21 weeks...

...means we're past the half-way point. Put on your helmets people, only 19 weeks to go, give or take.

Latest bump photo plus gender gossip

This photo was taken at the Bushiribana ruins in Aruba, and you need to be ready for it, because it is pure, undiluted, unabridged BUMP:

For those of you who take your bump neat.
Also, as far as everyone who decided to share an opinion was concerned, this baby is a boy.
It all started with my mom, Nancy, in February: "If by the second trimester you can still get your pants up over your butt and button them, it's a boy." (21 weeks in and I am still able to wear my jeans, though they are a little pinchy-pinchy right under the bump.)
Aruba did nothing but verify her opinion:
Taxi-driver from airport to hotel: "Girl-babies fight their mothers all the way, they make them really sick and fat all over. You must be carrying a boy."
Waitress at resort restaurant (after making me stand up): "It's a boy. It's pointy."
Divemaster for Steve's first night dive: "They say in Columbia that girl-babies steal their mothers' beauty. (Realizes she's treading VERY dangerous water.) SO you MUST be carrying a boy! (Big smile.)"
When we first found out I was pregnant, Steve and I both had the instinct that it was a girl; so far we have little folk-loric evidence to support the claim except that instinct. Since we have decided to keep the gender a surprise, only time will tell. We have our next ultrasound this Thursday; expect more photos soon!

The emotional process, weeks 13-21

This pregnancy has been mild in most every respect, and I must say I'm aware that this mildness includes my emotions -- I have been pretty much mostly myself.
Mostly.
Only, I cried when I got a B+ in my research class last quarter.
And I cried when Steve stayed out a little later than I expected.
And if I bump into inanimate objects I have a tendency to punch them.
And I am filled with love for Steve like those very first months, only with the familiarity of the last six years making it that much sweeter.
Much like Acorn's thunka-thunking, these peaks of emotion are still very much intermittent, but from the bigger picture they are more frequent and their onset more sudden.
So there you have it -- no pregnancy is a cake walk, but I'm pretty sure I'm walking on cupcakes, which I'm feeling very lucky about.
Feeling lucky is probably my number one emotion since we got that big fat positive 5 months ago.

Morse code for NERD

So the flutterings of many weeks ago were a false alarm -- merely butterflies. About a week and a half ago I felt an odd sensation -- not a muscle spasm, not a butterfly, not a gas bubble or borborygmus -- just like someone took their pinky finger and poked at a muscle. Only from the inside of my uterus. Whoa! These sensations have continued intermittently over the many days that followed, and I can now confidently say Acorn is trying out his/her new limbs. It's very odd and kind of amusing. Steve has even been able to feel it a couple times.
Only, if one ascribes any meaning to the timing of these occurrences, then Acorn is a NERD.
First time I felt it I was playing World of Warcraft, a nerdy online multiplayer game that has turned about 10 million people worldwide into nerds.
A lot of activity while watching A Beautiful Mind, a movie about famous mathematician John Nash.
A lot of activity while watching the X-men Wolverine movie.
And a lot of activity while a family of six sang *terrible* karaoke on Piet's Pier while I waited for Steve to get back from a night dive.
Let's see, computer games + mathematics + a movie based on a comic book + karaoke = NERD.
But was there every any doubt of that? Really?
(Shut up, Fred.)

Bump Photos

What follows below are our first "bump" photos.
Did I say "ours?" Oh yes, yes I did...


First is me, relaxed. Next is me sucking in. No really!

Steve's baby bump. (Lest you fear for his health, Steve is pushing it out for effect.)


Tika's baby bump.

There you have 'em, folks!

The belly stare and the mortification impulse

I walked into my internship yesterday morning and my supervisor exclaimed "you've popped!" Indeed, even though I posted about it a few weeks ago, it still felt like the genuine emergence of my "bump" happened overnight. A few weeks ago I could feel it and sorta see it but if I sucked my stomach in its presence was negotiable; now I can't not feel it and if I suck my stomach in, well, very little happens. (I will take and email photos soon; let me know if you'd like to be on that list.) It's not that it's huge; it's just that it's there.

While it's obvious to me what's going on, I'm starting to get the first onslaught of the "is she or isn't she?" stares. Well, that's not entirely accurate because the first onslaught has been by people who know I'm pregnant, so they're really "is it or isn't it showing?" stares. Women are used to being stared at for a variety of reasons, and I'm no exception, but I have to say the new locale for the stares is taking some adjustment. Women are also trained to be very, very sensitive to perceptions of our weight and if I were not pregnant and caught three or four people trying to discretely stare at my belly despite wide eyes and furrowed brows, I'd be mortified. That mortification impulse is still present with the pregnancy belly, like it or not, and has to be grappled with despite the fact that there's no reason to be even slightly embarrassed about one's belly size. (A note here that really -- really -- no one should be made to be embarrassed about their belly size, no matter its cause, by society or anyone, but let's face it, it happens pervasively.) Having a belly has called into high relief how much I do have that mortification impulse despite my beliefs that no one should have it; just another facet of day to day living of which pregnancy has made me hyper-aware.

What are the other things? How accustomed I'd grown to ignoring hunger and bathroom urges for the sake of convenience, for one. Training myself to eat when I'm hungry -- the moment I'm hungry -- and to use the facilities when I first have even the faintest awareness that I have to go -- has been just that, training. Then there's the infrequency with which I was paying attention to vegetables and protein amounts in my diet until now. There's the absolutely cerebral way I operated before pregnancy, rarely paying attention to the nuances of my physical existence like I do now. I have never before inhabited my body the way I so completely do now.

And lastly, there's the omnipresence of Easter candy in the world -- is Easter over yet? Please?

Steveidarity

Of the many things I must deny myself - alcohol, caffeine, sugar - Steve promised me solidarity on just one: sushi. Tonight I put him to the test: we were going to celebrate his new job and ended up deciding on a Japanese restaurant. We sat there in an environment where we'd eaten sushi and instead ordered things we'd never bothered to before, and lo and behold it was good. It was a trial for Steve, I'm sure, in that unlike me it was the first time he had to deny himself something on behalf of this pregnancy, but to have his solidarity on this one silly thing made me so grateful. And I'm guessing this is just the beginning.