27 weeks

I missed a milestone in my last weekly update - as of 3/23, I'm now down to double-digits for the estimated number of days left :) Besides that, the big milestone for the week was that I finally retired my non-maternity work pants. I had been in maternity jeans for a while now, but for some reason the hairband trick was still working perfectly well on my work pants until this past week, when it suddenly was no longer comfortable. So now I'm only wearing maternity clothes except for my beloved purple pants, a couple of shirts, and a couple of other lounge pants/shorts.

The heartburn is continuing, which is not fun but understandable given that my other organs are starting to get more rearranged and squished now. The baby is gaining some strength in its kicking now - I can mainly only feel it on my right side (movement is more dampened on the middle and left side, so I suspect that's where the placenta is lying), but it kicked hard enough to move my arm last week. I'm starting to think the baby doesn't like me to rest my arm on my belly, since it seems to focus its kicks there when I do it :)

We are now over halfway through our childbirth classes, and we've been talking about the different stages of labor and possible complications, etc., which is making it seem more real now. Every once in a while it will hit me that I'll actually be going through labor myself in a few short months instead of just reading about it. It's also hard to get my mind around thinking about Ryan and I having a child of our own too - it's easy to think about it in theory, but it will be so strange/amazing to actually come home from the hospital with our own baby.

As a side-benefit to the childbirth classes, our instructor also let us know about some prenatal massages that were being offered for free - so I got to have a free prenatal massage last Wednesday before we headed off on our last vacation before the baby comes :) We just spent a long weekend in St. Croix, which was about as low-key and warm as could be hoped for. I'll try to have some pictures ready to post in the next update, but since I'm notoriously slow with editing/culling them, they'll likely just be posted to my Flickr page eventually instead (link is to the right).

And here's the comparison picture for this week - I think I look noticeably bigger this time (especially when comparing the lower angle of my belly) when that can't just be blamed on me being closer to the camera... especially in this case, when I was closer to the camera on the older picture.