20 weeks!

I threw a kink in my plan for monthly pictures in the same place/same outfit when I left for South Carolina for a month.  Sadly, I'm a little crushed that this lil pattern got ruined, but oh well.  My little perfectionist self will have to learn to live with disappointment and this less-than-stellar picture for 20 weeks.

(Best I could do since I don't have the originals of the last few pictures on this computer, it's on my other one at home in Kansas)

All the morning sickness has died down with the exception of  horrible car sickness.  It's happened in my other two pregnancies, too, so nothing out of the ordinary.  

We've now moved onto contraction territory.  At 20 weeks.  One day about a week and a half ago I got very regular, very intense contractions for a few hours and ever since then, they've been pretty frequent.  Mostly Braxton Hicks with some real contractions thrown into the mix.  It's a little freaky so early on, but since it's nothing new to me, I'm trying really hard to accept it as a normal part of my pregnancy and not freak out each time.  My other two babies stayed put despite a lot of contractions and even a lot of dilation, so there's no reason to believe this pregnancy will be any different.

You might remember that I was 5 cm dilated(!!!) and not in active labor with Adalyn.  When I went to the hospital on January 14th, 2011  because I mistakenly thought my water had broken (still embarrassed about that), the nurses were shocked that I could be 6 cm dilated (at that point) and not in regular labor.  Apparently I was a freak show.  So like I said, it's not all that weird that the contractions are starting even earlier this time and I wouldn't be surprised to find out I start dilating early this time, too.  As I discovered with my last pregnancy, it really doesn't mean a thing except that labor is fast and easy.  Well, as easy as labor can be.

My water was broken at 8:45 a.m., contractions followed pretty shortly thereafter and she was born at 9:47 a.m.  I'm totally convinced my labor would have been even shorter than an hour had I been allowed to get off my back and move around and had they not told me to "hold her in" when my body started involuntarily pushing.  So in that regard, I feel SO blessed to have lots of Braxton Hicks and early dilation as long as it accomplishes the same thing it has the last two pregnancies.  I'm actually sort of concerned that there's no chance my midwife will make it to this birth.  But that makes me happy I'm having a home birth because one of my greatest fears has always been to have a baby in a car on the way to the hospital, and I'm kind of convinced that would happen with this pregnancy if I tried to go anywhere after labor started.  

This little babe moves all around all the time and I love it.  This is my favorite point in pregnancy: no morning sickness, minimal pain and lots of movement!  

We had our big ultrasound a couple of weeks ago and baby looked great!  We even got a DVD that I'll upload someday that shows baby sticking his/her tongue in and out.  It was pretty freakin' cool.  Everything checked out, baby looks healthy and we held out on the gender reveal.  This baby will be a surprise!  Woot!

:)