24 Weeks!

Viability! Hooray! That means that if Sea Monkey is born now, s/he has a fighting chance at surviving! But being born now means an extended stay in the NICU. So... s/he's going to stick in there for another 3 1/2 months-ish. I'm determined that that's how it's going to be.

Size and weight for Sea Monkey- s/he's now about a foot long (mmm, Subway) and weighs just over a pound. In the coming weeks, Sea Monkey will be plumping up to be a chubby little baby, and Zach won't think s/he looks like an alien anymore. =) Zach thinks the drawings of the scrawny little babies on babycenter look alien-like. Soon we won't have an alien-child anymore, though.

Fun fact (not really)- my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball. Whoah.

There's also a whole bunch of info on my weekly update email about pre-term labor, and I have no desire whatsoever to delve into that. I did read it, and my brain is just this massive sponge, so it is now permanently filed in a scary little cabinet in the corner of my mind and will hopefully begin collecting cobwebs soon, since it will not be accessed. Hear that Sea Monkey? Pre-term labor? Not happening. I refuse. (...I wonder if sheer stubbornness can prevent pre-term labor?)

We start childbirth classes tomorrow! I'm excited. We're supposed to bring a pillow and blanket and we will be practicing "intense relaxation." I'm definitely down for that. =)

Oh, Sea Monkey has a dresser! With a whole... drawer... of clothes! =) Richard and Karen had a large dresser that they didn't want to keep, and said we could have it if we wanted, or they'd sell it on craigslist, and since Zach and I are kind of uber "DON'T WASTE ANYTHING!!" people, we took it. Zach has a dresser now, too! He'd been using a couple of those 3-drawer rubbermaid tote things as a dresser, but now those are in the hallway waiting for me to be inspired and put them to use and both of our clothes are in our new dresser (and Mali thinks the totes are excellent play things to climb all over). The little black dresser I'd been using is now designated as Sea Monkey's dresser and will double as a changing table. So now we have somewhere to clean Sea Monkey's little tush without worrying about blow outs staining the carpet or the bedspread or something. I feel so accomplished. =)

Picture time! Here's Sea Monkey's dresser (the white and yellow blanket is the one my mom made for SM). At some point we'll have cutesy little things to decorate the space around it with (since the surface will be a changing table), but for now, this is all we have.


And the stash of clothes we have so far! They haven't been washed yet, they're just sorted into type by size...




And belly picture...



I feel like I'm never going to outgrow this shirt. It's just going to fit forever. I'm going to get all the way to 40 weeks and all laws of physics and everything sciencey will say there's no way this shirt should still fit.... but it will. And I'll still be wearing my normal jeans. Because I'm wearing them now and still have inches of space. I am wearing a few maternity shirts, though... most of my normal shirts still fit, some of the shorter shirts I've had to stop wearing because they show a glimmer of the tummy, and I just don't care for that. But yeah. Most of my normal clothes still fit and I'm a month away from Trimester 3.