Differences

I mentioned before that this pregnancy has been totally different from when I was pregnant with Jake. I know every pregnancy is different, but some things are making me feel like a newbie to this whole carrying a child thing.

-Sickness; I already mentioned this before, but wow...I was sick with Jake, but in hindsight, I'm realizing that was nothing in comparison to this time around. I was nauseous most of the time and actually getting sick a lot (sorry, gross)...the biggest culprit of getting sick was liquids, which is how I ended up on the Zofran. I was FINALLY able to go off of that around 15 weeks.

-Skin; the breakouts on my face are making me look like I'm in 9th grade again, so annoying.

-Movement; I'm guessing this is because it's my 2nd time around, but I started feeling little flutters of movement around 14.5 weeks. Now, I feel them more often & it's very obvious that it's the baby squirming around in there :) Brian felt the little one for the first time last night (16 weeks, 6 days)

-My backside; so uh, yeah...my back side is definitely bigger. This one is a toss up though; I'd like to blame the baby, but there's a pretty good chance that it could be due to the standard holiday eating that comes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. :(

-Cravings; with Jake, I craved juice, sweet tea and mexican food. This time, the only thing I'm really craving is Dr. Pepper (so random, I know). I've tried (even pre-pregnancy) to cut down on my pop consumption, but if someone tells me they have Dr. Pepper when I'm out to eat, all bets are off!!

-Hormones; I'm sure I was hormonal with Jake, but this time...watch out! I'm emotional, irritable and just kind of snippy in general. I can feel myself acting that way and I don't like it, but I just can't seem to help it. I seem to suffer from extreme road rage & just general disgust with lack of common courtesy lately from total strangers. It's totally normal for a pregnant woman to want to rip a stranger's head off for not holding the door open, or for driving way too slowly, right??

-Subchorionic Hematoma; after waking up on a Saturday morning around 9.5 weeks with bleeding, a trip to the ER showed that I had a small subchorionic hematoma, which basically means that some blood has collected along the uterine wall. Fortunately, mine was very small and resolved completely on its own with no harmful side effects, other than a huge scare for me.

To summarize, this pregnancy thus far at 17 weeks has involved prescription medication, 3 ultrasounds, one trip to the ER and about 7 appointments with my OB. For all of those reasons, Brian is predicting a girl, with his reason being that only a girl would cause this much drama in such a short period of time :) Very scientific, right? A lot of people seem to be thinking girl, probably because it's been so different this time, but I really don't have a gut feeling one way or the other at this time. We should find out next week though, so the wait will be over soon enough!