23 weeks

It's going by so fast!  Dean took this picture of me on Sunday....I always feel like my belly is much bigger than it actually is!

Baby's size: according to my BabyCenter email today, the baby is 11 inches long (wow!) and weighs over 1 pound. 


How I'm feeling: WHEW!  So tired!  My friend Kristen said, "welcome to pregnancy in your thirties!" and I'm wondering if that's part of it.  It never occurs to me that I'm an "older" mom (and really, I'm only 31 so I know I'm not too old) but I guess it makes sense that the older you get, the less your body is able to keep up with a pregnancy (not to mention having two small kids already).   Also, I'm having quite a few hypoglycemic episodes....probably once every three or four days.  All of a sudden (like Monday when I was with the kids at Moody Gardens), I'll break out into a sweat, and I feel incredibly hungry and weak.  Orange juice is the only thing that helps it instantly.  I realized that I'll have to keep some OJ with me when we go on outings like that....because there was no fruit juice (or fruit) to be found at Palm Beach.  I ate half the food we brought and finally felt better after about 15 minutes.

Baby names: we've finally started talking about it.  My goal is to come up with a name that everybody knows, but isn't super popular right now (like in the top 20).  Thankfully, Dean and I actually have very similar tastes on names....it's amazing how we pretty much agree on every name that we like or dislike.  Some of my favorites right now are Lauren (my personal favorite, although this one is always fairly popular), Meredith, Molly, Megan, and Jenna.  I also love Claire, but we may use this as a middle name (depending on the first name we choose). 

Movement: Finally, a lot!  The past couple weeks I have felt her (still feels weird to say "her") move quite a bit....especially in the evenings.  This is when I start to get a little stressed in every pregnancy.....I feel it moving fairly regularly, so I start getting unnecessarily paranoid when I don't feel it moving for a few hours.

I have another ultrasound on Friday.  They want to re-do the one I had at 19.5 weeks for two reasons: the baby was measuring a full week ahead of my due date (which my doctor seemed to think was no big deal that day....but whatever), and they had a hard time seeing some of the anatomy on the images.  This doesn't surprise me because the baby was curled up for much of it.  I'm excited too, because now I'll hopefully get some more confirmation that it's actually a girl, instead of having to wait until 29 or 30 weeks.  Part of me is still doubting!