23 Weeks.

These are the last few minutes of my 23rd week in this pregnancy.

This week saw the (continued) engorgement of my belly and leakage in places that just should not leak. It was a very difficult week.

I am told, at this point in the pregnancy, that my uterus has reached about two inches higher than my belly button. And with every day that my uterus slowly creeps up to my breasts, my belly is rounding out and is feeling noticeably much harder than in weeks previous. Tonight, while interrupting blabbing talking to Bubba during the Seahawks game something about where I suspected the baby was positioned within my belly, we both agreed that my stomach is feeling and looking more like a pregnant woman’s belly rather than just a feminine beer belly. Unfortunately, the freakish size of my uterus has apparently made feeling Baby’s movements much more random than I remember it from before. But I am keeping my concerns under control as it is moving nonetheless and I’m just trying to appreciate what is bound to be the few last weeks of what we now know of quiet time.

Besides the belly, this week’s second slap in the face that this body is actually carrying a real live human being was the horrifying sight of my fancy new breasts spouting a leak as I got out of the shower one morning. I’m sure you are just as shocked at reading what I just wrote as I was staring at the oddity that is watching a part of your body ooze where it has never oozed before. And so I did what any person would do when their body misbehaves, I stuffed them right back into the same harness sports bra they have consistently been in for the last six months and have not looked at them since.

With all the roundness and the drippage, Week 23 has left me feeling exceptionally pregnant and so I found it suiting to finally order the baby bed I have been contemplating for the last few months:

It’s a modern moses basket / travel bed from Lalapanzi that will be the baby’s personal niche for up to the first year of it’s life. Next to the chair, which was more of a gift for me than Baby, it’s the first expensive major baby item we have purchased. We are still far from having everything we will need (or want), but getting the bed was one of the items that we couldn’t put off until it after the baby arrives although I did seriously consider using a laundry basket until we were ready to get a crib.

Up next on the list, I think breast pads may have moved up the priority list. Or I could always just use the plumbers putty we’ve already got in the garage.