Week 14: Already Hyper

Earlier this week I had a midwife appointment and everything checked out great! The baby and I are right on track, and the midwife said our job over the next four weeks (when I have my next appointment) is to grow. I think I can handle that. :-)  During the visit I got to hear the heartbeat again! The midwife gelled up a little wand and pushed it around on my lower abdomen. At first it was a plain "white noise" type of sound, sort of like when you listen to old recordings of astronauts in space. Eventually it turned into a fast "whoosh! whoosh! whoosh!" then there was a different noise and back to "whoosh! whoosh! whoosh!". When it made the different noise the midwife said, "Hey! We can already hear it moving around!" It was pretty cool. When I relayed it all to Ben by phone after the appointment (he's just coming to the "big" appointments and not the five minute check-up type appointments like this one) he said, "Great... our baby is already hyper!" haha We decided it was moving around because the midwife was pushing on it, and my heart was probably pounding because I was nervous and excited. It's still so cool to know and have confirmation that there really is a little person growing inside me!

When we went to take the picture for the week Ben started to frame the photo then lowered the camera to say, "You really have a little bump going on there!" What do you think?

It's still quite small, but definitely starting to get more "legit" looking.  :-)

Here's what's going on with our hyper baby:


This week's big developments: Your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck his thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, his facial muscles are getting a workout as his tiny features form one expression after another. His kidneys are producing urine, which he releases into the amniotic fluid around him — a process he'll keep up until birth. He can grasp, too, and if you're having an ultrasound now, you may even catch him sucking his thumb.


In other news: Your baby's stretching out. From head to bottom, he measures 3 1/2 inches — about the size of a lemon — and he weighs 1 1/2 ounces. His body's growing faster than his head, which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, his arms will have grown to a length that's in proportion to the rest of his body. (His legs still have some lengthening to do.) He's starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over his body. Your baby's liver starts making bile this week — a sign that it's doing its job right — and his spleen starts helping in the production of red blood cells. Though you can't feel his tiny punches and kicks yet, your little pugilist's hands and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are more flexible and active.


In other news we've gone through a bunch of options as to which room to use as the nursery. We decided that it makes the most sense for Ben to move his office into our current guest room (we'll be getting rid of the  bed, etc. so it all fits), and we'll make his current office the nursery. It's the biggest room upstairs and it's right across the hall from my office so if I'm able to have the baby home with me during part of the work day it will be convenient. Also, our current guest room is over the garage, and we were worried that the garage door opening and closing would probably wake up a sleeping baby. That room also has a sloped ceiling on both sides and I was paranoid that we'd accidentally bonk the baby's head when we were picking it up from getting changed or picking it up out of the crib. March is a fairly busy month for us, so we'll probably start making progress on getting everything moved around, painted (probably just the guest room which never got painted a color), etc. in April.