22 weeks

This week I felt the baby moving every day and much more consistently, usually at night and usually on the right side of my abdomen (although it got me on the left side once really good and scared me). Ryan even got to feel the baby for the first time :) It's still so strange to think there's this whole other being kicking and rolling around in my belly, but I'm starting to move past being slightly weirded out by it and just find it more comforting now to be able to feel the baby in there. We had actually gotten a doppler a few months ago once I stopped having appointments every week and a half. I didn't understand the people who just couldn't wait between appointments and who would spend money on a doppler to listen to the heartbeat at home... and then I went to a monthly appointment schedule and I realized that that was way too much time between appointments for me to worry about the baby. So off to amazon.com we went, and for $25 (cheaper than expected!) we got the peace of mind of being able to listen to the baby's heartbeat whenever we wanted. Of course, then I started doing more research, and depending on who you ask, dopplers are apparently not that great for the baby since the sound waves can be irritating to it. So I went from listening to it every day to every other day, to now about once a week if I haven't felt the baby move for a while. We recorded the heartbeat too, several weeks back, but haven't figured out the best way to post that on here yet.

Also, I figured out the mystery of the disappearing belly! For the last few weeks I've been stumped why my belly looks so much smaller in the comparison pictures than it does in real life, and then I realized that as part of my attempts to have some semblance of posture, I've been sucking my stomach in for the pictures. So I'll keep doing that for consistency in the comparison pictures (and I imagine eventually it won't make any difference how much I'm sucking in or not), but I added a non-sucking-in picture too below for the fun of it.




In non-baby related news, Ryan just had surgery on Friday (2/25) to have the metal removed from his leg. Although the bone healed just fine from the break last year, the skin just never did, so hopefully taking the metal out will help that finally heal since we're assuming that he had been having an allergic reaction. Recovery seems to be much better than for the previous surgeries so far, since he's not really having any pain or swelling, and he's able to get up and walk around with and without his walking boot (which was okayed by his doctor).

Also, we're working through some more home renovation items. We had done the vast majority of the work on the house when we first moved in in 2008, and then moved the remaining stuff onto the "wish list", and it seems maybe having a baby on the way has kick-started the remaining projects :) So following on the heels of the recessed lighting from a few weeks ago, we just had our countertops redone on Saturday. We still need to figure out the backsplash and put the molding back in the pass-through, but at least the main part is done and looking quite pretty: