My stretches of silence have been due to a gaming addiction. I’m having way too much fun playing the mage and squishing things (or, rather, blasting them with fireballs). Ahhh, so relaxing. But sadly 6 hours can go by really quickly when you’re engrossed in a game (and the hubby is kind enough to watch sports upstairs and leave you to while away the time).

Yesterday morning was my 20 week appointment. How crazy is that? I wasn’t nervous this time, because baby was kicking me while I sat in the waiting room.

Blood pressure was normal, but weigh-in was less than they’d like to see – I think only a 1 lb gain over the past 4 weeks, which makes it 6lbs total. I spoke to the nutritionist, just looking for some ideas on small, simple, protein foods. I’ve been struggling, especially with feeling sick and cutting out dairy again – I’m pretty sure that’s why I’ve gained little to no weight the past week or two (actually I lost a tiny bit from 19 to 20 weeks). I was encouraged to eat tuna once a week, salmon, eggs, peanut butter, and milk. (I’m just not a big meat eater, especially when pregnant. Chicken is so goddamn boring.) The midwife wasn’t concerned about my weight, but I know I need to continue gaining at a nice steady rate for the baby’s health, so I just want to make sure I eat right.

The midwife – who knows and remembers my history – ran through some questions about birth, pediatrician (what? agghh), feeding plans. And then she looked up and said to me, “I know this is a stupid question, but I have to ask it. Are you planning on birth control after the baby is born?” And then we both just laughed.

She did consult with the MFM doctor and went over his plan for me, which they will follow – it is the same as before. Growth ultrasounds every 4 weeks from here on out, and starting at 34 weeks weekly checks with bio-physical profiles and non-stress tests (alternating weeks). Also starting at 28 weeks they want me to do daily kick counts – which I was planning on doing anyways but I found it interesting that the doctors mentioned it. I’m not sure if I’m pleased that they brought it up, or annoyed that no one mentioned them to me when I was pregnant with Devin… a little of both, probably.

I told her how active this little girl is, how she has her active periods already, how I can feel quite a bit though I wasn’t expecting to yet. She flipped through my ultrasound report from last week, confirmed that everything looks good, absolutely nothing of note – and she confirmed that the heart is fine, and that I am probably correct in my suspicion that they took a while with the heart because the baby wouldn’t let them get one particular picture that they wanted. This appointment she measured my fundal height (right where it should be, as I already know – my uterus is to my belly button), and then of course checked the heartrate with the doppler. Nice and loud and strong, then baby started moving away from it, hehe.

Then she told the receptionist to book my ultrasound appointments for the next several months. She suggested I book the ultrasound and midwife appointment together so I don’t have to go back and forth to the hospital all the time and can get them both taken care of at once. At first this sounded like a good idea, but in order to do that I had to move my appointment day to monday instead of tuesday due to my work schedule (I can do a short morning appointment, but if I don’t get there until noon I’ll be bogged down until 9pm) – mondays are far far more flexible for me, they’re my “free” day. Except the midwife that I love doesn’t work mondays. So now I have these appointments booked through April with other midwives and I’m starting to think I shouldn’t have done that. I know the other ones could be just as fine, but I found someone whom I’m comfortable with, do I really want to mess with that?

An interesting thing I noticed: the midwife doesn’t just hand me the booking instructions and send me to the front desk – she takes the paperwork to the receptionist herself, and then she stands there with me, chit-chatting, while my appointment is being booked… which turned out to be a really good thing. Normally the process is short, a quick hi-bye, but yesterday it took a while to get all those different appointments booked in together. It’s a high counter so I was standing there just letting the receptionist type in the computer, waiting for my printout of appointment dates and times, when I got dizzy. Now I do get those dizzy spells once in a while, usually I just stand still and blink a few times and I’m fine. But this time it didn’t pass. I said, “I’m feeling really dizzy…” as my vision greyed out. They sat me down in the chair behind me; still I couldn’t see and my head was throbbing. I was also wicked hot, just pulsing heat – I got out of my coat and scarf and someone ran to get a cold cloth for my forehead and neck. Slowly everything leveled out again. The midwife came back in with crackers, peanut butter and a cup of juice. After that I felt right as rain – and just a little bit foolish, especially considering it happened because I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I hate making a scene and I felt like some damsel in distress… but I guess there are times when you just have no choice in the matter and you have to let people help you out a little.

And that was my exciting day. Or at least the exciting baby part of my day – the work part was not so exciting.

Happy half-way mark to me! The second trimester is certainly going by faster than the first.

This is my view from up here, circa 20 weeks.

And these are my nails. I didn’t want to cut them until I got a picture. LOL My natural nails, with just a clearcoat on. I’m very sad to cut them, but they are impeding my typing and that’s just no good.