Saturday, April 19, 2008

Burgeoning Belly - 31 weeks




Here are a few pictures of me from this morning, just before Brian and I headed out to our all-day Childbirth Education class. We enjoyed the class and learned a lot. When the lady explained how the baby has to turn to fit through the pelvis because the pelvic spines that stick out make the space tight, Brian declared that the spines shouldn't be there (as the lady confirmed they don't serve any real purpose other than being in the way) and as an engineer, he thinks a redesign is in order!

As for my belly, I'm still growing! I look like I'm toting a beach ball under my shirt, don't I? Let me tell you, it's making tying my shoes harder every day. My belly is ~35" around, and I've gained close to 20 lbs so far. I'm feeling pretty good, except that I definitely have the urge to put my feet up at the end of the day. Brian has been great about pampering me as I lounge!


Wednesday, April 16, 2008

3D-4D Ultrasound






Just for fun, Brian and I decided to have a 3D-4D ultrasound done today and here are a few of the 3D pictures we got. The 4th dimension is time, so the 4D just means we got a video of the session, in addition to the 3D still-shots. (FYI...the 3D machine works via algorithms, which explains the weird shadows and distortions in the images. Click on the pictures above to see them enlarged).

Brian and his mom, Peggy, joined me at the session. We were all able to watch the session on a 90-inch screen which was fantastic. While the sessions usually last about 20 minutes, we were in there for a good 50 minutes since Little Hittle was not completely cooperating! While the baby's head was down in my pelvis, it was stretching its legs so that its feet were down by its face, blocking the view for awhile. Then, once we got the legs to move out of the way, Little Hittle promptly placed a hand in front of his/her face! Geez! Maybe the baby is already camera shy... or, more likely, s/he is just a bit stubborn like me!

We got to see all sorts of cute things... Little Hittle stuck his/her tongue out a couple of times and did a lot of practice sucking, we saw that the baby has hair, and we got to see our cutie's chubby cheeks and luscious lips!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Pregnancy Brain



Do you ever feel like memory-impaired Dory from the movie Finding Nemo? I had to chuckle at myself this morning as I experienced an episode of "pregnancy brain" while I was getting dressed and ready for work. I started to get frustrated when I couldn't get my left eye contact out... only after several futile attempts did I realize that I couldn't get the contact out because it wasn't in there! It was morning and I was supposed to be putting IN my contacts. Duh! Then, when I went down to eat breakfast, I realized that I had already brushed my teeth too. Needless to say, I have especially clean teeth today (I brushed twice this morning).

Since about month 5, I've been "suffering" from what is called "pregnancy brain", "baby drain brain" or "momnesia". It's when a pregnant woman or mom to young children becomes forgetful, distracted or absentminded. Those of us afflicted by this phenomenon often find ourselves forgetting what we are going to say or do, dropping things, etc.. That actually reminds me of another instance I had last night while I was cooking dinner...I dropped almost the entire box of angel hair pasta noodles on the floor! Talk about playing pick up sticks! I have to say, though, being able to chalk up these silly antics to being pregnant is great... people are really forgiving!

There is a great debate over the true causes of this condition, but generally, the experts think this short-term memory loss is largely due to a few factors, 1) increased levels of the hormone progesterone, 2) lack of sleep, 3) distracting thoughts about the baby, 4) anemia (I actually am very slightly anemic right now so my doctor has put me on iron supplements).

Whatever the cause, it is actually a fairly common condition among pregnant women (82%, according to The Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing). There have been all sorts of news and magazine articles and TV segments dedicated to this topic over the last couple of months... even NBC's Today show did a segment on "momnesia" last month. Below are two articles I found that try to explain more about this funny phenomenon, if you're interested: click
here and here.

p.s. Brian had a case of sympathy pregnancy brain the other day too... someone asked him for our home phone number and he gave his old phone number from when he was a kid growing up! :)