Pregnancy Week 23: Maternity Shopping and Updated Baby Registries

Josh got to feel baby girl kick for real this week. He's felt the little pokes, but I usually have to clarify that what he felt was indeed the baby (as opposed to...?)

However, on Halloween baby girl was super into kicking hard. Halloween was largely uneventful. We had two trick or treaters. TWO. So we had an entire bowl of candy left at the end of the night. I expected low turn out so I only got a small premixed hodgepodge of candy, but I didn't expect just two. So what is a preggo to do when faced with a bowl of candy?

Gorge. Shamelessly.

I think I had 5 of those mini bag of skittles and baby girl went nuts. You could physically see her kicking from the outside, so crazy. Josh didn't see it happen, but I told him she was doing some pretty serious kicking, so he laid his hand on my belly and waited. He's so funny to watch when he's waiting for her to kick. She finally gave one of the super mega kicks and his face lit up, he was so excited.

I also broke down and bought some maternity sweaters. It's weird. All of my pants and shirts still fit, but I just look weird in my regular shirts. As you can see in my progress pictures, I still don't particularly look pregnant. However, my back bows inward a lot more now than it used to, which forces my stomach out, and I am noticeably wider (and who needs a waist line anyway? X_X). I try to be conscious of my posture when I'm standing to minimize my back pain, but I don't know how much success I'm having.

Anyway, regular shirts have a tendency to hang down straight in the back but bow outward in the front with my new stance, so I look significantly bigger in clothes than I do in my sports bra and yoga pants. But not pregnant bigger, like I've let myself go bigger. Not a look any woman particularly wants.

So basically, I feel gross and unattractive. This is something that is incredibly frustrating. I know I don't look gross, but it really doesn't matter how often I say it to myself or Josh says it to me. I still feel like it and I definitely don't like how I look in my clothes. I figured I would give maternity tops a try. They are cut for pregnant women after all.

And what do you know, I feel way better in my maternity shirts. I think they look way more flattering too. Josh agrees, but I'm not sure if he actually thinks I look better or is just trying to avoid being eaten by a hormonal pregnant woman. Then again, he always tells me I look great (smart man, that one).

So without further ado, here are my progress pictures:

8 Weeks	23 Weeks

Lower tummy is protruding more and more each week. Normally, I would be all about this; however, I have to slap on a fancy dress in a little less than two weeks' time for Josh's job. I bought the dress a week ago with the intention that I would expand, so it has some give. That being said, I don't want to feel like a packed sardine in the dress either. We shall see.

Baby stats! This week baby girl is about the size of a papaya (this sounds smaller than last week's spaghetti squash estimate, but whatever). She is still about 8 inches long and weighs 1.2 pounds.

I've added some new items to the registries and updated others based on some of the input I got. I'm still looking for insights on what is a necessity, what is nice to have, and what is stuff I will never use.

We are registered at Babies "R" Us (#54941451) and Burlington Baby Depot (#34080180). They can be found by searching for either my or Josh's name.

Also, I wanted to include an update about my workouts as well since I get asked about them from time to time. However, I didn't want this post to get overly long, so you can check it out here if you are interested.