Bump Watch: 24 Weeks

Coming in just under the wire, before we hit 25 weeks tomorrow -- it's the 24 week bump watch picture!

I was in another one of my lovely, comfy maternity shirts for this one. It's a bit more billowy than my other shirts, so it almost looks like the bump is a bit smaller than it was last week, but David assures me that I'm growing ever larger by the day -- which, under these circumstances, is a really sweet thing for him to say. :)

And our little boy is continuing to grow, too! Here is this week's blurb from BabyCenter.com --

Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts him at just over a pound. Since he's almost a foot long (picture an ear of corn), he cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon start to plump up. His brain is also growing quickly now, and his taste buds are continuing to develop. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help his air sacs inflate once he hits the outside world. His skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon.

Aww, he's an ear of corn this week! (Which, incidentally, has been one of my cravings for the last several weeks... I love me some corn on the cob...)

And speaking of lung development, the biggest milestone we passed this week was viability! At 24 weeks, the rate of viability outside the womb goes up to 30-50%, so most hospitals will take extraordinary measures to try to save the life of a baby born this early. Before 24 weeks, survival rates are generally too low for even the best NICU units to be able to do much. So it's a cautiously exciting point to hit in this pregnancy -- we definitely, definitely don't want the baby to be born just yet, but it's exciting to have hit technical viability!

Fun milestone for this week -- my parents bought us our crib, which arrived this weekend!! So we're hoping to clear out the nursery/guest bedroom this week (it's currently full of empty boxes and storage items from the move) and start setting up the baby furniture this week! Pictures will be sure to come. :)

25th Anniversary Celebrations at Grace Pres

[This post has been back-dated, because we really meant to get this one up ages ago...]

On Saturday, October 3, we took a quick day trip out to State College, PA, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the official founding of Grace Presbyterian Church, David's old home church. (We wanted to stay for the whole weekend of events and celebrations, but David had to be back in Princeton to lead an apologetics seminar on Sunday, so we made it a day trip -- lots of driving for one day, but totally worth it!)

We made it to State College just in time to catch the tail end of the picnic -- and in time to catch up with old friends. And family! David's parents had come in from Indianapolis, so we got to see them in person for the first time we'd announced our pregnancy! I unfortunately didn't get any photos of the picnic, or of the reaction of the grandparents-to-be to my slowly developing baby bump, but here's a picture of us, stolen from David's mom's facebook album of the event -- which she helpfully captioned "David & Christina Keddie and future grandson." :)

In the evening, there was a catered dinner with great times of fellowship and reconnecting with Grace Pres members, old and new. All three of the men who had pastored the church in its 25 years were there, and shared reminiscences of the work God had done (and is continuing to do) through this branch of the body. And there was an open time of sharing at the end, where people spoke of the hospitality that had drawn them into real community with fellow believers, and the strong teaching and preaching of the Word, and just generally of their thankfulness for God's faithfulness to this church over the years... It was such an encouragement to all of us to hear these testimonies!

David Hanson, Gordon Keddie, and Duncan Lowe --
the current and past pastors of Grace Pres

Some of those giving testimonies -- Kathy Adams, Jean Sherman, and Willem Coetzee

As always, we had a wonderful time in State College -- we just wish we could have stayed longer!

May the Lord continue to bless the work at Grace Presbyterian!

For the complete set of photos, check out this SmugMug gallery.

Bump Watch: 23 Weeks

Sometimes, I look at my profile in the mirror and am not sure how much I'm changing week to week. Then I look through these "bump watch" posts... I'm really glad we decided to start documenting the belly growth! I get so many comments from well-meaning women at work telling me I'm "so tiny" for being 5 months pregnant -- which is great, and I'm sure they mean to give me hope that I'll lose the baby weight quickly post-pregnancy, or something like that, but seriously, I just want to be told I look huge. :)

So anyways, here's the latest bump watch photo -- Christina at 23 weeks, 3 days!



And here's what BabyCenter.com had to say about our little guy's development this week:

Turn on the radio and sway to the music. With his sense of movement well developed by now, your baby can feel you dance. And now that he's more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound (about as much as a large mango), you may be able to see him squirm underneath your clothes. Blood vessels in his lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that your baby's increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing him for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now — such as your dog barking or the roar of the vacuum cleaner — probably won't faze him when he hears them outside the womb.

And it's TRUE -- I did in fact see baby movement this week! I was sitting at my desk at work, drinking some ice-cold water (trying to get my 64-80 oz. of water per day). The baby tends to be more active after I drink cold water -- I think maybe he's responding to the feeling of cold water in my stomach? So he started kicking up a storm -- and with one particularly strong kick, I actually saw the top of my belly move! I immediately called David, and we marveled at our son's growing strength -- he's totally going to be a soccer star. :)

In other news, I had my monthly OB appointment yesterday afternoon. We got to meet another doctor in the practice, which is great, since any one of them might be the OB actually delivering our baby -- it all depends on when I go into labor and who's on call that day. I apparently am a textbook pregnant patient -- my weight gain is on track (finally up a net 10 pounds!), the baby's heartbeat is strong, my tests have all come back within normal limits, and my uterus is measuring just as it should be. We're so thankful for this "boring" pregnancy!

Oh, and we finally fixed our scanner, so I updated our 20-week ultrasound post with sonograms! [Here's a fun grammar/diction factoid that I didn't know before I was pregnant -- the "ultrasound" is the actual procedure using high-frequency sound waves to scan internal organs; the "sonogram" is the picture that results from the ultrasound procedure. The terms are colloquially used interchangeably, but I like precision in my word usage... So now you know!]

[And while we're talking pregnancy-related grammar/diction and precise word definitions... "Nauseous" technically means nausea-inducing, while "nauseated" means feeling sick. For instance, "I am nauseated because that smell is nauseous." I know this is totally a losing battle -- even dictionaries have started giving "affected with nausea" as the primary definition of "nauseous" -- so I've generally stopped "correcting" people, but I still firmly stick with the traditional definitions of these words. And thought I'd use this blog as a platform for raising "nauseous"/"nauseated" awareness. :)]

OK, OK, I'm done, I promise. Thanks for humoring this pregnant lady and her weird word usage hangups!

Our son: future soccer star and grammatical pedant... :)