Pregnant Lady at 16 weeks

The belly has grown quite impressively in the last two weeks, no? At least, it feels that way to me. This time, you'll see I opted for the artsy black and white version. It makes it easier to discern my fish-white belly from the wall behind me. And makes the whole enterprise seem somehow more momentous and less blatantly solipsistic.

Several people have told me that I'm starting look like a "pregnant lady" -- in those words. I always get a kick out of the word "lady." It makes me think of the women at my church when I was growing up, with their clip-on earrings and pocketbooks and high heels. I enjoy using the phrase "pregnant lady" to apply to myself, too. As in, "Move away from the pizza, pregnant lady coming through." Or (to my husband) "Have you ever seen such a hot, sexy pregnant lady as I in your life?"

Despite an incredibly frustrating and stressful past week at work, and the fact that I've had way too little time to write (I'm never going to finish this damned novel), this pregnant lady is feeling pretty good, physically and psychologically. Oh, sure, there are the little twin growth spurts, where I am suddenly overcome with exhaustion. And this fucking heat doesn't help matters any, although I don't think I'm any more uncomfortable than I would be if I weren't pregnant. (I hate, hate, HATE heat and humidity.) And the nighttime leg cramps continue, which isn't much fun.

On the upside, I'm getting more used to sleeping on my side: last week I broke down and shelled out $50 for a Snoogle. And I'm so glad I did. It's a body pillow with C-curves up top and bottom that you can find all kinds of ways to grip, clamp, straddle and mangle in your sleep. It does present a bit of a barrier between me and the husband for cuddling purposes, but who wants to cuddle when it's 95 degrees out and your air conditioner is a lemon? Not this pregnant lady.

Speaking of the husband, he woke up yesterday morning and had a revelation: our math has been wrong. All along, we've been saying that we have a 1 in 3 chance of having boy-girl twins, since there are three possible options: gg, bb, bg. But that's not quite right. In fact, there are FOUR options: gg, bb, bg AND gb. (Remember those old Mendelian graphs from high school biology?) He confirmed this with a little online research, and it's true. We have a 50% chance of having a boy and a girl. Of course, there was only about a 20% chance (or less, given that I only had 2 mature follicles at the time of our IUI) that we'd end up with twins, and we nailed that one. So, I wouldn't be entirely shocked if, in fact, we're having a hermaphrodite and a baby lemur.

One last thing: movement. Any day now, I should start to be able to feel it, which is very exciting. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I feel a little flutter or blip or bubble down there, and I wonder if maybe it's the bambinos. But it could also just be air or gas or stuff gushing around. Some friends of ours gave us a wonderful gift -- a baby listener. You put on headphones and put this microphone to your belly and listen. But it's a bit early to use it, so all I've been able to hear so far are the roarings of my own body: heartbeat, digestion, god knows what else. Something like the sound of a dog yawning. Another sound rather like a toilet flushing. Is this the miraculous music of gestating life? Why not.