Half Way There!

Okay, I'm a day early but it's a pretty big event and I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to post this. Tomorrow will officially be the half way mark of my pregnancy. It's crazy to believe that I've been carrying a baby around for 20 weeks already! It seems like just yesterday that I was jumping on the bed, waking Sean up at the crack of dawn telling him the test was positive.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror during one of my dozens of trips to the bathroom today (literally dozens, people. I swear, my bladder is the size of a friggin peanut!) and I was a little taken aback. My stomach has gotten bigger since the last pictures by a long shot (or so it seems to me, at least). This post might turn into a confessional for me, but...it's my blog and no one is forcing anyone to read (if anyone actually reads it in the first place. I wouldn't know...no one ever comments :P) so if I get too mushy, too personal, or just too gross...feel free to skip this post and I promise next time might be a little less..whatever this turns out to be.

So first things first...to all the girls out there...can you imagine not having your period for 9 months? I've got to say, it's by far my favorite pregnancy perk. I LOVE not having my period. haha. Okay, wow, this is getting personal...whaaaatever. It's a natural thing that happens to just about every girl in the world so..blah. Whatever. It really is great. No cramps for days every month, no having to buy tampons/pads, no drugging myself with Midol, no crazy-ass mood swings....okay, I still have crazy-ass mood swings...I guess just because I don't visit with "aunt flo" every month doesn't mean I don't have an insane amount of hormones surging through me. --On that note, I'd like to take a second to thank my wonderful husband for putting up with these moments...I really do love you with all of my heart, dear. Even when I have a hard time showing it :) --

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I can say that pregnancy is no walk in the park. When I was younger, and first thinking about pregnancy (we won't go into details about how young I was because now that I look back it seems a little crazy to have thought about it when I did --note to my family who might be reading this: I was just thinking about it as in a "someday it might be me" kind of thing...not "Oh I'm so excited to start trying for a baby right away with whoever will have me" kind of thing. I'm not dumb lol -- Anyway. Like I was saying, when I was younger I had this glorious idea of what pregnancy would be like. I figured I would have a little morning sickness...aka throwing up once in the morning when I got out of bed unless I ate a cracker before I got up (which everyone SWORE would solve that lovely little problem). Yeah. WRONG. Morning sickness sucked. You've all heard my ranting about this particular subject, but seeing as I'm making this blog out to be almost like a diary for me to look back on when I'm thinking about another baby I'm going to make it very clear. After week 8 or 9 I was sick EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  And not just in the mornings. I was sick pretty much all day. And it got worse as the weeks dragged on. I remember it starting when we found out we were moving from Utah to Oklahoma. I'm not sure if the stress of the whole situation jump started the hormone production or what, but literally the day I started packing, I got sick. The day we were moving, I was sick. When we were staying in hotels, I was sick. When we were driving, I was sick. (And I was damn lucky that Sean's car gave out before we left and he had to drive with me or else I'm convinced I would not have made it here.) When we were living out of hotels, I was especially sick. I literally spent the entire week that we stayed in our extended stay hotel in bed. I think I went out 3 of those days...once to help find an apartment, once to have breakfast with Sean's family, and once to see their new house. All three days were insanely difficult. Then I was sick once we moved into our apartment. I unpacked maybe..MAYBE a box or two a day..and those were the good days! The rest of the time, I literally layed on the couch and cried. I don't want to sound like a big whiny baby, but this is the truth and I definitely don't want to forget the crazy little details when I'm thinking about another little bundle of joy a few years down the road.

On that note, I should probably go ahead and let ya'll know that I don't want just one kid. I don't want a small family. I'd love a big family. Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into that crazy 20 kids and counting lady. If you ask me, I think she's insane and needs to invest in some form of birth control. But what do I know? Anyway. I don't want to speak of our plans too much because we all know life doesn't follow anyone's plans. Heck, this baby wasn't planned but I've never been so excited for something in my entire life.

Okay, back to the confessions of Erica.
A few more things I want to mention before I sign out for the night.

Pregnancy is beautiful. It's natural. It happens to millions of women all over the world (I'm just making up a big number there, but it sounded about right so we'll just go with it). It's also embarrassing sometimes. This is hard to explain but I'll do my best and please don't judge. When I go to the store or go out for a walk, there are some days I can feel people staring at my belly. Then they look at me with that judgmental look that says (to me) "wow you're young" or "I know what you did to get that way". Then there are the people who look at my belly and I can literally watch there eyes move to my left hand to see if I'm wearing a wedding ring. Most days I am, and then the judgement goes away (usually) but there are days I forget to wear my ring and people stare me down like I'm some sort of sex-addicted tramp! Maybe it's just my hormones throwing my senses off...or maybe I'm really just crazy. But I do have those days and it really is kind of embarrassing. Now that I think about it, sex was always such a taboo subject in my house growing up...maybe that has something to do with my awkward days. Who knows.
Then I have other weird moments. I get embarrassed thinking about the day where I'm actually going to have this baby. Like I said, sex and anything related to sex was very taboo in my house while I was growing up. My parents might disagree, because I think they tried to be open with us about it, but sex was just one of those subjects that was never brought up. When I think about the day where I'm going to be lying on a bed in a hospital room, half naked, legs spread showing a room full of strangers what God (or evolution...I'm not 100% certain on that subject) gave me...I'm mortified!! Granted, I'll know my doctor pretty well by then, and I know my husband very well...but there will be lots of new faces too..or so I assume. I guess I'm not certain because I've never played the "lets have a baby" game.
Oh well. There's no turning back now. I'm just going to have to get over my fear of "everyone seeing my business". Haha. Sometimes, when it comes to things like this, all you can do is laugh.


Mooooooooooving on.
Actually, I'm not moving very far. I was going to have a whole new section on what I love about pregnancy - because I'm discovering there is quite a bit - but I'm tired. The baby is saying it's time to lie down and wait for her daddy to get home so we can go to bed. (Actually, at the moment, the baby is kicking me...but that's beside the point). That's another lovely symptom of growing a baby...I'm always tired! I'm tired when I get up in the morning, I'm tired all day, and I'm especially tired when I finally crawl into bed at night.
The thing is, all the suffering is worth it. :)
At this point, I would go through months of morning sickness all over again to feel her kick more often. It's so cool!

Alright, looks like I'm not going to bed. Since Mia has started kicking up a storm since I started writing, I have to go ahead and rant about that for a while. Lots of people told me that feeling the baby kick was going to be one of the coolest things about being pregnant, and I was looking forward to it, but now that I have actually experienced it, I can say it really is a feeling that amazes me. The best way to describe it would be that feeling her kick is similar to a stomach muscle spasm or twitch. I feel it, but I know I'm not controlling it. It literally feels like someone in poking me quickly from the inside. For the most part, I feel Mia move the most late at night. Take right now, for instance. It's a little after 11:30 and I've been feeling her move around for about 4 or 5 minutes, off and on. If I wake up early but lay in bed for a while, I feel her in the mornings on occasion too. During the day, however, I hardly ever feel her. When I do, it's not for very long..maybe one or two kicks and that's it. I should probably start counting kicks and timing how long I feel them for..but I'm wayy too tired to do that tonight...plus she seems to be settling down already.

Okay. Now I'm really tired. I'll do another post here in a minute to show you the pictures of my growing belly. I figured it'd be best to do them in another post that way you don't have to sift through my rambling to find them on this post.

Thanks for reading, whoever my reader(s) is(are). Sorry if this post bored you, grossed you out, and/or generally made you uncomfortable in any way. I didn't mean to, honest.. I just had a lot to say and I figured this was as good a place as any to say it. :)

Good night!!