A Blueberry Update

Since I'm 20 weeks now, by my best estimation, I thought it was ripe time for another Blueberry update. (And by the way, I've had some questions about my questionable due date. Some people are wondering how in today's technology it is even possible to not actually know your due date. Well, let me tell you. Because I was still breastfeeding Zeke when I got pregnant, my ovulation wasnt started back up in a regular pattern, so I wasn't able to base my due date off of the first day of my last cycle, which is the standard practice. Usually when for one reason or another you cant base it off your cycle, you go ahead and base it off the baby's size in an ultrasound. We decided not to do that however, and for a few different reasons. A. Ultrasound dating isn't as accurate as doctors would like you to believe, a lot of times the size they get depends on their angle, placental fluids, ect. And especially with my past of...ahem...rather large babies, chances are this baby will also look, well, rather large. B. Due dates in general aren't as accurate as doctors would like you to believe. 40 weeks is an average and that is about it. Anything from 38-42 is considered "due". Yep, that's right. You arent "past due" until after 42 weeks. So, since we werent really planning on doing an ultrasound anyways, we decided an accurate due date wasnt important enough to us to do one just for that reason.) Phew.

Questions I see coming because of the answer to THAT question: Where did the whole "20 weeks" thing come from then? My midwife and I figure that I was probably 5 weeks when I found out I was pregnant and 16 weeks when I first felt kicking. You can also measure your uterus from the outside for a slightly less accurate date. If all that is true, then I would be 20 weeks right now (except I guess I'm actually measuring at 21, see above about big babies), which would put me in early January for a birth...but we're trying to just think of it as January.

Why arent you doing an ultrasound? Do you think they are unsafe or something? Not really, I mean, I've read the research wondering about their safety but in the end I think they are a great tool and probably perfectly safe. Its just that the reasons for ultrasounds are thus: to screen for abnormalities, to get an accurate due date, and to find out the sex of the baby. Since a due date isnt important to us, we dont want to find out the sex, and we dont believe in abortion and therefor wouldnt do anything about any abnormalities found...well there's just no reason right now for us to get one.

Phew. Again.

So Blueberry update continued. I'm about 20 weeks along. According to my weekly babycenter email that makes Blueberry about the length of a bananna now. (although how do they know anyways? all babies are different sizes after all. but then again so are all banana's so maybe they have it better than I thought.) I'm at that stage of pregnancy where you cant stop eating. No, really, I CANT STOP. I found myself moaning and murmering sweet nothings to my baked potato yesterday afternoon and decided maybe it was getting out of hand. In my defense, Im the kind of girl that when I make a sandwich, I freakin' MAKE that sandwich. I'm not all, oh turkey and mayo and I'm done. I get out the pickle, I'm slicing up tomato, I take my food seriously. So when I say baked potato I am talking about melty butter and sour cream and bacon bits and chives and lots of salt and pepper and... (getting up to make another baked potato) But still, all excuses aside, if I posted a video of myself eating that potato teenage boys all over this country wouldnt be able to get to it...because it would be blocked by their parent's filters.

I'm, maybe not so coincidentally, also getting dangerously close to the wrong side of 150 pounds.
I worried for a few hours that perhaps this meant I was having twins. But then my friends assured me that I wasnt that big at all, and I remembered that not gaining any weight until your 3rd trimester (like I did with Zeke) isnt exactly normal or healthy. Then my midwife laughed out loud at me. So catastrophe averted. (Can you imagine having 3 children under the age of 2? I can, which is why I don't want to.)

Blueberry herself (yes, I've decided at last that this is a girl for various pseudo-scientific reasons, like the fact that I'm carrying much higher, cant decide on any boy names Josh and I both like, and this baby has a much faster heartbeat then Zeke did) is doing just great. She is just kick kick kicking away in there. In fact Cathy, my midwife, was having a hell of a time finding a heartbeat at our appointment yesterday and in the end had to give up completely. She was kicking the doppler and then running away to the other side of my stomach, and finally retreated all the way back by my spine where she couldn't be reached and then stayed stubbornly back there the rest of the appointment. Since she's obviously alive and also obviously wants her privacy we just let it go. Later on she wont have so much room and we will be able to catch her.

But it brings up the question, will she be born as stranger shy and as stubborn as her brother? We wait trembling to find out.