What the heck is that?

I was driving yesterday on my way to go visit Emily and Daniel, and I undid the buttons on my cardigan. I looked down and I saw it...

 

This, friends, is my pregnant belly. Loud and proud and out there for the world to see and gawk at! Emily, for the first time in this pregnancy, pointed at it and exclaimed "OMG - it's so real now!". And it IS so real now. It's a full-fledged baby belly, not just a sack of jelly belly. It is hard and round and full - and gives Aaron a platform to talk to. This morning, he was trying to see if it echoed in there. And tonight - we meet her/him via ultrasound. My lovely husband is still set on waiting, but at 20 weeks down and 20 weeks to go, I'm actually okay with it. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut... knowing that tonight we could find out what gender this baby is inside me is pretty exciting!

Other things that are new and not so fantastic:

1. These swollen and sore little tootsies!

2. The W.O.R.S.T. heartburn of my life. Last night it felt like I'd swallowed gasoline - the acid was so bad! It felt like I was tasting the lining of my stomach with every breath. It didn't start going away until about 8:30pm last night, and I woke up with hunger pains because I hadn't eaten much dinner.

3. Acne. I'm hoping this is an indication that it's a girl. The old wives tale says that girls give you acne, while boys clear your skin. Emily had perfect skin and she had a boy. Jay has acne and she's having a girl. A girl can dream! :) I'm sure it's just excess hormones, but it's bad folks!

4. Sore body. Every joint and bone in my body hurts. Aaron bought me a body pillow at Walmart on Saturday and it's helped a lot. But I've always been a belly sleeper, and now I have to be a side sleeper. I will wake up at 3am with a stiff body and have to turn over, which reminds me that I have to pee, which reminds me that my husband is snoring, which reminds me that Keiko is also snoring and taking up the whole foot of the bed. And when I get back to bed to readjust myself to the opposite side, everything hurts!

5. Opinions. I've touched on this before, but one of the worst parts of this pregnancy has been dealing with everyone else's opinions on how we should handle the impending birth of our first child, what we need, what we don't need, what works, what doesn't work, what I should expect, what I should feel, what I should learn, what I should ignore, how much work it will be, how much our lives will change, how much we don't have ANY idea what we're getting into... it's all too much for us to take. We are both in our 30's, and Aaron will be almost a year away from 40 when the baby arrives. We've been around kids our whole lives. We have friends and cousins who are parents... does this make us ready for kids? No. But we're not going in blind either. We're fully aware that parenthood won't be all peaches and cream. We aren't going into this with rose-colored glasses, but we also aren't going into it thinking negatively either. We are just embracing it with open arms, and we are going to be parents to OUR child and will make OUR own decisions. Thank you very much.