25 Weeks

I am 25 weeks today. Part of me is excited that we only have 15 more weeks to wait to meet our little girl. The other part of me is panicked because we only have 15 weeks to come up with a name & get some kind of nursery together for her.  I know these 15 weeks will fly by (hopefully she doesn't come 4 weeks early like her brother), so we really need to get started!

How I've been feeling: I've been feeling really good. Up until about 16 weeks, most foods made me feel nausea, but since then, it's been fine. Now I've hit the "I'm so hungry, I'd rip food from a starving child's hand & eat it" stage. I know from my last pregnancy (& life in general) to enjoy the 20's. The 20-29 weeks of pregnancy are nice. You can feel the baby move, but it doesn't hurt. You look pregnant enough that people can tell, without looking completely huge. The baby is big enough you can feel her, but not so big that it is uncomfortable. You are close enough to your due to see the end of the tunnel, with still plenty of time to get things done.

How this pregnancy has been different from Jake's: It was the events leading up to this pregnancy and the first weeks that made it so different from Jake's. With Jake, we were completely blindsided with the pregnancy. We knew we were blessed to be pregnant and we wanted a baby, but it just kind of fell in our lap, so we kind of just took it for granted.  I was also naive. Getting pregnant was the hard part, we'd done that. Now I just had to breeze through the next 40 weeks until our healthy baby came, I thought. With this pregnancy, we'd tried for 2 years. We'd had a lot of negative pregnancy tests, so when we were told we were pregnant it was a feeling of accomplishment.  With Jake, I felt like the pregnancy symptoms were very minimal. A lot of the pregnancy symptoms, I looked at as annoyances, so I tried to just ignore them. With our last miscarriage, all of sudden, one day, all the pregnancy symptoms I had been feeling were gone. So with this pregnancy, I obsessed over every little thing I thought was a pregnancy symptoms. I was thankful for every blemish, for every sore body part, for every nausea feeling. I feel like my pregnancy symptoms were stronger this pregnancy, but it may have just been that I'm 5 years older, and a lot more obsessed over each one of them. I have been so fearful over everything this pregnancy. Every time I go to the doctor, I hold my breath, terrified they will tell me something is wrong. With Jake, we didn't find out we were pregnant, until I was 8 weeks along. With this baby, I was 1 week along. With Jake, we had an ultrasound at 8 weeks, 12 weeks & 20 weeks. With this baby, we had more ultrasounds the first 12 weeks, then we did the entire time we were pregnant with Jake. So a lot of things, have been very different. But the pregnancy after that time period, has been very similar to Jake's. Thankfully, with neither pregnancies I was horribly sick. I felt more nausea this pregnancy, but it wasn't horrible.

What Jake thinks of the pregnancy: Jake is actually really excited. At age 5, he for the most parts, gets it & understands. When we were trying to get pregnant, we'd ask him would he like a baby brother or sister. He always answered no, which worried us. He didn't want a baby to touch his stuff, he didn't want their cry to hurt his ears, he didn't want their dirty diapers to stink up the house. He basically saw no point in adding a baby to the household. We didn't tell him we were actually expecting until after we were 12 weeks and knew that it was going to be a girl. Surprisingly, he was really excited. I was worried he might be disappointed it wasn't a boy, but he seems more excited that it is a girl. (I think he thinks that because it is a girl, that means she'll just play with barbies & dolls, and not touch his stuff. I hate to tell him, that if it's his, she'll probably want to touch it, even boy toys. But for now, I'll let him bask in bliss.) For some reason, the concept of a baby was not appealing to him, but the actual fact that there is a baby in my stomach is. He loves to talk about how he is going to help and be a good big brother. He seems to understand that there is a baby in my stomach and that when she is born, she'll be needy. I'm sure it will be an adjustment once she actually gets here, but for now, he seems very okay with it.

What are we going to name her?: This is the question we get asked the most. Most people know I love to monogram every article of my child's clothing, so I must have a name already picked out. Unfortunately, we do not. We have a lot of names we like, we just can't decide on which one is the one for our daughter. I'm very persuaded by people's opinions, so which name is my favorite is constantly changing. And Robbie is just as undecided. I keep hoping that I have a dream, and the baby's name in the dream will make my decision. But so far, that dream hasn't happened. It is killing me that we haven't named her yet, I just don't know how to decide. We do know that the middle name will be Elizabeth. That is my middle name, and a family name on both sides of the family. But as for a first name, we are no closer to naming her today, than we were 25 weeks ago. Here are our front runners & runner ups:
Front Runners (in alphabetical order):
Charlotte
Katherine (Kate)
Sloane
Runner Up Contenders:
Camille
Caroline
Virginia
What Jake wants to name her:
Betsy Bush

Her nursery: I just assumed that our children would be close in age, so when we were pregnant with our 2nd, I wouldn't feel the need to go all out on the nursery like we did with the first. But over 5 years have passed since I last did a nursery. So I've had 5 years to fall in love with 1,000 new & different nursery ideas. I know I want the nursery to be white, ivory & gold accents.  Do I have the entire nursery planned out in my head? Yes. Do we have 1 single thing ready for her nursery? No. Has Robbie approved the budget for this nursery? No. Will Robbie & I agree on the budget for this nursery? Probably Not. Needless to say, we've got a long way to go, and only 15 weeks to get there.