Angie's Pregnancy Guide: Week 24

I’ve got to be honest - with my first pregnancy I could tell you the week, day, and probably hour of my pregnancy at any given time. “I’m 14 weeks 3 days 7 hours and 32 minutes…until Tuesday! On Tuesday I’ll be 15 weeks!” I’m pretty sure I really was that annoying about it, too.

This pregnancy has been a MILLION times different in every way, but especially in my anticipation level. Don’t get me wrong, I cannot WAIT until this little guy gets here! But having a toddler and so many other things going on distracts me from the obnoxious counting down I obsessed over during my first pregnancy. Now, I’m lucky if I remember my due date.

“Oh you’re expecting! How exciting! How far along are you?”

“Oh, umm, let me think…it’s May, right?”

You get the idea.

Now that I’m 24 weeks pregnant, I feel like I’m really pregnant. Like, there’s no mistaking it as an entire plate of Olive Garden pasta, 4 breadsticks, and tiramisu anymore. In fact, for the first time, a random stranger who was talking to me at the gas station (long story) (well not really, but another story for another post), stopped mid-sentence and said, “wait, are you pregnant?” I was a little shocked he’d just ask that, but I was more excited that I don’t just look like I’ve been shoving in the OG (it’s my weakness, okay?) and actually look pregnant! Win for the pregnant lady!

So other than having a legit baby bump finally, 24 weeks has also brought my old friend heartburn, who has so lovingly graced me with his presence for about 2 months now.

I was sitting in church on Sunday. It was time to eat the bread and drink the water as part of the service. It had been a while since breakfast but I was feeling great, good energy, not ravenously hungry, just in the vibe ya know? Not 2 MINUTES had passed after I swallowed that tiny bite-sized piece of bread when I grabbed my chest like I was going into cardiac arrest. I kid you not. Heartburn attack FROM THE BREAD AT CHURCH! This kid better have the most beautiful, luscious head of hair or so help me…

Moving on.

Naming problems.

Well according to all of those pregnancy tracker emails someone must have signed me up for as a prank…(because really, who’s idea was it to compare your baby’s size to fruit and vegetables?) ...lil’ boy is the size of an ear of corn!

“Well, isn’t that special!” [insert Dana Carvey Church Lady voice here].

Guys, that’s like, the size of a baby! A real baby! We’re not in grape mode or even medium-sized apple land anymore… an ear of corn! I’ve heard of babies born that small (I mean probably - as far as my imagination can compare a baby to an ear of corn). So I’m feeling more pressure than ever to decide on a name for this guy.

With baby #1 it was easy. Right after we found out her gender I had a dream about her as a little girl, in the dream her name was Olivia, she was beautiful and the name flowed well with our last name and we started calling her that. Simple.

I may or may not have been binge-watching Law and Order: SVU at the time and my daughter may or may not have subliminally been named after Detective Olivia Benson. Judge me.

For some reason, boy names are much harder to decide on than girl names. Even before we knew he was a boy, we had a girl name picked out and figured if it wasn’t a girl, we’d just try a little harder and the right one would just “pop” out at us. Well, it hasn’t. We’ve scoured the internet and looked up every list of boy names we can think of: Classic boy names, trendy boy names, unique boy names, even POTUS names (hey, you can’t go wrong being named after the great George Washington, right?) Wrong. Because my husband can tell you about a dozen nicknames he’ll get in school and we can’t possibly subject him to that.

Sigh…

So the struggle this week (24, right?), other than ongoing debilitating heartburn, is baby-naming.

If you recently heard the most breathtakingly masculine-but-beautiful baby boy name in the entire world, please put me out of my misery. Or if you know of the perfect baby-naming formula, PLEASE send it my way. Or if you know the secret to immediate and permanent heartburn relief AND the perfect baby boy name, I would probably invite you to the OG with me.

But if it gives me heartburn, you’re getting the check ;)