The Brucia Files

Random observations

• I decided I'm pretty impressed with my Nana - my mom's mom.  As I was sitting on the couch last night with a backache and heartburn - something I've never experienced in my life until this week - I calculated that my Nana spent nearly 6 years of her life pregnant...7 single births.  Wow!  That's longer than Chris and I have been married.  And for six of those pregnancies, she was caring for other kids at the same time.  New respect for what she went through.

• Heartburn...yuck.  And it doesn't seem to matter what I've eaten.

• Chris' mom is sending us a crying baby doll so that we can make an attempt to get Dill accustomed to the fact that a baby will be around.  I can't wait to see how even a doll goes over...

• And as I opened a baby gift this week of a plush toy, I realized that we have another Dill battle ahead...how do we teach him that the baby's toys are not his? 

• In normal life, looking forward to pizza and NCAA basketball tonight.  Let the weekend begin... 

27.5 weeks - Back from the East Coast

I'm recovering today from a great trip to the East Coast.  Good to see everyone in Richmond one more time while I was still able to make the cross-country flight.  One bonus of the trip was that my parents got to see the pregnancy as it progresses, too - they stopped in Richmond on their way to North Carolina.  (Really, the purpose of the trip was to prove to people that yes, I really am pregnant:))

Couple of nice shots that my mom took below...stolen from Shutterfly, but you get the gist:

Introducing the third trimester

I've hit the third trimester this week, and its way of saying hello the past two days is with a new, rather ugly looking problem: My feet are incredibly swollen and I'm losing site of my ankles.  (Bring on the cankle jokes.)  I drank tons of water today - which is supposed to help - and now have my feet elevated on three pillows, but I hope this isn't something I have to look at for the next three months.  How unattractive...and a bit painful, frankly. 

Other than that, I'm having a very good trip to the East Coast...

Tapeworm or baby?

If baby isn't even moving around very much, how can it make me feel so hungry?  I feel like I'm growing an unhappy tapeworm today.  Feeling constantly hungry is distracting.  And it varies so much day by day...some days I'd say I feel "normal" as far as having a pre-pregnancy appetite.  And days like today, the hunger makes me a little nutty. 

Dill and I better go for a long walk this afternoon because I know I'll eat more than the 300 extra pregnancy calories today.   

25 week doctor visit & home from sunny SF

25 weeks (Click on that link to see photo from this weekend - Golden Gate Park Botanical Garden, San Francisco.)

Chris and I had a great weekend in SF (note: photo link updated above).  He'll probably post more photos later on. 

Went to doctor Friday and all is well.  The news is that I'm not crazy that I still haven't felt this baby move...at all.  The resident and attending were nearly laughing at me that I hadn't felt anything yet so they offered to do an ultrasound so that they could show me kicks and whatnot, and then I could feel them at the same time.  Well, no such luck.  The attending spent about 20 minutes with me watching the baby on screen and moving the ultrasound sensor around to encourage movement.  All we saw were two "stretches," if you could call them that, to which she then said, "Well, I can understand why you're not feeling that."  Then, she got out this electronic thing so that the baby was supposed to feel some harmless pulses and react...again, nothing.  So, we have a chill baby on our hands.  

Also, the placenta is "anterior," which means it's in the front, and it's somewhat blocking whatever I would feel from the baby, anyway. 

In Search of a Name or Two

Tonight was the first night that Stacey and I seriously brainstormed on names for this chub. It was ultimately a very entertaining exercise--turns out we both have strong opinions. The upshot is that we have a decent, top-secret list to consider now. The downside is that I'm not sure we're totally in love with any of the contenders yet. Plenty of time on the clock, though, so I'm confident some winners will emerge after we let these marinate a while.

If you're ever looking to kill time, the historial name information on the Social Security website is rather entertaining...the names of the 1940s are funny in a different way from the 2007 top names. Especially girl names. Boy names have stayed mostly static over time, but the girls names are all over the place. Click here to dive in. No suggestions please. :)