19 weeks

I think it's fair to say we wouldn't have made it to Christmas before revealing this pregnancy - my body is giving me away! For some reason, I am carrying really high so I am still able to wear my own jeans but they are definitely getting uncomfortable - I am just too lazy to go dig out my maternity clothes.

We had our anatomy scan last week and the baby is looking good! My placenta placement also looks good so that is one more hurdle cleared on the way to a VBAC. C-section moms have a much higher chance of developing placenta previa and although it self corrects a lot of the time, it was something I didn't want to worry about. We didn't find out the gender so that is still a surprise. The tech said she couldn't tell anyway because the baby kept tucking up his/her feet to hide the goods. I don't know if I believe her because with Madelyn's ultrasound the tech said they did have to make sure there was something there and they just mark "Yes" on the sheet rather than "male or female". It makes sense since the whole point of that ultrasound is to make sure everything is forming correctly. Oh well - point is, we still don't know.

That being said, we are having a tough time with boy names. If Madelyn had been a boy, her name would have been Jonathan Michael. I consider that name to still be Madelyn's name - she was either Jonathan or Madelyn. I don't want to use it again so we are back to the drawing board. We both have a pretty strong feeling that this is a boy so I made a deal with Nick. When (not if) we get past this baby's due date and start doing the NST's (which include an ultrasound) and we still don't have a boy name, we will find out the gender at that point to see if it is in fact a boy. At that point, we will be pulling all nighters to name this little guy. My pregnancy brain has convinced me that this baby won't want to be born until we have a name.

Other news - Nick met with my midwife and really liked her. She gave my a referral for a chiropractor and is getting it submitted with my insurance company so I should be able to start that in a few weeks. She also suggested buying a prenatal yoga dvd and doing it on a regular basis to keep myself stretched out and moving. My doula suggested reading as many VBAC success stories as I can get my hands on to help me envision how this birth can go. Fortunately The Bump has a VBAC board and a lot of the women post their success stories so I have been checking that out as well.

Around the beginning on 18 weeks, I started feeling the baby move. I forgot what an awesome feeling that is and love that I am feeling this little bean on a regular basis now.

Weight gain - I gained 4lbs. So much for trying not to gain anything between those appointments. Oh well, I have surrendered to the weight gain at this point. I could gain another 32lbs and still weigh less than I did when I had Madelyn. I don't intend to gain another 32lbs so I figure no matter what, I will be ahead of where I was with her. Thankfully, I was able to get about 10lbs below my prepregnancy weight before getting pregnant again.