The Best Pedicure EVER!

Yesterday I started my day with my monthly OB appointment… officially 16 weeks. Blood pressure 102/68. Total weight gain 8.5 pounds. Right on track. (I told the nurse it sure feels like a lot more than that. She said that’s because everything has shifted up and out. Tell me about it. I am officially unable to wear my regular pants without pain.)

Dr. Brown and I talked about what to expect during the next few weeks and whether or not I should draw blood for the AFP test (which checks for neural tube defects such as spina bifida). He warned me that although the level 2 ultrasound in August will be fun and exciting to see the baby, it can cause some anxiety because the ultrasound technicians’s job during that exam is to find anything that might be wrong. So they spend a lot of time following every little thing that catches their eye. Dr. Brown told me not to worry.

I hopped on the exam table and he felt just a few inches below my belly button.

“There it is,” he said. “Right where it should be at this point.”

I’ve been reading about the size of my uterus and the baby lately (baby is 5 inches and weighs about 3 ounces), and the night before while I was laying on the couch watching Shaq’s Big Challenge on ABC, I found my uterus quite easily. Very hard compared to the belly fat that has been pushed up above it. I told Sarah you can tell I’m pregnant because I’ve never had weight up under my boobs before. My extra weight has always been below my belly button. Well, Baby has pushed all that up, and I’m getting that tell-tale rounded pregnant belly.

On the exam table, Dr. Brown smeared my belly with gel and we listened to the heartbeat. Boy, what a difference a month makes. He didn’t have to search at all. Baby’s heartbeat was loud and strong. He told me that the baby could probably hear sounds outside the womb now and that I should be starting to feel the baby move, if I haven’t already. I have been having some strange, very brief flutters (especially after scarfing down a bunch of pasta covered with butter and cheese) that I thought might be baby movement, but nothing long enough for me to be sure.

He asked me if I was starting to panic about paying for daycare and school and college yet, and I told him I have my moments where I think “Holy Shit, what have I done.”

“You thought about this for a long time before you did it, Barb,” he said, “You’re ready. You’re going to be a great mother.”

Everybody keeps telling me that. I hope they’re right.

Later in the day Brooklynn and I tried a new nail salon, and we decided to get our first pedicure together. We sat in two adjacent cushioned reclining chairs, and I soaked my feet in the hot water and delighted over the mechanical massagers kneading my back. As I watched the young, friendly asian man who smelled slightly of cigarette smoke bend over Brooklynn’s feet to paint a tiny white and silver design on top of her bright red toenails, I felt a definite twitter, a longer lasting bubble-bubble-bubble than any I’ve felt before. And I knew it was baby. I didn’t tell Brooklynn. The first person I told was Ann. I called her on my way home, and we both reminisced about the first time she felt Zachary during the third quarter of the Ravens/Giants Superbowl. Again, hard to believe that was six years ago.

This weekend I'm headed to Milwaukee for some good food and fun with my friend Kelly. I've been dreaming about her salsa all week. I wonder if I should warn her that I now have, as the pregnancy websites call it, "a truck driver's appetite."