17 weeks

I am just over 17 weeks pregnant now and I can tell that I'm really starting to look pregnant. It's pretty exciting stuff! I was 150.5 pounds on the scale this morning (up 8.5 pounds) and so clearly something is growing in there! I am getting very very very excited for our Level 2 ultrasound this Friday. We will be able to find out whether this little alien is a boy or a girl. A bunch of people now think I'm having a girl. I was pretty sure it was a boy before, but now I'm starting to doubt that conviction. Soon we will know!

I mowed the lawn again this past weekend. The mowing part is quite easy (given that we have a self-propelled mower). But I'm glad that winter is coming because I'm really having a hard time now bending down to lift the mower and clean out the gross ickiness that is clogging the blade. And picking up the piles of wet grass and hauling the garbage bags around really exhausts me. My hips and ankles are starting to bother me. I guess that comes with having looser joints.

So far, this pregnancy has been fairly ideal. The only thing that has caused me concern recently is waking up at 4 am three nights ago with horrendous cramps. The cramps made me so uncomfortable that I actually went to the bathroom to look to see if I was bleeding. But nothing was happening and the cramps subsided after about 15 minutes. I will ask my midwife about this when I see her this Thursday. I'm hoping it's "normal" but my mother doesn't remember feeling cramps like that.

I *think* I may have felt the baby last night when having dinner at my in-laws. But it didn't really feel how people have explained the feeling. It actually felt more crampy to me than movement. But I didn't have gas and I do I don't know how else to explain the feeling. It was fairly low down and right above my pelvic area. It will be nice to eventually be able to say, "I'm sure that was the baby kicking!"