Week 24

Construction plans (or nesting) and the joy of movement

Being unemployed generally means that my weekends are much busier than my weekdays.  It’s no wonder, then, that I’m posting this a little later than I’d like to.  Maybe I should make Monday my official weekly posting day, and on three day weekends, Tuesday.  That’s because making decisions about how to spend our money on home projects, visiting stores to find the right components for our house, and trying to get as much done as we can fill nearly every free moment J and I have together on the weekend.  I guess you could call it nesting, even if we haven’t gotten close to thinking about the baby’s room yet.

There are so many projects for us to get to over the weekend, especially ones that we can do before Baby Blueberry gets too big for me to move around relatively comfortably.  J and I were excited to have my dad and stepmom came into town for a day and a half this weekend, since my dad has done many a construction project in the few homes that he has owned.   He is an excellent resource for my husband and me.  So we had high hopes to make a big dent in the work we have cut out for ourselves.

Unfortunately for us, nearly all of the projects we hoped to have my dad help us out with were thwarted by the construction rule of law:  Nothing happens when you want it to.  The machines were down.  The people who could really help us just went home.  That kind of stuff.  There’s a lot of waiting and hoping that things will come together more quickly, but it seems unlikely that we’re going to get as far as I would like before I balloon out even more.  And Baby Blueberry just keeps on getting bigger.

My sister asked how it feels to have a baby move around inside, and it gave me pause.  What does it feel like?  It has changed pretty significantly over the last eight weeks.  The first time I felt the baby move was at week 16, while we were away for Christhanukkah.  Some people describe the feeling as a flutter, but I just felt like there were many light jabs.  For the weeks after, the light jabs continued until they became stronger.  Then I felt like I could call her movements flutters, or maybe like a series of really quick taps in funny places.  Two weeks ago, the quality of the movements changed again.  Now I can feel her as she changes positions.  If her head, or whatever it is, is moving alongside my inner skin, I feel it.

A week ago, I had J put his hand on my tummy to feel the kicks and jabs.  All the while that she was moving, he couldn’t feel it himself even if I announced that she had just moved against his hand.  But this week, he had his first unprompted unannounced baby experience.  He was able to feel her movements several times as we sat there watching my belly bump along wherever she hit.  I hadn’t spent much time watching my belly before this, but I can see that we will have a new pastime.  You have to wonder what’s going on in the little developing brain and body of the baby.

We know that she is starting to practice breathing, sucking amniotic fluid into her lungs, and she’s starting to fill out.  Up until this point, she’s basically been skin and bones.  Taste buds are forming, and apparently, if you were to look at her face when I eat something bitter, she might express displeasure!  This weekend we ate a lot of spicy food; I wonder what she thought about that.

She and I are both growing, and I’m happy that the daily temperature is getting warmer.  I need to hit the pool.  I had been swimming pretty religiously twice to three times a week up until December.  When the chaos of buying our home and moving to a new city hit, I put swimming off to the side.  I’m ready to take the plunge again, though.  My goal is to get to the pool at least once this week.  Let’s see if I make it!

Signing off and wishing you the best.