With so much going on in our real world right now, my pregnancy is likely to slip into the background, if that’s possible. I guess the truth is it’s likely to remind me of itself constantly. Boxes I either won’t be able to pick up, or won’t be allowed to by hubby and family. Fatigue setting in early. BB joining in on all the important moving conversations by kicking up a storm, which is now a regular occurrence in chez momma.

According to those prego geniuses at babycenter.com, BB now weighs about 2 1/2 pounds (like a butternut squash) and is about 15 inches long. Her muscles and lungs are continuing to mature, and her head is growing bigger to make room for her developing Genius brain (if she’s anything like her father or big brother anyway). To meet her increasing nutritional demands, babycenter.com says I’ll need plenty of protein, vitamins C, folic acid, and iron. And because her bones are soaking up lots of calcium, I also need to be sure to drink my milk (or other good sources of calcium like cheese, yogurt, or enriched OJ). Honestly I’m a little bit calcium / dairy obsessed, it’s like my favorite food group, so I’m thinking this won’t be a problem.

Babycenter.com and I agree on this next thing – my baby’s very active now. They say that my practitioner may ask me to spend some time each day counting kicks and will give me specific instructions on how to do this. I’ll let her know that I’ll try my hardest in between packing boxes, lining up the moving company and one way or another getting to Dream State (more on that later). I guess now I’ll definitely have to change my OB, which I’ve already looked into like the manic planner I am – I know which clinics I prefer, what hospitals are in the area, the names of their local OBGYN MDs and good news – there is a pretty good chance that one of Dream Company’s health insurance groups will cover my pregnancy – and from Day 1 that he starts his job – three cheers for Dream Company if that’s true.

To completely change the subject, babycenter.com wants to warn me that some old friends may be stopping by soon – no, not ex boyfriends or anything ghastly like that – just heartburn and constipation which is probably ghastly enough, no? The pregnancy hormone progesterone relaxes smooth muscle tissue throughout your body, including your gastrointestinal tract. This relaxation, coupled with the crowding in my abdomen (not that my little girl is fat or anything, just, you know, there) slows digestion, which in turn can cause gas and heartburn — especially after a big meal — and contribute to constipation as well. I haven’t been getting a lot of big meals lately, for some reason this sore throat / cold / not the Swine Flu is lowering my appetite. But all the water and Gatorade I’m subsisting on does seem to make baby and I quite burpy – I might be misreading some of the little sensations in BB’s bat cave, but I swear we are having burping contests. I know you wanted to know that.

I’m going to skip the paragraph on hemorrhoids as I don’t have them (thank god) and don’t really want to think about them. I think I have enough stressors on my plate to feed a massive crowd of worry warts. All in all, the pregnancy is going super normal per usual, so far as I can tell, but baby’s birth story is likely going to get very interesting. And now an even 1/2 of our little family will have been born out of the state we currently live in. I think it’s super cute that MM and his daddy were both born in the same city and since going 3,000 miles to have BB is probably out of the question, I’ll settle for 1,100. We like to keep things interesting around here I guess. That’s all for now – I promise to post more about Dream Company and the moving and all that hooplah, but it looks like we’re heading to my daddy’s to pack some stuff we have there and steal some eggs from their chicken house as we’re all out at the moment.  Add that to things I will miss when we leave – great church, free babysitting and free farm fresh eggs.