24 Weeks

Today I am 24 weeks pregnant and I had a doctor's appointment before class ... it was the much-dreaded glucose test. I had heard horror stories about these sickly-sugary liquids that you have to drink on an empty stomach, and fully prepared myself for gagging and an insurmountable crash thereafter. I don't know if the stuff has gotten better, or if my tolerance for sugar is dangerously high, but it wasn't that bad. I had the red/fruit punch flavor, and I refrigerated it prior to drinking. To me, it tasted like a carbonated Hawaiian Punch (are those carbonated?). I got to the doctor's office, they weighed me (I have gained about 9-10 pounds) and they took blood and blood pressure.

Then I met with my doctor. I have no actual complaints (i.e. things that I think are not semi-normal) and had no questions. She asked me if I have been feeling the baby move, and I told her that I have, AND I can actually see him kicking sometimes! (a new development this week). She seemed kind of shocked that I could see it so early, but I have no idea if it's actually early or not. But then she said, "so you're feeling good, not lifting anything too heavy?" Since I was heading to school after, my backpack was in the room at her feet. I looked at it and said "is that heavy?" She pretended to try and pick it up, and then GLARED at me, and said, "MUCH too heavy... You cannot carry that." I really don't think it's heavy, but I am not so stubborn as to continue to carry a backpack (not even that cool anyway) at the risk of having to spend time in the hospital, so I'm going to look into a rolling laptop bag/suitcase this weekend (decidedly less cool than any other option, but then again, I guess being pregnant is not exactly "cool" at law school anyway).
After this, I got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time! I don't know how I missed this earlier, I guess because I always just had ultrasounds, but it was pretty cool. We heard the heartbeat ("a strong, steady 160 bpm") and she said a few of the noises were the baby kicking. She said, "wow, he IS moving a lot!"
So, the appointment was good. It was my first one without PJO, so I'm sad he didn't get to hear the heartbeat, but I guess with so many appointments in our future left, he'll hear it at some point.
Next on my to-do list is schedule tours of the two hospitals to decide on one for delivery (they're about 4 blocks away from each other, both walking distance from my apartment). I guess we'll sign up for a child birth class too, although that does not sound exciting at all. Supposedly my doctor will talk about finding a pediatrician at the next appointment in 3 weeks, so that will be interesting.

I'm already completely behind my school work... not that I really care, although I probably should. Until now, getting the apartment unpacked and organized has completely consumed all my free time and energy. It took longer than it ever has before because we had to wait for furniture to be delivered so we could put stuff away. But now, everything is done except for the nursery. We might actually paint this weekend to get that out of the way. I don't think we'll get any nursery furniture for a while, but it will be nice to be able to just put stuff in there when we feel like buying it, rather than waiting to paint then. My plan was to be on top of school early, so that when I inevitably stop caring closer to the due date, I will still know SOMETHING for the finals. We'll see if I can pull it together this weekend.