During week 19, we found out that baby is a girl!! And the day after we found out we were flying to Seattle to go on our Alaska Cruise. Up until this point, baby had the nick name of "Blue." Once we were on our flight that just didn't seem like a good nickname for her anymore. As the plane was taking off, she either really HATED it or LOVED it, because she moving around like crazy! So we started calling her little "Twinkle Toes." Flying while being pregnant was definitely a different experience for me, because I was worried about the baby as we were landing and taking off. I kept bracing her so that wouldn't get bumped around too much. It was also different because of my swollen ankle! My left ankle started swelling up and being super painful around week 18 in my pregnancy. Like SO swollen that I couldn't even wear my shoes anymore! I had to go to the store before our cruise to buy a new pair of shoes that were a WHOLE shoe size bigger than what I normally wear so that I could walk during our cruise! I also had to wear compression socks during our flight.
During week 19, we found out that baby is a girl!! We thought that this would be our last trip on our own, but I soon found out that wasn’t really the case because I was taking her into consideration the whole trip. Obviously, a big difference was that I couldn’t drink like I normally do on our trip. Luckily, we had an awesome bartender that made me delicious non-alcoholic mojito drinks that I like. I also had fun doing different poses trying to show her off. But of all that, my ankle was really the most impactful. It hurt so darn bad that I could barely walk up the stairs on the ship. We had to rely on riding the elevators MUCH more on this cruise than we ever have in the past.
By week 22 I felt like I was showing enough to start taking weekly bump pictures! I also started a possible name list for baby. I went through the top 1000 most popular names in 2018 and 2017. I knew that I didn't want to name her anything crazy, so if it a name wasn't within the top 1000 most popular names, it probably wasn't something that we were going to pick. Now just waiting for Cody to do the same thing so that we can compare our lists and come up with a narrowed down version.
This week I started to be able to feel baby kick on the outside!! I'm still at the point where it's pretty infrequent, so whenever it happens I tend to get startled and jump. Cody wasn't around the baby at the "right time/right place" this week to get to feel her yet.
This weekend my mom and I went to the Medina Red Wagon sale. We were there on half off day and went a liiiiiittle bit crazy when it came to buying baby clothes!!
During week 24 I had another doctor appointment. This was my glucose test to test for gestational diabetes. I had to drink a bottle of a fruit punch flavor glucose drink. BLEH! Within 5-10 minutes of drinking this stuff, I literally felt sick to my stomach. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to be able to keep it down to take the test. I had to wait an hour from when I drank it to get my blood drawn. Luckily, I was able to hold out and make it to the test. I was so miserable though! I sat there getting my blood drawn, knowing that I was going to run to the bathroom right afterwards, and my blood came out the slowest it has ever done in my WHOLE life! It was literally going at the speed of filling up the tubes 1 drip at a time. But will power! I did make it to the bathroom in time! Ugh! I really hope that my blood work comes back good, because if not, I’ve heard the next step is to do a 3 HOUR glucose test! OMG! I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to do it. So fingers crossed I get good news when my results come back!
In my appointment room, I was met within a few minutes by my doctor (so refreshing to have a doctor that doesn’t keep you waiting for an hour to get to talk to them). Baby’s heart rate was 168 and she was really active because of the glucose drink. The doctor also measured my belly and said that the measurements were right on track. I started talking to her more about my ankle and how badly it hurts me. She asked me if I’d ever broken or sprained my ankle in the past… well when I played basketball I did roll my ankles quite a bit. And at one point they hurt so bad that I had to wear ankle braces to play. So she said that’s why they are hurting me now! She said that pregnancy makes you pay for old injuries. Even though that I haven’t had trouble with it in years, she said that pregnancy brings that type of stuff out in you… especially during your first pregnancy. She said that knees and ankles were even more susceptible to this than other body parts. At this point, I’m seriously hoping that this goes away after pregnancy, because it’s no joke! My ankle hurts more now than it ever did when I was younger. Sometimes it goes real stiff to where I can barely move it, and just to lightly touch it hurts pretty badly. I hope that this isn’t a peek into my elder years! But my doctor’s reasoning does make me feel a bit more validated. The last appointment that I had, we had to book with a different doctor because we were trying to squeeze in finding out the baby’s gender before our cruise… so it wasn’t our doctor that I talked to when I told her that my ankle was swollen and hurting. That doctor basically just shrugged and said “Well swelling is super common with pregnancy… it happens to most women. Nothing you can do.” And I’ve been thinking for the past 5 weeks since, that I don’t believe that most women have pain like this even if they are swollen… I was really wondering if this was truly pregnancy related or if I had broken my foot somehow or something! But my doctor’s explanation makes a bit more sense to me. Unfortunately, she didn’t really have a solution to offer to help either, but at least I feel like I understand it a bit better. Throughout this week, I have actively been trying to have Cody feel the baby kicking. She’ll kick at odd times, and usually when he’s not by me. By the time he comes over, she plays possum and stops moving! Cody was even jiggling her around last night hoping that she’d do it… he was trying and trying, and then gave up and went into the other room. Wouldn’t you know she started kicking right after he left! I've got a good feeling that he's going to catch her sooner or later though. I feel like week 24 could be "the" week for him to get to feel her.
