19 Weeks Pregnant - life is busy…plus gender & name chats
Weekly pregnancy updates from a childbirth educator, doula and mum to 2 little girls. Come and join me on my journey as I share how I’m feeling, how baby is developing, what I’m doing to prepare, and some favourite resources!
I have to say this week has been very NON-focused on pregnancy! While I have continued nourishing my baby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I’m at a stage of the pregnancy where I’m not feeling much of the effects of that. And with two family weddings back-to-back, along with all the busyness of travelling and making wedding cakes and preparing wedding outfits (pregnancy-friendly ones for me!)... really my mind has been on other things the majority of the time! And that’s OK. This is an exceptionally busy season that is coming to an end, and “normal” is just around the corner — I hope!
Finding out the gender
I will confess that despite the busyness, I am still counting down the days till the morphology ultrasound, when we are also hoping to find out the baby’s gender! I just can’t wait to start calling baby by his or her name! We have boy and girl names picked out, so are just waiting for the scan. With our older girls we started using their names as soon as we found out the gender, and I felt it helped me connect more with the baby as an individual person. So special!! 🥰🥰
Of course, we have had people say, “but what if they tell you the wrong gender at the scan?” It can happen, and it does happen, though it’s quite rare. My response is, provided the technician who does the scan seems confident about their assessment of gender, I’m willing to roll with that. However we have names picked out for both genders anyway, and I always make sure I have “neutral” clothes available for baby when they’re born, just in case! So yes, it would be weird if we had to switch names after months of thinking baby was the opposite gender/name. But it wouldn’t faze us to be honest. And chances are, the technician will get it right and we will have had four extra months calling our baby by their name!
Choosing baby names
We hear so many couples having such a hard time finding a baby name they agree on. Thankfully for us it’s never been a problem. We had a few principles in mind from the start as to how we’d choose names, and we’ve just been able to come up with ideas pretty easily of names we love. Yes, for sure there are names that one of us suggests that the other dislikes or even just isn’t too keen on. And we just leave those aside and go for the ones that we both like more!
Our basic principles have been that the names will be Italian names that flow well with our family surname (my husband is Italian), and not names that are super common. Of course, in choosing names I think there will often have to be a bit of give and take, and we’ve had that too. We had two boys’ names that we were set on from before our first (a girl!) was born, and we each preferred a different one of them. I let my husband take his first pick as our top boy’s name, so then when it came to choosing girls’ names and we had a similar situation, I got to pick my preference for top name! And then we had a second daughter, so we used the other name that had been my husband’s initial preference!
I also think that people sometimes forget that names can grow on you. Even if you’re not completely sold on a name, maybe only at a 90-95%, I assure you that when you start associating that name with your beautiful baby, you will love the name too and will not be able to imagine them with any other name!
What symptoms am I feeling?
I feel baby moving around on a daily basis. Movements are starting to feel a bit stronger so I am confident baby is thriving!
How has baby been developing this week?
Baby is now around 24cm tall and weighs around 270g. Their fingernails and fingerprints have formed. And the other incredible thing is that baby now not only has all their baby teeth in place inside their gums, but now their adult teeth have also formed behind the baby teeth!
What am I doing to prepare?
To be honest, right now I’m just focusing on getting through this busy season! Weddings are very special reasons for being busy, but I’m also looking forward to life taking a slower, more routine pace again, especially as I approach the second half of the pregnancy. As far as preparation goes, I like to focus on “informational”/educational preparation in the first half of pregnancy (reading books, listening to podcasts, etc.), and then have the focus shift to physical and mental preparation in the second half (Spinning Babies exercises, birth affirmations, listening to guided relaxation tracks, etc.). Of course, I aim to exercise in the first half of the pregnancy as well, just as I keep listening to podcasts, etc. in the second half. But these tend to be my focuses for the different seasons.
And that’s it for this week! 🌿💛