20 Weeks

I started drinking coffee again. I've always like the taste, but you never would've found me drinking it near-black a few years ago. I say "near black" because, well, I guess it's technically just as black as "black", but I add sugar. I used to add a little milk, but last week I kinda went milk crazy (unrelated to coffee) and maxed out the milk budget. Justin is one of those people who's more likely to be a psychopath since he drinks his coffee true black, so we don't have creamer of any kind. So, you could say what I've been drinking is like strong, dark tea. Sweet tea. Not as good as cold, sweet, actual tea, but that's not the point.

I'm drinking coffee again because I need it. Well, what I actually need is a minimum of 12 solid hours of sleep every night, but LOL, amirite? It's not just that I need coffee; obviously, I crave it. You know what this baby in me wants? Near-black coffee, fat rare steak, sharp cheddar, and chocolate.

...which means it's OBVIOUSLY a boy.

For real! A real, living, ultrasound-confirmed boy.

So far, both of my pregnancies have been healthy and generally uneventful (which is great). In nearly every other way, my current could not be more different from my previous. With Maya, I think I had exactly one week of nausea and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I threw up the entire 40 weeks. This time, almost the entire first half was all-day sickness. I don't generally suffer from allergies, but with Maya, allergy season had me feeling dead and wishing I actually was. With this baby, nothin'.

There have been some other differences that are probably normal for second vs. first. I felt baby boy moving much sooner than I felt Maya, and this pregnancy has gone by significantly faster than hers. Duh. When I was pregnant with her, I didn't have a crazy kid running around, dancing, climbing, breaking all my stuff. I still wonder what I did before I had kids. There was so much time for activities! Why don't I have my own business? Why haven't I traveled the world already? Why am I not a plastic surgeon or something? I remember being busy... with stuff? I worked. I... showered regularly?

I've decided that parenting is for Type A people. We should just leave the procreating to the responsible adults who can handle it.

On that note, here's a sonogram of the baby I'm about to have! ...which is not at all contradictory to my previous statement. I refuse to admit that it is, and you can't make me.

I'm officially halfway through this pregnancy, and I've only started to panic a tiny bit. On the one hand, I know having two kids is totally possible and people do it all the time. On the other hand, how does anyone have two kids at once?! I'll figure it out, probably. Plus, I'm totally used to being awake at night now. It's like my brain learned which lights to keep on up there. You gain a new state - awake, asleep, and now, zombie. "Mombie", if you will. I'd say it's different than your traditional zombie in that you don't want brains, but that would be a lie. I need brains more than ever. There's that saying about how having kids is like letting pieces of your heart go walking around outside your body. Well, that's not all. They take some of your brain, too.

I'll leave it to more experienced moms to tell you if you ever get any of it back.