22nd week starts today

Peanut, you are 21 weeks along today, starting week 22!  There's still three weeks to go until the "safety zone", where if you are born prematurely, you have a much larger chance of survival.  You weigh about one pound and are somewhere between 10 and 11 inches long.  You are developing your senses of sight, touch, hearing and taste.  You're grabbing the umbilical cord and practicing your grip.  You can perceive light and dark.  You can hear different voices, the dog barking, sirens, or loud TV.  And you can taste everything I eat, by swallowing the amniotic fluid.  We love you very much.  

Your lips, eyelids, and eyebrows are becoming more distinct, and your eyes have formed, but the colored parts (the irises) don't have color yet.  You move often and I think I feel it now.  Sometimes it feels like someone's flicking my stomach with their finger.  Sometimes it feels like there's a potato in my stomach that's turning over.  I don't know about all that "butterfly" stuff, but that's what it feels like to me.  You will respond to singing and talking by moving.  Jared and I should choose a couple of songs to sing.  After you're born, the same sounds will probably sooth you. 

As for me, I feel okay.  I haven't thrown up in two weeks!  However, in that absence, I now have acid reflux.  There's an awful feeling in the back of my throat for most of the day.  People who know me notice my belly, but I feel like strangers still think I'm just fat.  It does take more effort to sit down and stand up from the couch, get in and out of the car, etc.

I have a birth center appointment next Thursday, and another ultrasound scheduled in three and a half weeks to check on the small area of bleed that we saw in the anatomy ultrasound.