Ultrasound
This photo is not taken by me. It's a photo of our baby at 17.5 weeks. That was around 12 weeks ago. Ultrasounds are quite amazing. They allow you to see an image of the baby through sound waves. The images are quite grainy on paper but much better on the screen. You can see the baby moving all over the place and you can hear the heartbeat. It is the most wonderful part of the doctor's appointment. We still don't know the gender of our little one but this ultrasound showed us the four chambers of the heart, the kidneys, and all other internal organs as well as two legs, two arms, a head and overall a healthy looking baby. It's quite magical that you can see so much of the baby with just soundwaves.

Whale
I am a few days away from week 30. That means we have around 10 weeks before the baby is here (assuming it's full term and not early or late.) A few weeks ago the doctor worried that my uterus was too small, but now I am measuring exactly where I am and all my tests (blood and diabetes) came out healthy. The baby's heart is beating loudly and at the correct speed. So all seems to be fine.

Except that I've gained a lot of weight. I spent the first five months gaining a tiny bit of weight and now I'm gaining like it's going out of style. I've gained a bit over 22 pounds and I don't show any signs of slowing down. The thing that makes me mad is that I'm not eating any chocolate or chips or ice cream or anything that's your typical pregnancy food. The only possible culprit is that I drink Orangina (maybe a glass a day) but I can't honestly tell how I'm gaining all this weight. At first, I really freaked out. I asked the doctor if the weight gain has any bad implications on the baby. He said that there's no correlation between weight gain and a big baby. The main causes of baby size are diabetes or a genetic disposition to having large babies. The main downside to gaining more than the desired amount is that I'll have more to lose afterwards. (There are other disadvantages like my back might hurt a lot, etc, but I am not anywhere near that range for now.)

So all my worries are from being vain. The baby is ok. The pregnancy is coming along fine, yet I am spending hours crying because I'm gaining more weight than I would like. How's that for a good mom?