Week 14: Lemon

I'm officially in my second trimester now! Eric and I started telling more people recently, and it has been really fun and happy telling people. We have been lucky in that we have recently spent time face-to-face with many close friends and family who we normally don't see often (who live far away). So we got to tell a lot more people in person, which is always nice. 

Similar to what Eric mentioned in his "Motherly Bonding" post last week, I have noticed that people who are parents of young children are among the happiest/ most excited to hear our news. And they immediately start talking about how being a parent is the best thing they have ever done, etc etc. It is nice for us too, like we are being inducted into a club of people who are enthusiastic to help and support and give advice. 

Baby heartbeat monitoring

One of our friends gave us a fetal Doppler machine as a pregnancy gift. You can use this machine to listen to your baby's heartbeat at home! We tried it for the first time last week, and it took us a while to find the baby's heartbeat (as opposed to my own heartbeat), but we eventually found it, and it was really fun and exciting to be able to hear it. Reassuring too. I think we are able to hook up the machine to a computer to record the sound, so we will try to do that sometime and share it on the blog. 

Weekly update
Here's this week's photo and some notes. We weren't home over the weekend, so this photo was taken in our hotel room in Michigan (we were there for a wedding). Baby is now the size of a lemon, at about 3.5 inches long.

• Weight: Still 1 pound less than pre-pregnancy weight. People keep telling me not to worry about not gaining weight, because it will happen! 
• Appetite/Cravings: Starting to eat more now. I never felt hungry for most of my first trimester, but I was really hungry for dinner yesterday by 6:30! Cravings tend to be salty (pickles, olives, roasted/salted seaweed 김), but I'm also eating more candy/sweets than I normally do. I think my stomach is smaller though, because I can't eat as much in one meal. Eric commented that he hasn't seen me finish a meal in a long time (and I normally always clean my plate!). 
• Mood/Energy/Sleep: Fine, fine, fine. Not much to note. I'm feeling less tired now. I'm also not waking up every night in the middle of the night (to use the restroom) anymore -- just sometimes.

I'm starting to do a little more research for stuff we need to buy for the baby... there's a lot of stuff! Stroller, crib, changing table, etc. We also need to figure out which room we'll be using for the nursery. Once we find out the gender (in 4-6 weeks), we'll start decorating, etc :).