I know this is insane and impossible and I am totally imagining it, but I need to write it down as part of the memory-keeping venture. 

For the last couple days I swear I have felt baby kicks. Little bitty baby feeties kicking me waaaay down low.

Like I said. Impossible. Wonder what it actually is?

Voila! Here are baby and me at 13 weeks! We are officially in the 2nd trimester, which feels crazy!!!
My symptoms have continued to ease significantly, which is lovely. I am hardly ever nauseous anymore. The only things that get me are strong, unpleasant smells (didn’t really have this problem with Lewis’ pregnancy!), and brushing my teeth. But even those things aren’t as bad as they had been. Although I did have a particularly rough time at the grocery store over the weekend… my nose was turned up to full-power. I could even smell the corn tortillas through the packaging in the Hispanic foods aisle! Other than that, the belly continues to grow, my steady cravings have been relatively constant (carrots, grape juice, pears), punctuated by random acute cravings that are very fun to satisfy on the fly.

Outside of normal pregnancy symptoms, I have been having strange feelings about this pregnancy lately. I’ve been so excited to look and feel pregnant and enjoy all of the things that go along with pregnancy that I’ve been sort of forgetting to enjoy the parts I’m in. It is kind of a feeling of wanting to “fast forward to the good parts”.

At the same time, Kyle and I believe this will be our last baby. So I am struggling to slow down the “fast forward” feeling so I can savor every moment of my “last time”. I wanted this so bad and now I am rushing, rushing, rushing to get to the next part… but if I fast forward through all of it, it will be over forever, and I will have missed it!

I’m hoping that the arrival of the 2nd trimester and all of the relative physical ease that comes with it will allow me to put things on slo-mo instead, and I can really sink into the moments and take snapshot memories of all of the feelings – physical and emotional – to cherish forever.

Part of doing that, I think, will be allowing myself the best possible foundation for feeling “good”. Especially considering Lewis’ ongoing sleep problems, which just draaaaaaain me and make me want to fast forward at warp speed to get out of this exhaustion. To that end, Kyle’s mother took Lewis for a sleepover on Saturday night so we could get a full night of sleep.

Oh. My. Goodness. That was life-altering.

And you know what? As a surprise, she kept him all day Sunday until dinnertime, so we had a whole day to just be grownups and recharge! It worked. I am in a much better place mentally now than I was before the break. I even kept my cool through two wake-ups last night with the kid because I was just feeling so restored. I think we will take advantage of grandparents willing to do sleepovers before my next desperate mental breakdown instead of after! I feel like I can be a much better mommy for a good stretch now that I had that 24 hour break to reconnect with both my husband and myself.

Final thought: I AM SO EXCITED TO BE IN THE SECOND TRIMESTER!!!!!