Almost 22 weeks

21 weeks & 5 days

Baby is about 11 inches long and just reached 1 lb! He is about the size of an envelope, but quite a bit thicker! He just started a growth spurt the past week. They say over the next 2 months or so I'll be gaining a pound a week to help him out. Yikes!

Hormones have gotten to me and made me kinda emotional. It's way too easy to cry for silly reasons. John is having to learn some coping skills.

Last Sunday we ordered a pizza and they totally messed up the order and I ended up crying for an hour because they put the wrong toppings on my whole wheat pizza. John didn't know what to do except wait for them to deliver the right pizza. Unfortunately by then since I had already taken my insulin I had to find something else to eat, so correcting the problem at that point didn't "solve" me being upset. Then I had the RIGHT pizza in front of me that I could no longer eat because I had already had to allocate my diet to something else. Couldn't win!

John also says I'm kinda "squishy". We went to Build-a-Bear at the mall to get baby a bear this past weekend. At one point they have you pick out a heart and you kiss it and make a wish then they sew it into your bear. When the sales clerk was explaining this process I just went "squish" and started bawling in the middle fo the store. It was so sweet! John just hugged me and laughed and smiled at his silly squishy pregnant wife.

Body chemistry changes have made my blood sugar swing all over the place for the last week. Within a few hours I can swing from an extreme high that makes me want to fall asleep for days to an extreme low that gives me a headache and causes me to shake and feel faint. I'm struggling trying to find the correct insulin levels to control it tightly again and pricking my fingers every 2 hours trying to see the reactions more clearly. I'm starting to understand the new reactions so hopefully I'll get that soon and have a week or two steady before it changes again. I am definitely up to the 2 different types of insulin and each of them atleast 3 times a day. Sometimes its more to do some correcting of dosages.

I did see my endocrinologist on Friday (diabetes specialist). She said I was actually doing amazing and to stop being so hard on myself. My A1C was within "normal" person range still, it had actually gone down further. And my triglycerides were maintained at the same level as 6 weeks ago. Blood pressure was still low. Whoo-hoo! So all in all, health-wise baby and I are doing good.

I've gained a total of 11 pounds so far. Sure seems like more if you look at my belly. It certainly looks like a definate baby belly these days. I'm pretty much in maternity clothes 100% of the time now. Thankfully my mom bought me a few basics that I wear a lot. I'm still lighter than I was 6 months ago because I lost weight before getting pregnant, but it doesn't really feel like it because my stomach seems so swollen and full.

It's weird, I constantly feel full and bloated but I am always ready to eat. I never know what I want to eat though. No super cravings recently. I just kinda graze on whatever is around. (Well, whatever I am ALLOWED to eat.) No real "I gotta have it". More like the "Must have SOMETHING now."

I've gotten into the habit of going around to some consignment stores after I drop John off at work on the weekends. I browse second-hand stores hoping to find a "great buy". That's where I've gotten my library of baby books and a few little outfits that were too cute to pass up, but other than that not a whole lot. There are some good deals out there sometimes.

OH! And MAN did I wish I had $$ this week. Tucson's USA Baby store was going out of business. Everything was 70% off. And I mean high end, brand name stuff going for next to nothing. I bought some little things like bottles and toys and stuff but I was aching to buy the kick butt rocker and strollers at cost. Unfortunatley I didn't have that much extra cash. Even at 70% off the high end stuff is just as much of an investment and the generic strollers.

In shopping I have discovered a new pet peeve of the week: Everything for baby is designed for you to have a large vehicle. It's like a requirement to have an SUV these days. Ridiculous American excessiveness. Anyways I realized that alot of strollers and car seats and such just won't fit in my little Chevy Cavalier. We'll have to do some more shopping around to figure out that one.

This week John parted with a lot of his biggest computer stuff. Most of which was so old nothing could be done with it anyway. A few pieces were really nice, but it would be years before we could even think about having the resources to put them together and get them functioning. I know he's a little disappointed in loosing an enterprise class server, but we'd need a minimum of $5000 just to get it functioning to be worth turning on...and that ain't happening any time soon. He's a little in mourning to part with it, but I think he's also a little relieved that now he can start fresh and have room for baby.

And there IS room for baby now! We got a whole wall cleared for the crib!!! I have boxes of "to sell" and "to donate". Now we just need to get them out of the house and I'll feel a bit better.

The last couple days its been raining and cooling off around here. Of course, it is still Tucson. Cold is in the 50's, but it has been hitting the 30's at night. I bundle up in the mornings when I am headed to work. They say pregnant women are supposed to overheat but I seem to be having the opposite problem. I am FREEZING! My toes and fingers don't seem to have any heat for the first few hours of the day. Every once in a while I go to the bathroom just to run my hands under some warm water just to get some feeling back into them.

I'm starting to have some trouble doing things at work. I've given up taking files for storage. And bending over to file things in the bottom drawer is getting to be a real chore that I avoid at all costs. This past week I had to shift a whole bunch of files into different drawers and I was pretty much dead by the afternoon. I will have to speak up and say something pretty soon because if I ever have to do that again it will be almost impossible. I'm spending most of my time staying busy on the computer instead. It's just hard for me to admit that I have limits! I still think I should be able to do anything. Isn't anybody gonna tell that to the baby!!!