seventeen weeks

Today I'm officially 17 weeks pregnant. Not quite halfway but getting there. It's impossible to deny that there's a bump and inside that bump there's currently a turnip-sized little person. It's crazy to think of and impossible to comprehend. How does one start from nothing and grow into a full-sized human?

I'm trying not to think too hard on the whole thing. I don't want to risk terrifying myself. It's a sort of que sera sera attitude I'm currently adopting. It's working so far. It's also easy to forget sometimes. I don't actually feel pregnant most of the time. I feel nauseous, gassy, bloated and exhausted, but you don't have to be pregnant to feel those things. I know in my mind there's a little person in there and at the prenatal appointments they confirm it with pictures and sounds of a tiny heart beating. When I'm home though, just hanging out and relaxing, it's easy to feel like things are just normal and a tiny life isn't blossoming inside me.

The heartburn is the worst though. It doesn't matter what I eat, when I eat or how much/little of it there is. It's inevitable. The heartburn is coming. The curse of the second trimester. That's when it's impossible to ignore that I'm pregnant. This unprecedented heartburn that happens every day is the one symptom that I know is being caused by these horrible hormones and thus makes it very clear that I'm 100% pregnant.

Eventually the little turnip will become larger and its little movements will become pretty difficult to ignore, but until then I'm enjoying the quiet little moments where I feel like my normal self (though a somewhat squishier version) and can pretend that the inevitable life change isn't just 23 weeks away...