Baby H: Week 23

Another week in the books and closer to little man's big debut! Assuming I don't end up going past my due date, we're officially less than 4 months till he's in our arms.

The blood tests from my glucose screening have still been lingering around this week in both good and bad ways. Bad when I got a call from the lab about a missing test result that had my medical school brain doing circles all weekend. Thankfully it was a mistake and wasn't an issue in the first place but that's definitely the down side of being knowledgeable in this area. Sometimes it's less scary to be ignorant, I swear. But on the bright side, the blood draw was able to determine that I'm anemic and I've started on an extra iron supplement along with my prenatal vitamins every day. The nurse said to be diligent about taking it every day because "it takes 4-6 weeks for you to stop feeling fatigued". And to think I only attributed my exhaustion to medical school, score! I'm also pretty confident anemia was causing my dizziness from a few weeks ago which I would love to avoid again.

Baby boy joined me again at the pool twice this week and I can already tell I'm going to be spending a lot of time there in the coming months. I've always loved the pool (being on swim team and working as a lifeguard) and can bet that my prego body will throughly enjoy the weightlessness and escape from the heat. I'm thankful that my skin has yet to have any adverse reactions or over-sensitivity to the sun so for now, bring on the tan! (With sunscreen of course!) Little man's also been asking me for lots of ice water, strawberry shortcake ice-cream bars (which are apparently hard to find around here), savory bagels and gummy candies. I've also noticed over the last few weeks that the idea of having hot coffee or other warm liquids has my stomach turning which means ice in everything, even glasses of milk!

My body must be doing a lot of stretching this week because my skin feels tight, my low back is always sore and sometimes I feel like my ribs are expanding by the minute. I also get a weird sensation in my diaphragm when I breath in as deeply as I can and sometimes when I cough. I can only attribute it to compression of everything inside that I imagine will only get worse as time goes by. I'm up about another pound making that a total of 16 from my pre-baby weight, a little quicker than I would have liked but I'd do anything for this boy. His pokes and sudden movements are still so sweet and are all over my belly now. He's still not very consistent, sometimes jabbing the same location over and over again but sometimes giving me one good push and then settling down. I find myself imagining what he's doing in there. Moving his arms and legs around rapidly? Just changing positions?

Finally, I'm excited to announce that J and I are about 98% decided on a name for our little mister. His first name is set, just working on the middle name a little. But we're keeping it a secret until his birthday, sorry! I've heard of way to many names being ruined by other people's opinions or stories... "oh that's my brother's dog's name", "I had a horrible boyfriend with that name", "that's our top choice too" so to avoid it all, we're not telling a soul. But, again, it makes it that much more special connecting with our boy with his name in mind.