Bump Day: 17 weeks!

Today I am 17 weeks pregnant. 17 weeks! Time is really flying by now. As a special treat today, I got to listen in on the baby’s heartbeat during my midwife appointment. Those little thuds have got to be the best sound on earth. 

After both of our ultrasounds, I’ve had this reassuring burst of confidence that slowly begins to dissipate as the weeks go by. Without being able to feel the baby’s movements yet, and only with a small little tummy bulge to show the evidence of what’s going on inside, it’s easy to get carried away with worry. Some call me a pessimist, but my friend Pam said that it’s just my instinctual mommy ‘worry genes’ kicking in.   

Ultimately, I trust that the Lord’s will is for us to have a healthy baby, but even the most faithful people have miscarriages or babies with fatal abnormalities. We are so lucky and fortunate that everything so far points to a healthy baby, and we don’t take that for granted for a single second. 

We know firsthand what a miracle we are working with here, and how delicate conception and pregnancy can be. It’s just the most comforting feeling to have the healthy development and growth of our baby confirmed from time to time. 

Now we only have about 3 weeks to go before our big anatomy scan which will tell us if baby is a boy or a girl. I cannot wait. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when I start to think about the total overhaul my lifestyle is about to go through, but the way I ease my mind is to visualize this little baby that I will love beyond my current comprehension. 

However, I have to hold myself back from too much visualization because I don’t want to constantly be picturing a boy/girl and then feel disappointed if my intuition turns out to be wrong. At this point, my instincts say ‘boy’, but we’d be super pleasantly surprised if pink balloons flew out of our gender reveal box. 

Another thing that I’m cautious to think too much about are baby names. Before getting pregnant, I thought I knew exactly what I’d name a boy or a girl, but as soon as I saw those 2 blue lines, suddenly they didn’t feel so right anymore. 

Jonathan wanted to announce the baby’s name at the gender reveal party, but I just don’t think we’ll have a decision by then. I think we’ll need time to sit with the fact that baby is a boy or a girl before we can really make such an important choice. 

We are also having totally opposite problems with our boy and girl name lists. For boys, we have about 10 names that are perfectly suitable, but none that knock our socks off. As for girls, we have 4 names that we absolutely love, without a clue as to how we’ll narrow them down. 

I can’t imagine that I’ll be able to make a confident decision in the next 4 months. I have frequent nightmares that it’s time to leave the hospital after delivery, and our baby is still nameless. But enough about my pregnancy anxieties. Here is a glimpse of my baby bump at 17 weeks:

 P.S. I'd like to say a big thank you to Jillian, who stepped in as photographer when Jonathan was unavailable. I owe you one, sweet friend!