24 week check in

The breathe a sigh of relief week, because even a podunk hospital will take you seriously if something seems to be going wrong.  The big magic widely accepted viability cutoff week.

Even when everything is flying along and is totally peachy, there is always a bit of reassurance once you pass this point.  At least for me there is.

And here is your fair warning that if you're offended by bare bellies, you should stop now.  Or cover your eyes and scroll quickly or something.  I'll spare you a weekly update, but I have enjoyed looking back over the past couple of pregnancies at the updates I've blogged, so every few weeks or so until the very end I'll update.

24 Weeks

Total Weight Gain: by my scale I'm up about 15 pounds.  By my dr.'s scale at my appointment last week, 12.  I'm going with mine being more accurate since I'm always wearing the same thing and it's the same time of day when I weigh in here.

Maternity Clothes: Nope!  Yay!  Well, ok, I have a couple of long shirts that are technically maternity shirts that I've worn once or twice, and when I have a hankering for skinny jeans I do have a pair of those with a panel that I have to break out.  Real skinny jeans stopped happening a while ago.  But in general, low waist jeans a little bigger than normal are still doing the job.

Sleep: Meh.  Some nights are better than others.  Overall I really can't complain, usually I'm only up once in the night, but some nights include a lot of tossing and turning.  I find that usually on the nights when Aaron is home I sleep like a rock.  It's so nice.

Miss Anything?  Some of my clothes.  And some running related things; I do miss running fast (well, my version of fast anyway), I miss speed work and fast hill repeats.  I think I miss hard workouts in general.  I do miss really long runs as well, and am a little envious of my friends who are in marathon training mode right now.  But I think that is partly due to the days being a little warmer...if we were stuck in the polar vortex here, I'm guessing I wouldn't be longing for a 3 hour run!

Movement: Baby isn't as constantly active as most of my others have been.  I have an anterior placenta, but have with the last couple of kids as well and it didn't seem to make a difference in what I was able to feel as far as their movement, so apparently he's just a pretty chill kid?  I will admit it causes a little paranoia when I haven't felt him for a number of hours, but on the flip side it makes me appreciate it that much more when I do feel him being particularly active!  LOVE watching him jump around in there.

Food Cravings: Strawberries

Making me sick: Red meat, as is the case in most of my pregnancies.  And I haven't been able to stomach pita chips since I got pregnant.  Weird.

Showing: Yep.  For sure. The belly isn't huge, but I have thickened up a ton everywhere.  I see these cute little ladies who don't look pregnant anywhere but their belly-like that pregnancy Barbie from a few years back where you could just pop off the belly and she looked normal again...total novelty to me because my thighs/hips/butt/waist thicken from the very beginning!

Gender: Boy!

Wedding ring on/off: On

How are you feeling? Every pregnant woman's favorite question!  Honestly, pretty darn good.  Feeling very blessed to be healthy and strong and not struggle through pregnancy the way so many do.  It definitely makes the hard work to be in shape between pregnancies worth it!  I will admit that at the end of the day I am pretty wiped out, and I get tired more easily than I would like to, but considering that this is my tenth baby, I appreciate how awesome that is!  Especially now that I'm officially medically "old" to be doing this.

Looking forward to: Eventually figuring out the right name for this child.  Since none of our kids' names start with the same letter, we figured we'd stick with that route, so any A, C, D, E, J, L, M, S, T names are out.  You'd think that with 17 letters left to choose from it wouldn't be that hard.  Our last name makes it a little bit tricky, we have to project ourselves to childhood and how any particular name could be twisted to be obnoxious and/or inappropriate with our last name. We have a list of about 20 names that are up for consideration, but none of them seem to fit just right.  This may be the first time that one of our babies arrives without a name!  Plenty of time still, but weird to not know yet.  We've found the right name by this point with all but one of our kids in the past.