Ciao, Roma!

OK, no new sonograms for a while - we have a fuzzy one from last week, but it's hard to make anything out on it! - so here's a first look at Speck from the outside. We haven't been doing a real series of belly shots, but here's one from our trip to Rome. (Mostly I think it's a nice picture of Tim and me at the Colosseum.)

Such a great trip! We had a fantastic time.

Week 18 Check-up

It's been a really busy past few weeks for us. Tim's dad Chuck and aunt Rosie came for a nice long visit. Although we had some down time in Berlin, we were pretty busy - Tim took them out west to the towns near Münster where the Klitzes come from originally; we spent a long weekend in central Germany visiting the cultural heartland - Wittenberg, Weimar, and Eisenach; and we all flew down for a wonderful 4-night trip to Rome. (Pictures coming this weekend, promise!) In the meantime, Tim really outdid himself with the cooking on our nights in Berlin.

Rome was incredible, better than I remembered it from my one trip there 12 years ago. We had perfect sunny weather, a nice break from Berlin, and did so much! We also ate ourselves silly every night at a wonderful neighborhood joint that our B&B landlady recommended. (I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or a bit worried when I saw an American couple wander in one evening with a page marked in their Rick Steves' Rome guide.) I could eat fresh pasta and salad every night and be a very happy woman. On the other hand, Speck was craving bruschetta and bread much more than gelato. Is this really my kid?

Speck really enjoyed the trip. (I have visions of the baby coming out, turning to me, and saying "Ciao, Mama!" But nah, s/he won't learn Italian for at least a few months...) I've started feeling very occasional, very light movement. It's stronger when I'm very excited, or when I've just eaten after fasting for a while. Speck seems to also enjoy Italian food, and long walks through Rome. S/he also earned me a place to sit in the Sistine Chapel, which is usually almost impossible to do; the Italian guards took one look at my belly and shooed some college kids off a bench so I could rest my feet. After a long morning waiting to get into the Vatican museum and a few hours walking through it, I appreciated the thought. In general, though, the Italian tendency to casually jostle passersby worried me a bit. One older lady in front of me at the Pantheon looked over her shoulder before backing up, started to back into me (how dare I not get out of her way?), then did a double take as she saw my hands holding my belly defensively. She almost tripped as she corrected herself to avoid knocking me over. I'm not sure whether to be grateful that she decided not to crash into my unborn child, or annoyed that if I weren't visibly pregnant, she would clearly have run me over.

We had our monthly check-up today, which is day 1 of our 18th week of pregnancy. Speck is measuring perfectly, with a lovely heartbeat, and was head-down for the first time since we've started peeking in on him/her. We'll be doing check-ups every 3 weeks for a while, so we'll be back at the doctor's office soon, but in the meantime we have to go in for our next detailed ultrasound in 2 weeks. We'll go back to the specialist who did our NT screening a few weeks ago, and are very hopeful that we'll get to learn Speck's gender. In the meantime, we're looking forward to a quiet weekend at home, enjoying fall weather with a nice fire and some college football...