27 Weeks

Sea Monkey is 2 pounds, 14 1/2 inches. S/he sleeps at regular intervals, and opens and closes his/her eyes. That seems really weird to me, since there's all that fluid in there, but then, I've never been able to open my eyes under water. It's just weird. If Sea Monkey were to be born now, his/her lungs would function, but they'd need medical help. I already knew that, but it's really reassuring to see that in my weekly updates, instead of just a random factoid I've come across that will be applicable at X point in my pregnancy.

New this past week: leg cramps! Hooray! Due to my crazy-growing uterus putting pressure on some veins, leg cramps are now very common and will only get worse as the pregnancy progresses! It's a wonderful way to wake up (ha!). Really, I don't mind it. It lasts about 10 seconds and then I go back to sleep. Annoying, sure, but not a big deal.

Also new: itchy belly! Bah. I did have a fun (brief) conversation with a cashier the other night; she had just had a baby 3 months ago and could empathize with the itchiness. She had asked which hospital I was going to, and I told her I was having the baby at home. She asked if I was going to do a water birth, I said yep, and she seemed to think it was pretty cool. I was a little surprised that she thought it was cool, because apparently a lot of women planning home births get a lot of hostility for their decision to birth at home. But hey. It works for me. =)

27 weeks is limbo-land in terms of which trimester I'm in. One of my weekly updates says I'm in the 3rd trimester, the other says it doesn't start until next week. Why can't they just agree? It was like that in the transition between first and second trimesters, too.

I am in a near constant state of being worn out, and entirely lacking any motivation to do anything, whatsoever. It's particularly terrible when Zach and I get back from our walks. I've started spending part of my afternoons when I have a smidge more energy doing as much prep work as I can for dinner, that way I have a whole lot less to do. It helps a lot.

I'm officially in maternity pants now. My old jeans still fit, I just really don't like the feeling of the material touching my belly like they did. So maternity pants it is. And the elastic band.... very annoying. Really. I've only been wearing maternity pants for two days now and I'm already annoyed. Yikes. But I'm feeling very relieved that I only have to deal with them for the one trimester and however long it takes to get back into pre-pregnancy shape. Which hopefully won't be long, since it took forever for me to get into them to begin with. Also: why in the world did designers of maternity pants decide it was a good idea to not give those pants pockets?? Why? WHY would you do that?

Today (Saturday), Zach and I went to this store in town called The Children's Orchard; it's kind of like this thrift store for kids' stuff. You can sell baby clothes and equipment and buy stuff, but they have standards for the things they buy and sell; they want to have good quality things. Anyway, today they had a $5 bag sale, which is basically where you shove all the clothes you can into a bag that they provide and then you get all that stuff for $5. It's pretty cool. We got 2 bags of size 3-6 and higher clothes (a lot of pants and neutral tops). We totaled it up when we got home and figured out we'd saved about $115 from the sale, which is pretty darn awesome (it'd be even more if we'd bought them new). They only do the sale twice a year (and understandably so, since we made out like bandits today). So we now have a start on clothes for Sea Monkey for when s/he gets bigger. And we'll probably fill out the rest of Sea Monkey's wardrobe once s/he is here, so we can have clothes that are actually gender specific. And we'll hit up the next $5 bag sale in December. =)

That's really about it. Things are pretty boring, but that's fine with me, because I'd much rather have boring updates for the next 13 weeks or so than updates about pre-term labor, pre-eclampsia, etc. Boring is good.

Belly picture: