Week 18: Growing pains or baby kicks?

This week my tummy has felt...different.  Not nausea or indigestion, at least I don't think so.  I can't tell if what I'm feeling are the growing pains as the round ligaments stretch to accomodate the growing baby or if I'm feeling kicks, punches, etc., or some combination thereof.  "What to Expect" says I should be able to feel the little one's kicks and punches sometime in the coming weeks, so that might be what I'm feeling, but nothing yet that I felt and said "that was definitely a kick!"  Maybe in the next few weeks I'll feel something that is more definite.  Till then, my tummy just feels weird.

In the meantime, the kiddo continues to make his/her presence known as the belly slowly but surely gets bigger.  So far I'm up about 5 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.  It's starting to look more like a baby bump, less like a beer gut but still some room for confusion on that.  I wore the Belly Band last week with one pair of pants and it worked great.  I think that will buy me a few more weeks in my normal pants as more of them start to get too snug.

By the way, I should mention that we usually take these pictures in the evening when I've changed out of my work clothes and into "around the house" clothes.  Just so you don't think my wardrobe is limited to trackpants, or that that's all I can fit into already.  I might as well get used to them though, that may be all that's comfortable in the last month and the first post-baby weeks!

I got my first round of maternity clothes last week courtesy of my friend Dawn, who graciously offered me her hand-me-downs.  She and I are about the same size pre-baby so I assume a lot of what fit her will fit me.  I tried several things on yesterday but so far they are all way too big.  Pretty surreal to think I might actually be big enough to fill them out in a few months.  I'll have to wait till I'm a little futher along to shop for anything else but it's nice to know I've got a few things in the closet so I'm prepared on that first morning that nothing else fits.

In the past week we've made our first few trips to Babies R Us so we can start to get an idea what we'll need, what the options are, and how much it's all going to cost.  For any given item (crib, carseat, stroller, bouncy chair, etc), there are at least a dozen options and a wide price range, which equals two bewildered parents to be trying to figure out what we need.  Needless to say, baby shopping is an overwhelming task.  As Kevin said, it's like picking out our wedding registry items except in that case we actually knew what everything was, what it was supposed to do, and how we would use it!  Oh, and there's the worry that "if I get the wrong carseat, my kiddo won't be protected in an accident."  Other than all that, just like wedding registry shopping ;)

I think we might have found our crib already though.  I was thinking modern, but the choices seem to be traditional and transitional (something in between traditional and modern), so transitional it is.  I like the lower profile and clean lines of this crib and it's got nice features.  While it's being used as a crib it has 3 height settings so the baby can start out higher up then gradually go lower as s/he gets heavier.  It's also convertible so it can become a toddler bed and daybed and later the back piece can become a twin bed headboard.  The plan is for baby #1 to sleep in this till baby #2 comes along in a few years, then baby #2 gets a few years in it, so we ought to get plenty of use out of it.

On the stroller front, we're still not sure what we want.  I definitely want a jogging stroller I can take for runs but other than that I'm not sure how often and where we'll use a stroller.  I've heard from several people that the big travel systems are nice for the first few months but so heavy and bulky that they are too much trouble to use.  We may want to use a backpack-like carrier a lot of the time rather than haul around a stroller...might just have to wait till the little one arrives to figure out exactly what we want.  Any thoughts?

So much to figure out...no wonder Mother Nature gives us 9 months to prepare!