Four Months - 16 Weeks

At 16 weeks our baby is the size of an avocado

Now that I'm in my second trimester at 16 weeks along, I am feeling a lot better. I don't feel sick 24 hours a day anymore and only on a rare occasion now will I throw up. I have a lot more energy and feel up to doing more activities. The only thing I have a problem with is standing for too long. It kills my back. I feel it the most when I'm doing the dishes and cooking so I have to take a lot of breaks. My belly is some-what big, I mean, I look pregnant, and it makes me wonder if I weren't pregnant, but put on some extra weight, would I still have back pain? Do big bellied people suffer from the same pain pregnant women do? Maybe I'll take a survey…or not.

I weigh the most I have ever weighed, in my life! Every time I step on the scale it amazes me. And week by week I see a pound more. I know that I need to gain weight for my baby. I was eating more in the first trimester, but that has gone back to normal now that I'm feeling better. Also, I'm not sure how much of the weight is from pregnancy and how much is from lymphedema. I have been really bad about wearing my compression garments because I was feeling so sick. Because of that my legs have gotten more swollen than usual. I'll start wearing my garments on a regular basis now that I'm feeling better so I'll be keeping an eye on my weight to see if that goes down any once the swelling goes down in my legs. 

A weird side effect of my belly growing is the change in my belly button. I guess you could say that I have an innie, although my belly button was so tightly tied when I was a baby, I really only had a slit. It looked as though someone drew a J on my stomach and called it my belly button. Now that my belly is bigger, my belly button has opened up. It's weird to look at. I can actually see in it, like an innie is supposed to be. I wonder if my belly button will pop out? While pregnant with her 5th child (I think, she had 8 all together), my Mommom's (grandma) belly button disappeared and never returned. She would tell us she was from Mars because she had no belly button. Strange enough, any kid would've believed her with her lack of a belly button and being able to take out her entire row of teeth! Not to mention that at 4 feet 11 inches, she gave birth to 8 children - none of which are shorter than 5 foot 4, and raised them on her own. She definitely was a super-human alien from Mars!

So I need to start exercising, not only for my health, but the health of our baby. I don't like to exercise, not even a little. I did yoga in the past and never thought of it as exercise so I tried to find a prenatal yoga routine that I would enjoy doing. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars a month going to a class, I decided to look up some videos on You Tube. I found a couple of prenatal yoga clips but none that would really work for me. Having lymphedema in both legs doesn't make it easy for me to squat or lunge so I needed to find something that would assist me. After a semi-long search, not only did I find a prenatal yoga video, I found one that is a full class and works with an assist from a chair. Score!!