Pre-Christmas posting.

I've been hardly daring to believe it, but I think I'm feeling better! The morning sickness has eased off quite a bit and even though I still have a bad day or so, not every day is constant nausea like it used to be! It's so awesome to feel an improvement, right when I was thinking there would NEVER be one.

Of course, I've managed to get an awful cold for Christmas but I still feel better than I did! A cold isn't the end of the world but not being able to take Neo Citran feels so weird. I've been using a saline nasal spray to help with the sinus stuff and it's ... very different from Otrivin. Otrivin is meant to go in there and stay in there, whereas the saline spray is meant to flush you out, baby. I'd never used one before, or a Neti pot or anything like that, so the learning curve for me has been a bit steep and uncomfortable, but surprisingly it does help. Perhaps not when the cold is at its worst, but it makes a difference. I used to be the kind of person who never took medication for anything, but in my early twenties I discovered that medications WORK and actually bring relief, so converted enthusiastically to cold and headache relievers. Now that I can't take the ones that work best I really miss them.

I ran into my cousin-out-law (Andrew's cousin) Emily on the street tonight when I was coming home from some Christmas shopping. I mentioned to her that so far this weblog has been mostly just a bunch of bitching about how horrid pregnancy makes me feel, but there are some really good things starting to happen now and I want to make sure to highlight all the great stuff since I don't want this to be a total warning to the female population to never get pregnant.

I'm nineteen weeks now and the baby is getting very normal-looking in there, according to the experts, instead of looking like a creepy alien. It's about the size of a large deli pickle (except baby-shaped), and my uterus is a bit larger than a cantaloupe! A cantaloupe! Wow. So, I'm starting to look more pregnant although it's still hard to tell in general since I tend to wear loose clothes anyhow. I also think I'm feeling some baby movement, which is bizarre but awesome. Fluttery feelings, which is exactly how it's described by those who've experienced it before. My innards are definitely shifting around to make room for all this growth and stuff and it feels odd. Not bad; just odd.

We won't be finding out the gender until after the holidays. I meant to book the anatomical scan before Christmas but things got away from me, so hopefully they'll be able to fit us in soon after the new year. I have my heart set on finding out and if it turns out that the baby won't cooperate and they can't get a good enough look I'm going to be very disappointed. Don't be shy, baby!

We're going to be traveling like mad over the holidays, which is our usual way of spending Christmas. Three cities (Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal.) Maybe I'll be able to score another caramel apple from the Purple Cow!