23 weeks.

23 weeks pregnant – only one more week until viability! Hard to believe in less than a week, I will have a baby who is potentially capable of surviving on the outside. Not that I want him born anytime soon, but it’s slightly more comforting in my crazy brain to know that if he was born next week, the doctors would do everything they could to save him.

Things are starting to feel a bit more real. We’ve been working away on the nursery (I’ll have to write a separate post just about that!), we’ve got our registry about 99% done, and I now have two baby showers being planned for me – a family shower being thrown by my mom and sister-in-law on February 10 (I’ll be 28 weeks) and one some friends are throwing on March 30 (I’ll be almost 35 weeks). Then we’ll have about a month to finish everything up and get the rest of the items on our registry that we didn’t get as gifts. Yikes – less than 4 months to go now and I’m starting to get nervous we won’t be ready. We are in the process of looking into classes at the hospital – birthing classes, infant safety/CPR, newborn care and breastfeeding. I’m having a hard time convincing D to sign up, though. For one, they’re pricey (about $260 for all of them), and two, some friends of ours told us they left halfway through the birthing class because they thought it was lame. So now D is convinced he wants to ask around to some other friends to find out if it’s really worth it. Grr… Even if it is lame, we don’t know what we’re doing, so I really don’t see any alternative but to take them. Hoping he comes to his senses soon so I can get us signed up while the good time slots are still open.

Anyway, onto my 23 week update…

Baby is now almost a foot long, and the pancreas should be kicking into gear sometime this week. The other big news is that his lungs are getting stronger and stronger – an important factor in viability, as mentioned earlier. He is kicking like crazy now, and in the last couple days has learned a new trick – kicking me square in the bladder!

Mama is feeling pretty good right now, aside from the sciatic pain. It seems to alternate between flaring up on the right side for a couple days, then over to the left. On rare occasions I have felt it on both sides, which makes it really hard to get comfortable. The other thing that cropped up earlier this week was heartburn. Holy moly. I felt like someone had lit a match in the back of my throat, and it lasted for about three days straight. Haven’t had it for about two days though, so hopefully it’s gone now (knock on wood). Oh, and my tailbone hurts too, when I sit for very long. A girl in my yoga class mentioned that her tailbone BROKE during her last pregnancy. Yikes! Okay, so looking back at the paragraph I wrote, maybe I should retract my “feeling pretty good” statement. At least my hips haven’t hurt me for a while, so there’s something. My skin is also super itchy, and the coconut oil I thought was helping, suddenly isn’t anymore. I think I felt the best when I was using a cocoa butter lotion, so I’m going to go back to using that to see if it helps. As far as weight goes, I actually lost 1.4 lbs over the past week, bringing my total weight gain so far this pregnancy down to 10.6 lbs. Not sure I’m really supposed to be losing weight during pregnancy, but given my rapid gain over the holidays, I’m giving myself a pass this week. I’d like to maintain a healthy 1 lb gain per week, which would give me a 27-28 lb gain total (recommended amount is 25-35).

And now, another work bathroom picture, since that’s the only time I ever remember to take my weekly photo. 🙂