17 Weeks

Everyone says that with your second kid you take fewer photos and celebrate fewer milestones, you're just too busy. If my blog is any indication this is probably true for us. You won't see many posed belly shots taken every few weeks and I probably won't have much to say unless it is something big, for example next week we have our ultrasound that will hopefully tell us if we are having a boy or a girl, check back I will eventually blog about it!

I am 17.5 weeks today and feeling pretty good, aside from the aforementioned insomnia here and there. The first thing I noticed about this pregnancy is that my belly immediately springs forth whenever I eat, making me look more pregnant than I actually am. I had come to peace with this but about 10 days go the belly sprang forth but hasn't recoiled since! What I figured out is my uterus/baby is occupying the lower half of my abdomen and thereby forcing my tummy fat upward creating a rounded bump. The good news is I haven't gained much weight (yet!) so I hope that things will even out eventually. Here is a picture of Harrison from Easter in which you can see a side view of my belly:

At about 15 weeks I realized that I could feel the baby moving around, which was a little weird since I was closer to 22 weeks when I could first feel Harrison kicking. Most of the time I interpret the motions as the baby doing somersaults or turning over "in bed." It is uncomfortable only when the baby seems to push "away" from me which puts pressure right at my waist line of my pants.

We are having family photos taken in a couple weeks and Harrison came to the mall with me to let me look for clothes (15 minutes tops and only with a bribe of playing in the mall afterwards, he's a tough negotiator). This is not his first time in the maternity section with me, but it is the first time he let me take a picture of him with the pillow tummy you can try on. Yes, I know I look rockin' with socks on but the photo is cuter if you kind of compare him to me in the background... drawback of any dress is it makes me look even bigger!

Speaking of shopping with him, I was shopping for jeans a couple weeks ago and Harrison was browsing the adjoining baby section. He picked up a shirt and said, "this is cute mama, I want to get this for my baby." So sweet. I explained to him that we will wait to buy any clothes until we know if we are having a baby boy or a baby girl. I continued shopping for a few more minutes and then noticed he was stuffing that same shirt under our stroller. When I told him he couldn't do that he told me again he wanted it for his baby. When I bent down to remove the shirt from the stroller I found the entire stack of shirts in multiple sizes stuffed under there! He had been putting them in there one by one while I wasn't looking.