Halfway to Reality

This week I am 20 weeks pregnant, halfway there! I can't believe it! The first half of this pregnancy has been nothing short of wonderful. Sure I had some nausea, some trouble sleeping, and I've missed many a funny movie quote thanks to my 300th trip to the bathroom, but none of that compares to living this miracle.

Not long ago, I had begun to question if motherhood would ever happen for me. I spent so long on the exhausting journey to get here that I couldn't imagine any other way of life. I felt like a hamster stuck in a wheel that was doomed to go around and around but never reach my destination. To actually see the progress of each day and to reach this amazing milestone feels like a true miracle. And this week has provided many amazing milestones for me, Chad and Snow Pea.

About 4 weeks ago I began feeling the first flutters of Snow Pea moving around in my tummy. At first I thought I might be imagining things or making them up because I was so anxious to feel something, but when another friend described what her flutters felt like, I knew it was exactly what I felt too. I was amazed and excited. I spent many free moments sitting as still as possible to see if I could feel it again. For the past week or so though, sitting still has stopped being necessary. I no longer feel little flutters but all out baby flips! She is so so crazy active, I jump in surprise regularly when I feel her thump me from inside.

Feeling such distinct movement is all at once amazing and bizarre. I feel so much more connected to her when she makes herself known like that, she feels so much more real and alive. But it also is a little freaky when she whacks me out of nowhere and I am sometimes reminded of a certain famous scene from "Alien". Honestly though, I love it and have been anxious for the day when Chad could feel her move too. I researched the time line of when that usually happens and was sad to read it's typically another month before the baby can be felt from the outside. This past Sunday though she was moving so fiercely, I thought there was no way he wouldn't be able to feel it. So I lay in bed and pressed his hand to my tummy, and shortly after she thumped, hard. I turned to Chad and his eyes were huge and beyond excited. He felt her too! It was incredible. Feeling her move was wonderful enough but it feels even better to be able to share it with him.

The next day we were excited to be able to see our precious Snow Pea again at the 20 week anatomy scan. Some of you may already know there was some drama surrounding this particular ultrasound and whether my insurance would cover it. My OB's office warned me that they have never received a payout on this claim because my company deems it unnecessary unless it is a high risk pregnancy. Chad and I spent days researching the policy, the claim history at the hospital, and the uses of this particular scan. We still are not 100% sure if our claim will be paid, but after talking it over we agreed that we had come much too far and fought much too hard to take any chances now. This is the ultrasound that can potentially find any heart defects or other abnormalities and if there is a problem, knowing about in advance can potentially save our baby's life. Once we realized that, there was no question about what we would do. (Of course I reserve the right to blog an angry rant if our insurance does deny our claim)

The scan itself went well. Snow Pea stayed true to her behavior the previous day and moved around like crazy. She literally did somersaults and flipped position many times, starting out head down and then quickly moving into the exact opposite position and then moving into a completely different spot after that. The poor tech had a lot of trouble getting some of the pictures she needed, particularly of the heart. The good news is, Snow Pea finally did stay still long enough to get those important images, and she gave Chad and I some extra time to watch her on screen.

Since the tech doesn't do the interpretation, we won't have any official reports until my OB appointment next week, but from what I gathered Snow Pea is doing well. She is still a she and measuring pretty much right on target. She is about 14 ounces now and the size of a cantaloupe! The coolest part of the scan was seeing her move on screen and feeling it at the exact same time. I teared up a bit at that moment, it was just such an incredible connection. This isn't just some picture on the screen, this is a baby, my baby, my daughter and she is living and growing inside me. Despite my difficulty believing it, this is real, I am no longer living in the hamster wheel. Every day things progress more and more and I am one day closer to reaching my destination, one step closer to being a mom.