Still here...

It's been...two and a half months? Almost three months? Whatever...it's been a long time. And somewhere in there I decided to switch to Blogger Beta, which completely messed up my template (if anyone can troubleshoot that annoying white bar separating the two parts of my backgroud picture, I'd be eternally grateful...oh dear, it's even worse in IE...help!) and made it a bit of a pain for me to comment on other Blogger blogs...so my presence has kind of faded from the infertility blogosphere. Though I've been reading, really I have.

Y'all missed most of my second trimester. What's happened? Lots of ultrasounds. Lots of images of two healthy babies. Good numbers for my AFP screening. Weight gain finally on track (though I actually lost almost two pounds last week, which was a little disturbing). The return of my appetite, including my ability to eat poultry and beef. Many, many, many cute kicks.

I don't remember, did I mention here the first time I felt movement? It was at 14 weeks on the nose, which is very early, but I'm quite certain that's what I felt. Tiny, gentle, fluttery taps. It doesn't feel like that any more, though...now it's all thumps and jabs and the occasional rotating lump. I'm not yet sure whether it's just baby parts I'm feeling, or perhaps balls and the like bouncing off the walls of my uterus-cum-squash-court. The kidlets are both oriented with their heads toward the lower left (stay head down, darlings!) and their feet toward the upper right, so the strongest movements all come from the same area. I expect to be nicely bruised by the time this pregnancy is through.

Oh, sciatica. Not terrible yet, not contant yet, but clearly nerve-pinching rather than just random lower back and leg pain. Though, fret not, I have that too.

A few days here and there when I overdid it and wound up with a bunch of (harmless, it seems) contractions. I have to remember that I can't spend five hours cooking without a break for so much as a glass of water.

Oh yeah - I'm not employed anymore. But it's more or less by choice, and not related to any health complications with the pregnancy. It just gives me more time to cook, you see. And to stare at the mountain of boxes in the future nursery (did I just say that?) and think about how nice it would be if I sorted through them and threw stuff away. And to nap.

And, no, we're not going to talk about the stress. Its nature has changed, but it has certainly not gone away. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

Go ahead, have your parades. I'm back, I think. I'll try to blog somewhat regularly at least through the end of the pregnancy. I wouldn't mind terribly if those of you with blogs would post a little mention that I've started writing again, or at least put me back on your sidebars if you've taken me off. That would be even better than a parade, maybe.

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The comments problem should be fixed. The layout problem, obviously, is not.