Review of Week Eleven, a Heartbeat and a Camera

At the end of week 11, the weeha is about 2 1/2 inches long, or roughly the size of a plum if you’d like to think of it in fruit-terms.  For some reason, all the books I’ve read relate the weeha’s size to a piece of food.  I guess this makes sense, because food is such a prevalent thought in a pregnant woman’s mind.  Along with it’s new plum-sized status, it has also begun to form hair follicles and nail beds.  I was wondering aloud a few days ago if our baby would be born bald or have lots of hair…Alan said he thinks the weeha will have bunches of it since he was born with lots and so was I.  I’m thinking a dark-haired, curly-headed kid with squinty eyes would sure be cute…

I also just came home from a routine doctor’s visit – they checked me out, weighed me in and squirted what I thought was going to be very cold gel on my belly.  However, to my pleasant surprise the goo was warm!!  They have heaters for the slippery stuff now and I thought that was pretty cool and a good invention by whoever thought of it.  My doctor turned on the machine and I heard…absolutely nothing.  I thought the weeha must be hiding somewhere and asked if maybe he or she had decided to travel north towards my rib cage.  The doctor was, after all, searching very low on my belly.  She just laughed at me and said the weeha can’t travel that far yet and still makes it’s home very low, towards the bottom of my pelvis.  Apparently babies don’t move up in your stomach until a little later on…which doesn’t bode well for my peeing problems but I’ll discuss that more later.  After a little more digging around, a noise that reminded me of drums being played underwater boomed through the speakers and a big smile lit up my doctor’s face…she had found the heartbeat!  So, the weeha is alive and well…and not in hiding.

The doctor said that everything is looking good for being right at 12 weeks, but cautioned that the catheters may come into play again soon.  Apparently, it’s unusual to start having bladder issues as soon as I did even with a tilted uterus.  However, mine is tilted so far back that the issues began early for me. And although I haven’t had any problems peeing lately, the doctor warned me that as the baby gets much bigger in the coming weeks it will put a lot more pressure on my bladder so I’d better be prepared…traveling with my trusty catheters at all times.  Keep your fingers crossed for me on this one because it is really not a comfortable experience.  The doctor did say that the only other time she’d seen someone have to use a catheter like me was another woman with a tilted uterus like mine…but pregnant with twins.  However, we did an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago and the other doctor only saw one weeha so it seems doubtful that there would be two in there if we only saw one just a short time ago.  She also told me that she wants to keep my official due date at January 31, even though I’m a few days further along then they originally thought.

On a funnier note, I had a breakdown over a camera this week…haha.  I had just been proudly thinking that I haven’t felt plagued by the infamous pregnancy hormones causing erratic shifts in behavior.  However, the following incident might disprove that theory. Let me just preface this by saying that Alan is a planner, while I am most definitely not.  He likes to research and hunt around for the best deal or bargain and go from there.  While I am happy to let him research and hunt, I also have a tendency not to be the most patient person in the world when there is something I desperately need…or at least feel that I desperately need.  

Anyway…on with the story.  I had mentioned to Alan a couple of weeks ago that we needed to buy a new camera because ours has been out of commission for a while now.  I’m not a picture-snapping fanatic and I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned getting a new camera if not for the fact that I feel the necessity to capture on film my ever-expanding abdomen. I know that the belly will begin growing very quickly during the second trimester and I really want to have weekly pics of it to include in a baby keep-sake chest for the weeha.  So, Alan suggested that I do some research and find a good camera we could go buy together.  I reminded him, however, that he is the researcher in this family as I don’t really know the first thing about pixels and zoom capabilities.  He said he’d check it out and that was that.  

Well, I realized this past week that it was almost week 12…the deadline I had set for myself in my head that the first picture of my tummy should be taken.  Where I got this deadline from, I have no idea.  Upon this realization, I stormed into the living room, interrupting his video game playing, and said, “Alan…did you go to the BX (military store) to check out the camera’s??!!”  He said that he had, but thought I should go in to the store, write down the top 4 or 5 camera’s I liked and then he’d research to see which one was best.  Well…I did not like that response one bit.  I promptly burst into tears and said, “I’m not that type of person!!!  I don’t care about all the extra features, I just want a camera to take pictures of my belly!”  Alan, God bless him, didn’t bat an eye at my inappropriate emotional outburst and instead asked if maybe I needed a nap. haha.  I took his advice and went and laid down for awhile.

We’ve found the camera that we want and I’ll take my first picture tomorrow.  Although I’m not sure quite how to do it, there should be some way to post it up on this site…I’ll have Alan research it.