Pregnant Livin'

Today I am FOUR months pregnant. Gotta take a belly picture when the hubs gets up! It seems so strange--four months seems "legitimately" pregnant. The first few weeks are, well, just weeks...you finally make it to three months, but it's more exciting to think about the transition to second trimester...but now I feel like I can start measuring in months! It doesn't feel like we should be this far, but that's probably because we pretty much just told people, and now we're almost at the halfway point already.

Me and watermelon are still BFFs, and I still don't feel like I'm eating enough. Most evenings, no matter what I ate for lunch (or what time I ate), I don't feel hungry for dinner. I try to make sure I get something in me so I don't wake up miserable, but I still don't feel like sitting down to a balanced meal. I'm on a pretty steady Zofran schedule--I take 4 mg in the morning every two days. That seems to be my limit of feeling good. I took one on Thursday, felt good Friday and Saturday, and felt pretty crummy when I woke up today. If it's only 4 mg, I suppose I can live with that. I still have a little hope that I will not be sick the entire pregnancy, as a few women I know said that it took them until 16 weeks to feel good. Where is the insatiable appetite that is supposed to be part of this package deal?!

I'm also getting frequent headaches, and I'm not sure if it's the pregnancy or my pillow. It seems like when I wake up in the morning, I feel very tight in my neck and shoulders. It disgusts me that I cannot get through one single day without taking medicine of some kind. I refuse to combine medicines, but that means that if I have to take Zofran, I can't take my allergy medicine (which I can no longer do without). If I take my allergy medicine and then get nauseous, too bad. I want one day to go by where I don't have to take a single thing. I thank God that there are medications that are safe to take during pregnancy, but I don't want to need them!

Yesterday, my SIL loaned me a ton of pregnancy, birthing, and breastfeeding books--score! It'll give me something to do this week on spring break besides sleep. A friend also loaned us a Diaper Genie, a jumper, an infant tub, and a carseat and base for my parents, in case they need to take the tot somewhere. (We'll be buying our own, brand new carseat for us to use). This coming week, we'll be ordering our crib and doing our registry, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I've had a hard time picking out the bedding, and while I haven't decided 100%, this seems to be the frontrunner for our bedding set. I do like the cheery colors--I think it will go well with the Eric Carle pieces we'll have in the room. (And extra bonus--this picture happens to use the same crib we'll be buying, so this is pretty much what it will look like):
I don't think I'll be using the bumpers, though. I think I prefer to use those breatheable bumpers they sell...prevents risk of getting tiny arms or legs stuck, but less suffocation risk.
I also chose our crib mattress, so I guess I feel pretty accomplished! I thought it would take much more research than it actually involved.

Finally, I need to jot down the last two things I don't want to forget--kicking and gender. I *think* that I may have felt the baby move a few days last week, because they were tiny fluttering feelings I've never felt before. However, I'm also super-conscious of everything that's going on in the tummy area these days, so I may just be imagining it. We'll see if it continues.

Now, gender. I don't want to say this too loudly, because I will feel like a fool if I am wrong, but I think I'm having a boy. In fact, pretty much everyone except Mr. ABC123 thinks it's a boy (he's holding out for "Daddy's Little Lilypad"). I can't help but think of the baby as a "he," and when I am looking at baby items, I don't even bother to look at anything pink or purple. Of course, I'd love a daughter, too...I just can't get past the mental block. However, all this could just be because I ALWAYS pictured myself having a boy first. I know some people who have been convinced of the gender and guessed right, and I know people who were convinced of the gender and have been pretty shocked to find out they were wrong. I don't want to broadcast it, though, because if I find out we've got Lily in there, I'm going to feel like a bad mom--out of tune with my baby, or something. Aren't moms supposed to be intuitive about this kind of thing?

Of course, I want my baby to be healthy. I am very nervous about them finding something bad on the anatomy scan in a few weeks. However, on a "more shallow and less severe, but still present" list of worries, are that I will be wrong about the gender (thus feeling like I have no mom instinct), and that my baby will not be cute. So vain, I know. But with all the people having babies, I don't want to be the one who hears, "Oh, what...tiny feet!" I know that's so dumb...but still. I don't want to be like, "Oh, isn't my baby so precious? So adorable? Look at the 127 pictures I took of his/ her first five minutes of life!" and everyone else think, "Mmm, yeah. I hope when I have kids, they don't look like that." (I need to find someone who will promise to tell me the truth if my baby is not cute....)