Early this morning I went in to have my blood drawn for my AFP. I had been told at my last appointment that today would be just the blood draw, and that I will come in two weeks later for a regular check-up.

Well, imagine my surprise when the visit turned into a full check-up!

I was able to meet the third and final doctor at my OB practice today, and he was warm and friendly as expected. However, when I asked him if we would be able to tell the sex of the baby today, he didn’t even bother and said, “It’s still too early,” when I know full well that external sex organs have been distinguishable for at least a week. I know that not every baby cooperates with the gender reveal, but he could’ve at least tried, you know?

The good news is that the baby is still thriving inside my tummy. The doctor said everything looks absolutely perfect, and I was able to see the baby’s spinal cord for the first time today!

Here is a close-up headshot that the doc printed for me to take home:

As soon as I saw it I started cracking up, because the baby looks so alien-like. Take me to your leader, baby! Here’s the same picture flipped horizontally and zoomed:

The bad news is that since I had the full check-up today, my May 3 appointment has been pushed back to May 17. J and I had been anticipating the May 3 appointment in hopes of finding out the gender, but now it looks like we’ll need to wait for the 19-week anatomy scan on May 13.

Obviously we were bummed to get this news as we are both impatient people who like to find things out ASAP. We’re considering getting a 3D/4D ultrasound before May 13 to find out the gender (and to see what the baby looks like in full 3D/4D detail) but we haven’t decided yet. Do you think we should go for it, or just wait until the 13th?

On to this week’s updates!

Baby, you are now almost 5″ long crown-to-rump, or about the size of an avocado (mmm looking at this picture makes me long for your father’s famous guacamole!). The smallest bones in your body — the three in your ear canal — have developed and you are officially able to hear!

Over the next few weeks you are in for another big growth spurt that will double your weight and add inches to your length. Your arms and legs are almost at the same proportions as they will be at birth, and your little feet are developing itty bitty toenails.

Although you still look like an alien, the first thing I noticed when I saw you facing me today was that your eyes seem much closer together than at our 12-week NT scan. According to BabyCenter, your eyes and ears are now close to their final positions and you will only continue to look more and more human.

As for your mother? There isn’t much new to report. I am still enjoying the “honeymoon trimester” and looking forward to our babymoon with great anticipation. Two days ago, I felt you move for the first time but I haven’t felt anything since. Baby, won’t you move for me again? Pretty please?

I have also realized that I have not taken any belly shots so far. The travesty! I think one of the big reasons has to do with my immense weight gain during the first trimester — I still shy away from the camera as it is a constant reminder of the fatty that I’ve become.

Here is a shot I took pre-pregnancy (showing off my new steam perm):

And here I am, today…

(Please excuse the dirty mirror! I promise to wipe it clean before next week’s belly shot!)

As you can see I’ve become quite the fatty. A couple of weeks ago I saw my mother’s friend whose first words to me were, “Uhmuhnah [the Korean equivalent of OMG] you gained sooo much weight!” She then proceeded to give me a lecture about how I really need to watch what I’m eating or the baby will grow too big in my belly and I will have a hard time with labor. Sigh.

Whatevs. I’m just happy that the baby is doing okay in there.

Today, I felt my baby move for the very first time.

I was sitting in a beautiful church at the wedding of J’s cousin (congrats, Suzanne & Lou!). They were in the midst of reciting their wedding vows when I felt it —

Butterflies fluttering in my lower abdomen.

The moment lasted barely a second, but I knew exactly what it was.

“I just felt the baby move!” I whispered to J. He immediately put his hand on my stomach, and I had to inform him that it’s still way too early for movements to be felt externally.

Unfortunately, I haven’t felt the baby move since. But I know that the day can’t be far off when I’ll feel it move every day.

I love being a mother. Have I mentioned that lately?

I have found that pregnancy and mothering boards can be some of the most heated on the web.

Everyone has different parenting styles, and they all seem to think that their way is the best. They fight tooth and nail to prove their point, and soon the debates become nothing short of nasty catfights.

There are, of course, topics that repeated garner much dissension among new/expectant mothers and we are labeled as one of two categories depending on what we choose:

Obviously it is only in rare cases that a woman falls perfectly under one category; it is far more common to be somewhere in the middle, or to only lean to one side.

Based on the chart above, would you consider yourself to be Crunchy or Silky?

I have found myself to be more on the Silky side:

• I plan on giving birth in a hospital with an epidural. I will try my best not to get a c-section, but I will not consider myself a failure if I do.
• I fully trust in modern medicine. I like my OB practice and hospital, and have faith that they will do what is best for my baby. The idea of giving birth at home freaks me out — not because I don’t believe birth is a natural process and that my body will know what to do (I do believe those things), but because I constantly worry about the “what if”s of every situation and like to be over-prepared.
• I plan on breastfeeding for as long as I can for the first year. But if it doesn’t work out, I won’t beat myself over it and will have no problem using formula.
• If our baby is a boy, I want to circumcise but J is against it. And since he is the one with a penis, I will go along with him on this one.
• We will definitely vaccinate, but perhaps on a slightly delayed schedule (just so the baby won’t get a million shots at once).
• I will not baby-wear and do my best to raise my kids to be as independent as possible. I believe in the CIO method and do not believe in over-coddling or over-protecting children (except for the first three months, when you can’t “spoil” a baby). I will co-sleep for perhaps the first couple of months, but will make the baby sleep in the nursery, in the crib, as soon as possible.
• J and I try to recycle as much as we can, but we don’t actively go out of our way or inconvenience ourselves over it. We plan on using disposable diapers and disposable wipes and have no guilt about that.
• The same goes for organic food and organic products. We are fully aware of the benefits of organics and prefer them, but many times they are too expensive compared to regular products and too inconvenient as there aren’t too many organic/locally-grown stores in our area.

