Nighttime Jumping Jacks

You would think that making a baby would tire a person out enough to where they'd sleep well at night. After all, something as simple as walking across the room can take it out of you sometimes. But a good night's sleep is just not in the cards for me. I don't know exactly how to describe it, it's like half the night, my head is out like a light, but my body is a hyperactive zombie. I toss and turn all night long and can't just lay still. But yet, when I get up to pee (which, unfortunately, is several times a night) I'm so out of it and sleepy I can barely stumble to the toilet and back. I feel like I have liquid lead in my veins instead of blood. Poor John, he's such a light sleeper and he has to put up with me flip-flopping all night like a fish out of water. And then, the other half the night, when my mind isn't black like I've had anesthesia, it's racing. I'm aware that I'm in this half-way world between sleep and reality and I'm thinking obsessively about one thing over and over or dreaming really vividly (and these are the times where I'm aware of all the jumping jacks... but just can't seem to do anything about it). I'll go to bed at 9 or 10 and wake up in the middle of the night thinking it must be like 5, only to find out it's only 11:30. Argh.

On a brighter note, I ordered a fetal heartbeat monitor the other day. They sell really, really cheap versions of a doppler at places like Target or Walmart. It was only 20 bucks. There were some really great reviews and some really bad ones... I guess it depended on whether or not the person could figure out how to use it or not - I think some of them didn't really follow the instructions and so couldn't get it to work. One of the reviews actually described how she couldn't hear anything because it was picking up all the movements from her hand that was holding the monitor in place... well, it comes with a strap because you're not supposed to hold it with your hand. I mean, how's it going to be sensitive enough to detect noise inside your belly but not detect a hand that's directly on it??? And it's not going to be like a doctor's doppler, it was 20 bucks for goodness sake!! Although, you can rent a real doppler for as low as 14/month so I might end up returning the cheap one and renting a real 0ne if it really doesn't work. Not because I need it, but because there's nothing else to do but wait. I want to do something. I'm waiting, rather impatiently, for the doppler to get here, but even once it does, I'll probably have to wait til week 20 or so to be able to hear anything baby related. I'm a pretty impatient person - I hate waiting. It's not a very fun trait to have during pregnancy - 9 months of just pure waiting. Waiting to find out if you're pregnant, waiting to see the first ultrasound, waiting to feel the movements, waiting to find out the sex. And then, after that, no more milestones, just wait, wait, wait for the baby.

So anyway, to pacify that impatience a bit til the doppler gets here, I borrowed my parents' stethoscope to see if I could hear the heartbeat, and wouldn't you know it? I couldn't. I hear nothing but regular old belly gurglings. To be fair, I'm only 16-1/2 weeks and they say that you can't really hear the heartbeat using a stethoscope until weeks 25-26 (grrrr!!) but I thought I'd give it a try anyway... (told you I'm impatient). I thought maybe I'd be able to hear it move around or something even if I couldn't find the heartbeat. But alas, I hear nothing baby-related at all. I haven't been able to listen during times when I can feel him/her move (which are still very few and far between and very faint). I'd listen all the time if I could, but the earpieces are really painful after oh, about a minute.

And it is impossible to find a picture of a fetus labeled correctly on the internet. How do I know this? I know this because you find the same picture labelled 14 weeks, 15 weeks, 18 weeks, and then, oh no, it's only 8 weeks! (this usually from anti-abortion advocates... don't get me wrong, I'm not choosing sides here, but get the facts accurate, people!!) So I am going to post a picture of about what our baby looks like these days, but I'm not going to say exactly how old the fetus in the picture is because I don't know - thanks to all the other bloggers and anti-abortion people out there who take a picture and label it whatever is convenient for them. But here's a picture of a fetus that, according to my best guess, based on the hundreds of hours of obsessive reading of pregnancy websites (I told you I'm not good at waiting!), is probably about 14-18 weeks old.

I tried finding a reliable website to pull it from, but all the medical websites only have drawings (or that's all I've found so far) which isn't quite what I'm looking for. You also get different information - not just different pictures - depending on what website you're looking at (even among the more reliable ones it seems). But, for the most part, they all say that this week our baby is about 4-5 inches long now from head to rump, can make facial expressions, hear sounds, and has tiny little fingernails, toenails, and fingerprints. It's simply amazing what's going on in there. The wait is well worth it.