Week 20: The halfway point

Halfway into your pregnancy, your baby is about 6 inches long and weighs about 9 ounces — a little over half a pound. You've probably begun to feel your baby's movements.

Under the protection of the vernix, your baby's skin is thickening and developing layers. Your baby now has thin eyebrows, hair on the scalp and well-developed limbs.

Commenting

Because some of you can't figure it out, I'll say it here. We want you to comment. Just hit the button that says 0 comments or however many comments after the entry, and then you can add whatever you like here. Remember, the kid's gonna eventually read it, so be funny. Or not.

The wierdness of being pregnant

Nobody ever tells you about the wierdness of showing/not quite showing, (depending on what you're wearing) of feeling pregnant some days, and then some days it all seems theoretical, even after you've heard the heartbeat, and seen the fuzzy ultrasound. Theoretical because you haven't felt any movement yet, and you're not really sure if you look actually pregnant, or just thick around the middle.

It's a lot of waiting, this first half of the pregnancy--and I know that the waiting will just become more prolonged, and pronounced as time goes on.

All I can do is wonder, and wait, and try to pretend like I'm not obsessed with my body.

The baby, the sprog, the kid-to-be still seems a very very long way away.

Week 19: Lanugo covers baby's skin

Your baby's delicate skin is now protected with a pasty white coating called vernix. Under the vernix, a fine, down-like hair called lanugo covers your baby's body.

Your baby's kidneys are already producing urine. The urine is excreted into the amniotic sac, which surrounds and protects your baby.

As your baby's hearing continues to improve, he or she may pick up your voice in conversations — although it's probably hard to hear clearly through the amniotic fluid and protective paste covering your baby's ears.

Thanks to the millions of motor neurons developing in the brain, your baby can make reflexive muscle movements. If you haven't felt movement yet, you will soon.

Week 18: Baby begins to hear

As the nerve endings from your baby's brain "hook up" to the ears, your baby may hear your heart beating, your stomach rumbling or blood moving through the umbilical cord. He or she may even be startled by loud noises. Your baby can swallow this week, too.

In the beginning ...

It's a new blog. So where did it come from?

Well, the two of us are going to be parents and we've decided to start writing about what this means, how feel, what is going on in our lives right now.

Where did it come from? Well if you're a fellow human being I think I can assume that you know where babies come from. If not, ask your mother. I can assure that it was a perfectly excellent experience and fully planned for.

So why write about it? Because this is really important. We mark our lives with rituals with specific moments and this is one of the grand transitional moments. Normally it is a private moment, a hidden one. Instead this is to be public -- we want to share the turning of our lives with everyone, family, friends, and well-wishers equally.

This is an indefinably important transitional moment for me. We have few rituals left in our culture, nothing to count the ages of life, but having a child changes everything. In the past I could think selfishly, now I no longer have that luxury.

So it's going to be a while until our baby can read this, but this week it will start be able to hear.