20 weeks down, 20 (ish) weeks to go!

Little update for you, for those who are interested. For those of you who aren't, why are you still reading?! :)

Last week Seth and I went for my 20 week scan. I was pretty excited in the run up to the scan as I was really looking forward to seeing our baby again, especially because it had seemed like ages ago since the 12 week scan. My appointment was at 10.45am and I was told in my appointment letter to drink 3 cups of water an hour before the appointment. So I obediently did this as I was getting ready that morning. As we left the house, I had a bottle of water with me and I asked Seth if he thought I should drink any more water, as I didn't really feel like I was that full just yet. Seth laughed and told me that I didn't want to end up wetting myself because I'd had too much to drink. Quite true!

We arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes before my appointment. As we were in the waiting room, a woman and her husband / boyfriend arrived. When she sat down, she was fidgeting a lot and was perched right on the edge of her chair. She hit her husband / boyfriend on the arm when he started to make water sounds. I think she too followed the instructions in the letter. 35 minutes later, my name was called. By this point, I needed the toilet quite a lot and when I had to lay down on the bed for the scan, I had to actually get Seth to help me, for fear that I would over-exert myself (because obviously laying down on a bed takes just that much effort) and wet myself. I am so glad I had been practising my pelvic floor exercises because they were very much needed. The sonographer then left the room for what felt like an hour but in reality was only 5 minutes. And then the scan began.


It was so exciting to see our baby again. I had to kind of shift around a bit so that I could see as the sonographer's arm was blocking my view but after that, all was well! He explained everything that he was looking at and we both found it fascinating! We saw the baby's brain, it's spine, stomach, kidneys, arms and legs, little hands and feet (it really did look like it was waving to us at one point. I think it knew what was happening and it really did wave to us to say hello. It's a very friendly baby), it's brain and it's heart. It was incredible how we could actually see the four chambers of the heart. About half way through the scan I remembered to tell the sonographer that we didn't want to know the sex of the baby. I had been so determined that we wouldn't find out (Seth wanted to know, but luckily he knew better than to insist!), I couldn't believe that I had nearly forgotten to tell him! I think that had we wanted to know, he would have been able to tell us quite easily. Our baby isn't very modest.

I know a lot of people don't like being pregnant but I must say, I am rather enjoying the whole thing! Maybe it's because I haven't really been ill with it. I have had bad headaches and a cold that has pretty much lasted since November, but other than that I think I've been one of the fortunate ones. I found that the first 12 weeks went by pretty slowly - after the initial excitement of finding out that we were having a baby, I wanted to tell people and so it killed me keeping it quiet! I was pretty happy when we could share the news. 12 to around 17 weeks also went by fairly slowly - people now knew I was pregnant and whilst I was still very excited by it all (I may have the baby centre pregnancy app on my phone. Don't judge) I was waiting for something more to happen. Like a growing stomach, or being able to feel the baby move. 17 weeks up to this point have been brilliant - from feeling the first tiny wriggling movements of the baby to feeling stronger movements and kicks and being able to feel it with my hand as well - have been really exciting for me. I'm glad that Seth has been able to feel the baby move as now he can share some more of that excitement too. Not that he's not excited, he really is, but I think it's very different for the husbands as they don't have the baby growing inside of them, so it now feels like he can share it all a bit more. He often laughs at me as he'll walk into the lounge and see me sitting there with my hand on my stomach, feeling the baby move. But he laughs in a nice way, as he will then say how much he loves seeing me feeling the baby move and he will tell me what an amazing mother I will be. He's a good husband!

So, that's my pregnancy news so far. The bump is slowly getting bigger, although a lot of people I know and see regularly are still only just finding out I'm pregnant, so I guess either I don't look that pregnant at all, or I just look fat. All in good time, I suppose! The looking pregnant part, hopefully not the looking fat part. Although I have been craving sweet things a lot more. Like marshmallows, popcorn and coconut flavoured jelly belly beans and Cold Stone Creamery oreo overload. The first two I could do something about, but sadly, unless I go to the States, I can't really do much about the third.

That really is all of my news now. I am a happy pregnant person! Not to sound cheesy or anything, but I must say, I feel pretty blessed. When I know that there are so many people in the world who are unable to have children and who want them desperately, I feel so fortunate to be pregnant. I have occasional aches and pains but I always say to Seth that I will really try not to moan about it because I am lucky to be pregnant and I really don't want to take that foregranted. I just want to enjoy it all.