23 Week Summary

Okay, the baby is definitely bigger this week!

23 weeks, 5 days
Ignore my hair, I was fresh from the shower.

Ryan and I spent some time gazing at my bump earlier. It's large enough not to ignore. That is, I still am not sure it's large enough for strangers to know, especially as I typically am wearing a coat as we go out lately. But at home with Ryan? It can't be ignored!

Baby was a little less rambunctious this week. Still kicked and moved every day, but didn't have a day of "I just can't stop wiggling!" like last week and the week before had. I did have a time on Saturday though where I was in bed and I turned over and apparently the baby either did or didn't like that and was kicking every five seconds for the next two minutes while I smiled. But mainly it's been more like a kick an hour or so, on average.

However, this is the week Ryan felt the baby for the first time! I had just changed positions in bed and the baby apparently didn't like being flipped on his/her head and was trying to wiggle around and I grabbed Ryan's hand and got him to feel the baby's adjustment.

While the kicks don't seem as frequent, they are stronger. And they are "well placed." I've been kicked in the stomach for the first time this week! Luckily the baby isn't so strong that did anything yet, but I remember my mom telling me when she was pregnant with me every time she ate I'd kick it back up into her throat, probably saying "Hey, there's not enough room in this abdominal cavity!" Hopefully baby doesn't take after Mommy in that! I'm also getting kicked in a sensitive lower area, though again it's not strong enough to hurt. I've had my bladder danced on for a few weeks now, but the baby is obviously getting stronger on that one.

I got excited to see 23 weeks because this is the first week they have survival statistics for preemies. It's only 17%, but prior to this the survival rates were so low as to not be statistically measurable (the youngest surviving baby being born at 21 weeks 6 days) but now and with drastic increases each week the baby's got at least a chance should anything go wrong. Not that I think something will go wrong, everything so far has been good.

I've had a few other pregnancy "milestones" this week. First appearance of colostrum, and first "heart burn"... I'm hoping against that last one actually. What happened was I was cleaning the bathroom floor and I felt the acid in my throat. I haven't gotten heart burn yet, but I know it's caused by that and I'm thinking oh darn. I've had pretty much every other pregnancy symptom there is, so I was hoping I was luckily enough to avoid the heartburn... we'll see... as I said it wasn't full blown heartburn yet.

here's my little baby, 22 weeks. (For those ultrasound impaired,
he or she is lying on their back and this is from the side.)

I think that's pretty much this week. We got to get the ultrasound pictures from 22 weeks finally, BUT enclosed with it was a CD-Rom with photos and/or videos on it; I don't know because I haven't seen it. We don't have a CD-Rom drive working and we tried it on my father-in-law's laptop but it wouldn't recognize it. When Ryan asked his dad for help his dad said to blow on the lense (sadly did nothing) but I'm guessing that means it's probably the drive, not the disk. Still the medical report side of the ultrasound had a few photos, including this one profile. (The rest are like stomach, kidneys, brain, etc.) So I can share that for now!