All this being said…

My personal belief is that parenting involves very personal choices (and many times, no one but the parent knows the full story) and so I do not feel it is my right to judge, or even try to sway anyone my way unless they ask for my opinion.

Note: Due to reader requests (and some confusion on both me and my readers’ sides), I have decided to combine all posts from baby.geekinheels.com to my main blog here at geekinheels.com. I apologize in advance to anyone who feels put off by the plethora of pregnancy posts, and for any inconvenience this may cause anyone. Thank you for reading!

* * * * *

If I could summarize my pregnancy thus far, it would be:

1st Trimester: Fatigue, exhaustion, and lethargy. Very minor nausea. Major weight gain and bloating.

2nd Trimester: More energy. No nausea at all. Weight gain has tapered (I haven’t gained any weight in over 6 weeks!). Embarrassing body changes.

So what are these body changes? Glad you asked. (And prepared to be grossed out!)

National Geographic breasts.

I’ve already written of my porn star boobs. Well, today I noticed something else: my areolae are at least 1/3 larger, and have darkened considerably.

…And from what I hear, they will grow more grotesque as the pregnancy progresses.

I have always disliked my full breasts because I stuck out like a sore thumb among my friends with perky A-cups. Now, I’ve grown to hate them. None of my shirts fit anymore unless they are made of stretchy fabric. Shopping has become a nightmare because if I find something that fits my chest, it is loose everywhere else.

The worst part is that my breasts seem to be everywhere. They are constantly in the way and I’m always knocking things over with them. I am not kidding when I say I feel like this:

Most women look forward to the breast enlargement that pregnancy provides (I have many friends who have gone from A-cups to C, even D-cups). I had been dreading this ever since middle school Health class, and it seems like my fears were fully warranted.

Hemorrhoids.

I have never had hemorrhoids before. So when my ass started itching like crazy a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had gotten an infection.

I managed to get out a hand mirror to check out my nether regions… (I haven’t done this since I entered puberty and became curious as to what my hoo-ha looked like.)

…and discovered two bumps along my a-hole.

Pregnancy had given me the worst constipation of my life. And apparently, it invited its cousin, hemorrhoids, along for the ride.

My first instinct was to hide myself in shame. I even kept my condition a secret from J for a few days, using cold paper towels to calm my itchy ass.

But I couldn’t stand it anymore. I caved, and bought these:

Tucks Medicated Pads are a godsend for hemorrhoids. I didn’t even bother with Preparation-H or any other cream stuff, because the pregnancy boards all raved about these.

Luckily the hemorrhoids went away after about a week. I thought I was in the clear, but nooooo. My body had even more fun stuff in store.

Yeast infection.

So by now you’re probably thinking that I’m a nasty girl who barely cleans her cooch.

This can’t be further from the truth, because I have been diligent about keeping my girl parts clean ever since I found out I was pregnant. I had read all about how my immune system would go down, and how I would be more susceptible to infections and problems “down there” as a result of the pregnancy, so I always made sure to keep my vajayjay and its surrounding area sparkling clean.

But mid-last week, as my hemorrhoids were finally retreating, I started itching again…except this was further up.

Again, I had never had a yeast infection before, so I had no idea what this could be.

After a couple of days of scratching myself like a bored baseball player scratching his balls through an entire inning, I went to the store and bought myself a tube of Vagisil.

A funny story about my Vagisil purchase. I had the wondrous luck of approaching the Walgreens counter just as the cashier ran out of dollar bills. So I stood there with my box of Vagisil out on display for all to see as the cashier called for a manager. Then the manager took his sweet time to come to the register, surveyed my purchases, gave the cashier the correct change, and helped her ring my purchase again as the last one had gotten canceled. All while the line behind me continued to grow longer and everyone kept sneaking up to see what was taking so long. I. Was. Mortified.

Back to the story. So although Vagisil helped a lot, I realized that I was only treating the symptoms and not the source.

I quickly discovered that what I had was a common yeast infection (eww), and that Monistat 7 would be the best best (the 1 or 3 day kinds are not safe for pregnancy).

So this morning, I sucked it up and visited the same Walgreens where I bought the Vagisil for some Monistat 7.

Do you see where this is going? Why didn’t just I drive the extra 5 minutes to go to another pharmacy? Because one humiliating experience would be enough for the week? Wrong. Apparently, the gods of embarrassing feminine purchases saw that I had not yet met my quota.

So I calmly walked up to the cashier with my Monistat 7. She barely glanced at the box and scanned it in.

It rang up as $34.95.

“Excuse me, that can’t be correct. I’m sure that it costs less than $12.”

I should’ve just kept my mouth shut and paid the extra $23. Because the cashier then took the microphone, and yelled: “PRICE CHECK ON MONISTAT 7! REPEAT, PRICE CHECK ON MONISTAT 7!”

And as if that weren’t bad enough, a clerk shouted back, “DO YOU WANT THE VAGINAL CREAM OR THE COMBINATION PACK?”

“COMBINATION PACK WITH TRIPLE ACTION SYSTEM!”

The good news was that I was correct about the price. The bad news? Well, it’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?

I can’t wait to see what else this pregnancy has in store for me.

But I’m not complaining. And I’m being 100% serious here. Despite all these TMI problems, I’m still elated to be pregnant and to have my baby growing and flourishing inside of me.