15 weeks: baby is the size of a pear

I think this is the last day for those jeans, the last remaining non-maternity pants in my closet. Last week I packed all the clothes that don't fit anymore into bins and put them in the hall closet. So now ALL the clothes in my closet fit me, which feels good.

Baby just keeps on growing in there and now the legs are longer than the arms. S/he's also moving amniotic fluid through the nose and upper respiratory tract to help the air sacs in the lungs develop. Another interesting development: baby can sense light now! If we were to shine a flashlight at my belly, baby would likely move away. For some reason that is just so cool to me!

I know intellectually there is a baby in there, I mean I have seen the proof over and over, but it's just so hard to really wrap my head around. I wonder if that will change once I start to actually feel the baby moving.

Last week started great with a prenatal appointment on Tuesday morning before work. We heard the heartbeat with the fetal doppler for the first time! We'd seen it beating on ultrasound but never actually heard the fast little thump-thump-thump. So cool! Our appointment was short and sweet, just a weigh-in, hear the heartbeat, answer questions, and schedule another appointment. I'll be going in for some more blood work next week - the quad screen, which tests for neural tube defects like spina bifida among other things. We're of the  mind that we want to know everything there is to know, as long as there is no danger to baby. Some people prefer not to have all this genetic testing, NT scan, etc. Oh, we also scheduled our anatomy scan ultrasound for Feb. 11 right before we leave for Thailand. That's when we'll find out if baby is a boy or girl! We're holding off on name discussions until we know so as to avoid half the conflict. :-)

After a long day on Tuesday, I woke up Wednesday morning absolutely exhausted and with a pounding headache. Sometimes baby really sucks the life force out of me. As the week progressed I added a sore throat, sore ears, and nasal congestion. I did absolutely nothing except lay on the couch, take naps, and sleep 13 hours/night. I was so miserable and exhausted I thought something must really be wrong with me so I called the OB advice nurse. Do you know what she told me? "You just have a cold on top of the usual pregnancy symptoms." I felt like such a wimp in that moment! I took her advice and broke down and took two Tylenol, which I knew I could take but didn't want to drug my baby. Are you following my logic? Cheeseburgers okay, Tylenol not okay. Anyway, that helped. But what REALLY helped was having a cup of coffee on Sunday morning for the first time in weeks. I'm "allowed" 200 mg of caffeine/day but once I started weaning off the coffee in the very beginning it felt so good I went all the way. The coffee not only helped the headache and fatigue but also the pooping problem. Three birds, one stone.

I went to my second prenatal yoga class on Saturday and it was, again, awesome. I did much better on Broken Toe pose this time, the painful one I described last week. Now I'm thinking I can handle med-free birth after all. Ha!