Halfway There

I've been securely in my second trimester for about a month now, and I've been feeling great.  I'm officially at 20 weeks today, which means I'm halfway to meeting our baby.  The nausea, morning sickness, and weird taste in my mouth are largely behind me now.  My energy is up these days.  I've had very few and minor symptoms since entering the second trimester.  Some minor heartburn/acid reflux.  Maybe some minor constipation.  But nothing at all to complain about.  Overall, I'm feeling hopeful that this pregnancy will continue to progress.  At this point, we've passed the anatomy scan and all of the genetic testing.  It seems like she is healthy and well in there, which is such a relief!

Next bit of exciting news is that we found out last week we're having a girl!  I didn't care either way, but it's good to know, so that now we can start really planning for names, nursery, registry, etc.

Speaking of planning, that nesting instinct is a real thing.  I have been cleaning like nobody's business.  Things in the house that were broken or needing work are suddenly getting my full attention.  I'm happy about this because we've been letting things slide for way too long.  We're planning to paint, re-decorate and fix up all the way up until she arrives, which will just make our house nicer anyway.

As far as baby movement, I've been feeling her move for about a month at this point. At first it started off as flutters, like someone was tickling me from inside.  In hindsight, it was probably happening for a while and I just didn't realize what it was.  But the first time it dawned on me that it may be Baby Girl moving around in there was around Christmas, and I was watching The Social Network with my family.  Hmm...maybe she's trying to tell me that she plans to be an internet mogul one day? :)

Since that first instance, I have felt her move intermittently, but not often.  Just this past week though, she started to kick it up a notch - literally.  We went into Buy Buy Baby this past Saturday to start looking at baby registry stuff, and she was tickling away in there!  But the first time I felt her actually kick was later that same night when I was working on my Target.com registry.  I thought at first it was gnarly gas bubbles, but then I realized she was actually kicking.  I called my husband down quickly so he could witness it.  He didn't feel anything, but he saw her kick and make my belly pulse out.  It's so surreal and absolutely special and wonderful to know she's in there hammering away.

I'm still in disbelief half the time that we are actually pregnant.  I wake up sometimes in the morning in a half panic thinking I was just dreaming, and none of this is real.  I've just been so so so happy.  I'm actually happier and more excited about the baby than I was about being engaged.  Is that weird?  The sweetest thing of all is to see how happy and excited my husband has been too.  Babies have never really excited him before, so it's heartwarming to watch him eagerly await the arrival of our daughter.