Things are Definitely Different

I was remembering a couple of times during my pregnancy with Jaden when I’d had some very intense braxton hicks that lasted a long time and were frequent and a little scary. I went back to check my livejournal to see how far along I was then, as I knew I’d journaled about it. It was around 26 weeks when it started.

Wednesday, I’ll be 24 weeks. I have only had 1 braxton hicks thus far in pregnancy. This intrigued me and I read further to find these differences in this pregnancy compared to my last:

Jaden – 15 weeks lots of movement/ Kara – 17 weeks first movement

Jaden – written at 18 weeks “This child rarely stops moving and as of this morning...and really the majority of the day, you can see the movement from the outside. I never imaged I'd be able to see movement from the outside at this point, but you DEFINITELY can. And she is not gentle either.” / Kara – 23 weeks and we can finally feel and see movement from the outside. She moves infrequently too.

Jaden – journaled “Speaking of, he is Mr. Active right now. Dang! He kicks me in the ribs officially. My others never did that, and at 24 weeks, I don't feel like I could possibly get any bigger. I feel totally huge. I've already gained 18 pounds and I can barely move most of the time.” I also wrote about not being able to breathe. / Kara – At almost 24 weeks, I’ve gained 21 pounds so far and don’t feel huge at all and definitely not feeling anything in my ribs or having difficulty breathing.

Jaden – 26 weeks – braxton hicks every 2 minutes for 2 hours and lots of pressure / Kara – almost 24 weeks and 1 braxton hicks

Jaden – 28 weeks – restless leg syndrome so bad that I often only got 3 hours of sleep / Kara – have had rls 3 times that I can remember so far

Now, this time, my back pain is horrendous most of the time. When I do much of anything around the house, my back gets very sore. Reading my journal today, I realized that I had a pinched nerve (or something) in my back for a while but then it just went away. That is not the case with this one. It’s hard sometimes just to walk.

However with Jaden, certain foods did not settle well with me and I could barely drink milk throughout the entire pregnancy. Now, I could LIVE on milk. Oh my goodness, it is so good! It’s like crack to a crack-head. I love milk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve had problem eating anything else either.

Anyway, I guess it just blows my mind that two pregnancies can be so much different. I thought Jaden’s pregnancy was because I was older. I’ve now realized that much of it was probably just Jaden’s personality. I often wrote that I was scared of the child in my womb and that I felt God was preparing me through the pregnancy for this child and certainly, He was! I’m excited to meet this one and see how similar she is to what I’ve experienced thus far.

And yes, we’ve decided on Kara Lillian for a girl, if in fact, this child is a girl.