24 weeks

Another month has flown by. I can't believe how fast this pregnancy is going!

The big news to share is that starting on Monday, the little fluttery movements that I've been feeling off and on since about week 20 or so have become a lot stronger and more persistent. It's been so fun to feel these stronger movements, although there are two downsides so far: 1) it seems this baby's favourite work-out time is right around when I'm getting into bed... and 2) my bladder seems to be receiving most of the brunt of these little punches and kicks. I know this is still pretty early on and the kicks will only get stronger, but I'm already wondering if this baby won't end up a martial arts expert someday... Really, though, I am thrilled to be able to feel these movements and know my baby is growing and getting stronger!

And in other less exciting news, last week I finally bought my first pieces of maternity clothes. This is something I have been dreading since I was a teenager in high school. As someone who didn't ever really love shopping to begin with, maternity clothes shopping seemed like the most awful and embarrassing kind of shopping, and I imagined everyone staring at me and my baby bump as I entered the store or watching me as I looked through clothes and stood in line at the changing room. In reality, though, it wasn't near as bad as I had imagined all those years ago, although that could be because the four stores we visited were all consignment/thrift stores. As the number of clothing items I could fit into grew smaller (I was down to wearing one pair of regular pants outside the house and lounge pants most of the time at home), I realized that soon I would have to buy some maternity clothes, but it pained me to think about buying brand new pieces that I would only wear for a few months (well, hopefully not too many months after the baby arrives...). So I looked up maternity consignment stores in town and found a store that had two locations. Last Wednesday, Jonathan and I stopped at both, as well as looked at the maternity sections at Goodwill and another thrift store in town. Although I was self-conscious going into the maternity stores, no one stared or made any comments. In fact, no one seemed to notice us at all, which is exactly the way I prefer to shop. All in all, I didn't find what I was actually looking for, which was long-sleeved shirts (all except for three of mine are getting much too short), but I did find two pairs of maternity jeans and one T-shirt that fit me. After trying on the jeans, I really kind of wish I'd gone looking sooner; they are SO comfortable! I am someone who likes to wear clothes that look nice, but not at the expense of comfort, so I was very pleased to find such comfortable maternity options. Plus there's the added benefit of not having to fiddle with buttons and zippers during all those many bathroom trips, nor having to worry about forgetting to zip the zipper back up either. Now that I know these things, I may be tempted to keep on wearing these clothes even after I can fit back into my pre-pregnancy wardrobe again (or maybe I should say "if").

So that's the 24 week update. Baby kicks and maternity clothes mean it's been a pretty exciting and interesting past week!