tie the rubberband around it.  I basically never wear jeans though.  I only wore those because we were in California and it was actually pretty chilly there.  It’s WAY too hot in the south for jeans right now.  Also, I have noticed that I carry my babies pretty high during pregnancy.  That also makes buttoning jeans a little easier than it is for people that carry babies lower.  But I am going to have to go buy some maternity workout clothes.  I can’t squeeze into most of my yoga pants these days.

Weight Gain:  16 pounds.  I have a book that I had with Carter that you list your weight and your waist size every day that you’re pregnant.  It’s cool because I can look back to see exactly how much I weighed with Carter on that same day within the pregnancy.  So far these two boys are shaping up to be the exact same.  Right now I’m still about a pound ahead of where I was with Carter, but overall weight is about 8-9lbs less.  So basically if this baby shapes up to be the same as Carter, I’ll expect to gain about 35 pounds.  I was trying to gain less weight but from what I hear, most moms gain more weight the second time around because they are less worried about what they’re eating.  I can agree that I’m not as much of a Nazi this time around with things like caffeine intake or small stuff like that, but overall, I actually eat significantly healthier this time around.  PLUS there’s the whole working out about 5-6 days a week which I certainly DID NOT do with Carter.  So to be honest, I have no idea how my weight is the same as it was with Carter.  I guess this is just how I carry babies.  Good thing about this being my 2nd rodeo is that I know all this weight is going to fall off so I ain’t worried :)

Sleep:  No change.  Sleep is normal.

Belly Button: In and it will likely stay that way.  With Carter it never popped out, it just got really really flat as my stomach got bigger.  No indication of the line that shows up on your lower stomach just yet.  Can’t really remember when it showed up with Carter, but I do remember that it FREAKED JUSTIN OUT!  As of now though, the belly button is getting flatter and flatter since my belly seems to have grown an inch and a half over the last two weeks!

Stretch Marks:  None yet.  Didn’t have any with Carter so I’m hoping it stays that way.

Cravings/Aversions:  Haven’t really noticed any major cravings lately.  And to be honest, it appears that I’m one of those rare few that don’t crave things during pregnancy.  With Carter the only things I craved were eggs and chocolate milk, but I loved those things when I wasn’t pregnant so I don’t really count those.  Haven’t craved much of anything at all during this pregnancy either.

Exercise Routine:  Still holding strong at 6 days a week of P90X, Mommy and Me Fitness and/or Pure Barre.  The last week was a long break from exercising because of our trip to California but I picked it back up as soon as I got back.  I’ve actually already gotten through another 90 days of P90X, so I’m starting back over again on Day 1.  I am starting to do more modifications than I was at the beginning of pregnancy though.  I’m using a chair more during pullups, I’ll do the first set of pushups on my toes but I’ll drop to my knees for the 2nd set, I also eliminate any dangerous-type moves (if you’ve done P90X you know there’s plenty of those) and replace them with something a little more tame.  All in all, I’m still doing these workouts, I’m just trying to be a little more careful in how I do them.  I also don’t do Plyometrics at all.  I stopped doing that as soon as I got pregnant.  That DVD is INTENSE and not safe at all for pregnancy.  Way too much jumping around.  My doctor told me that was the one DVD from P90x to stay away from while pregnant and I agree.  I’ve been doing the Cardio X DVD in it’s place.

Baby Size:  At week 23, baby is the size of a grapefruit.  It’s about 11-12 inches from head to heel and weighs anywhere from a pound to 21 ounces.   At this stage, the face is fully formed and everything is in place.  He can hear my heart and my blood moving around in my body as well as people around me talking.  So this is when he’ll pick up on Justin’s voice as well as Carter’s. 

Movement:   Kid moves ALL THE TIME.  I can even see it on my stomach now which is crazy to me.  I very rarely use my fetal doppler to hear him anymore because if I just stay still long enough, he moves.  That doesn’t mean he’s awake though.  He still sleeps about 14-17 hours a day in there, but he rolls around a lot when he sleeps and I can feel all that.  I’ve been told the reason I can feel him so much more than I could feel Carter is because I weigh less than I did with Carter.  Someone told me that and then just days later I read it in one of my books.  Not sure if there’s really any truth to that, but I like feeling him move whenever I want to! 

Gender:  I am the queen in my house of boys!

What I’m Looking Forward To:  Finishing his room.  It’s been painted and we have his chair, but we still need to move all of Carter’s furniture into Garrett’s room (and put Carter’s new furniture in his room) and get a table and a lamp.  I’ll feel better when those things happen.  I’m not too worried about decor.  There’s plenty of time for that.  I just want furniture!

Next Appointment:  26 week appointment is on July 25th, me and Justin’s 5 year anniversary.  How appropriate.  It’s crazy that as of right now, I only have about 4 1/2 weeks left in the 2nd trimester and then onto 3rd trimester land I go.  This pregnancy is FLYING.  I’m doing my best to soak it up because it will likely be my last.  Neither Justin nor I want three children.  We know we may change our minds in the future, but we’ve both always said just 2 is fine with us.

Even though I haven’t blogged for 3 weeks on this pregnancy, I have done a decent job of still taking the pictures so here’s the pictures for weeks 21-23:

Bump Pic for Week 21:

Bump Pic for Week 22 (This is at the Golden Gate Bridge):

 

Bump Pic for Week 23: