Yikes

This is my 18 week old baby... but a lot uglier than a sweet potato in real life.  I was given a picture of how a babies face progresses over the nine months of pregnancy and it goes something like this: tadpole, jabba the hut, various characters from the cantina in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the elephant man, the face of someone that was in a horrible accident, the face of someone who was in a less horrible accident, and finally an old man's face.  Right now our baby is in the Star Wars cantina phase and I swear I can hear the cantina music playing late at night as I try to fall asleep.
It is my opinion that they should stop giving out this particular sheet of paper that shows the baby's facial progressions... having a baby is scary enough. 

18 Weeks

Today I am officially 18 weeks along in my pregnancy!  Two more weeks and I will be exactly half way (if my due date is exact, which hardly ever happens...but close to half way anyway).  Things have been going really well.  I have been feeling good... not as tired and not sick anymore!  I haven't really had any weird food cravings or food aversions yet.  I still hate all the usual things: pickles, mustard, fish, mushrooms, etc (I dislike a lot of things I realized), and I still love all my usual favorites: nesquik powder, peanut butter, popcorn (I'm not a complete fatso...wait for the last one), FRESH FRUIT!!!  All the yummy fruit and vegetables are finally coming back into season and I am so excited about it!  I bought the first cherries of the season yesterday and, although they were $4.99 a pound (ouch), they were seriously SO good.  I also bought two apricots and a peach yesterday and I inhaled them pretty much before I even made it home from the store... but hey, at least it is healthy stuff.  I've been keeping really busy with summer classes, work, and working out, and it has been really good for me to be doing stuff other than lazing around the house.  I'm finally starting to look pregnant which may not sound like a good thing, but when it comes to choosing between looking pregnant and just looking like I ate way too many oreos... I choose looking pregnant. 
Only two weeks until we find out the gender!  So far I have none of the "intuition" that tells what gender it will be.  I have had two dreams where I had the baby; in one dream it was a girl, in the other dream it was a boy.  The only thing that was common about both dreams was that Nathan wasn't there... I don't read too much into dream interpretation, but I'm pretty sure that I subconsiously think my husband is a flake. 
Nathan and I get more excited every day for this little baby to be a part of our family! 

3rd Appointment/My Angry Rant

I had my third appointment yesterday.  It was... awful!  The appointment was at 2:30.  I was out running errands and at 2:00 I figured I would just head over to the appointment since I didn't have time to do my grocery shopping first.  So, I showed up and checked in at the appointment at 2:15.  I figured it would be good, I would show up early, get in on time, and get done early.  Besides, I had my awesome nerdy novel that I could read while I waited.  There were only two of us in the waiting room when I checked in so, again, I was confident that I would be in and out pretty quickly.  About 2:30 a girl I know from high school came in and sat down.  I started talking to her and found out that she also had an appointment with the same doctor at 2:30.  I was thinking, "haha... you will be waiting a while since I have been here fifteen minutes and haven't even gotten in yet".  Well the joke was on me... about five minutes later they called her in.  As I kept sitting there the waiting room was getting busier and busier.  I was really starting to get pissed after they called FOUR MORE women in who checked in after me.  After waiting for half an hour I went to the front desk to see if they had forgotten to check me in... they said that they were sorry for the wait but there was only one doctor there.  Ok, that doesn't change the fact that I checked in at least half an hour ahead of all those other women.  So, after waiting for AN HOUR AND A HALF I was called in to see the doctor.  I was let into a little room where the nurse took my blood pressure and then told me the doctor would be right in.  After I sat in that little room for HALF AN HOUR I started to cry.  I cried, and cried, and cried because I was SO frustrated and angry that I had been waiting for so long.  FINALLY, the doctor came in around 4:30.  I was still crying and had a beautiful mixture of snot and mascara running down my face.  It was really embarrassing... even more so since he had a young, beautiful med student shadowing him that day.  He asked what was wrong and even though I knew he couldn't do anything about it I told him I was just frustrated because I had been waiting so long.  He said sorry and we moved on with the appointment.  I asked him a couple of questions about my back pain and such, then checked the baby's heart beat, and I was done.  I was with the doctor for a total of five minutes.  I waited two hours for a five minute appointment!  The worst thing about the whole experience was that I didn't even feel excited to hear the baby's heartbeat because I was so angry and upset.  I hate that the fun and amazing experience of hearing my little baby's heart was lost in how awful this appointment was.  Nathan was gone for the weekend at a Melaleuca convention with his dad so he wasn't able to be there.   I scared him really bad when I called after the appointment and I was crying really hard, he thought something happened with the baby.
So anyway, it was an awful appointment.  After I left it took about an hour to cry myself out and then I was able to think about some of the positives.  The baby is still healthy, the heartbeat was in the 150's, which is normal.  Our next appointment is on June 14th and we get to figure out the gender!!!! YAY!  Our baby has changed from a navel orange to an avocado size over the last week... not much of a difference, but exciting for us!
This post is pretty depressing, but I just want to say that I sure do love my little baby.  I am so excited that it is getting bigger and that I am beginning to get a little baby bump!  I am now in the second trimester and I am looking forward to finally feeling better and getting closer and closer to having our little baby with us!