Halfway there.

I'm just over halfway through this pregnancy, and I'm really starting to feel it.

This morning I put on a dress and realized it was a little tight around the middle. My first thought was that I should put on something bigger, that I didn't want my belly to look too fat... and then I realized it's not fat, it's baby. There's a weird shift that has to happen -- I'm so used to wanting to conceal and camouflage my belly, but when you're pregnant you don't have to. Not to mention that in a week or two it will be completely impossible!

I'm definitely showing more than I did at this stage last pregnancy, I guess because I started this pregnancy some thirty pounds lighter. It's been weird going through my wardrobe to find things that fit; it's like going backwards in time through my weight loss. I just grew out of the shorts I bought last February. Fortunately it's getting hotter and it will soon be little summer dress weather. I'm pretty sure my existing little summer dresses will work, and if they don't I bet I can get some cheap at Old Navy or somewhere. Real maternity wear! I never had that before.

I said above that I'm starting to feel this pregnancy, and I do mean in the painful way. I'm having a lot more pelvic and abdominal pain this time than did with Delphine. I get killer cramps in my lower belly whenever I walk at better than a fast trudge, and I'm feeling more pressure on my pelvis and cervix than I remember last time. Also, since the placenta is posterior this time, I can feel way more kicking, and way earlier, than I did with Delphine and her anterior placenta. It feels like the little guy is practicing capoeira sometimes. It's nice, though; I like the kicking.

We had our second ultrasound since I last posted, and we were supposed to find out the gender of baby number two, but no. He, or she, was positioned wrong and the technician couldn't tell. (I'm not sure how the ultrasound can see through my belly but not through the baby's leg or whatever.) So we have to pick two names (which we did, but I'm not telling what they are) and we have to play the pronoun game for the next four months. I'm quite disappointed. As I said to Beth, I found that knowing Delphine was a girl really helped me personify her and feel closer to her when she was in utero. On the other hand I'm not hung up on having one gender or the other this time; some days I feel like I would love another little girl because Delphine is so great, and then other days I want a little boy because it would be nice to have one of each.

Tuesday we have a midwife appointment with our primary midwife. I think we will set the date for a planned c-section, ten days or so after my due date. I know we won't be inducing with oxytocin, so unless I go into labour all by myself or with gentler methods of induction, it will be a c-section.

I'm really torn about the birth thing; on the one hand I would like a Caesar because it's a known evil, and because I am scared of the damage that a vaginal birth could do to my body, and because a section is safer for the baby. On the other hand it would be nice to prove to myself that I can deliver the old-fashioned way -- not that I am tough enough, I know that for sure, but that my body can generate the right hormones and contract the right muscles. My mother never delivered vaginally so I have this weird superstitious idea that we, Brown women, just can't do it. I would like to disprove that to myself. We're kind of a genetic dead end, otherwise.