It’s been quite a week this one that’s just passed! There’s never a dull moment in my life, let alone during this pregnancy! Not complaining though 🙂

Frosty’s developments

Our little tornado Frosty this week has grown the size of a mango, measuring around 25cm and weighing 300g! 😱

Frosty’s growth is now mainly focused on gaining weight and fat, and the majority of their efforts are being spent on this big goal.

Apparently Frosty is now developing sleep patterns that I’m supposed to start recognising; to be honest, I haven’t yet, maybe because of the trip abroad in Budapest that might have affected my perceptions.

The Budapest trip

Compared with the Amsterdam trip, this staying in Budapest has been a bit more challenging, although I had a nice, fun and pleasant time all things considered – I’ll talk about that later in the Oven Updates section.

We had the best time and the best food in Budapest, with the best company: my Celestine team mates. Neither the bad weather affected the level of fun we had together!

We spent time with some colleagues who live in Budapest, and we also played an Escape Room together, escaping in about 40 minutes, which is a great time to score!

These are the (good) pics I took:

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My (talented painter, check his Instagram!) colleague Dan took other pictures he gracefully gave me permission to post. He took a lot of team selfies and I’m grateful he did it because I took none!

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Oven updates, and Budapest misadventures

I always take check-in pictures and record my weight on the same day of the week; as the Budapest trip happened across this span of time, this week’s pictures and weight check-in have been recored and taken at home as usual, but not after 5 nights and 6 days of troubled weight fluctuations in Budapest – which of course challenged also my body image issues I mentioned in the last week’s updates.

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After touching a whooping 51.5kg after a big (and glorious) dinner in Budapest, and also after 48 hours of usual food, good sleep, no stress and no plane’s pressurised cabin in Reading, I ended up weighing less than last week – 46.5kg – 102.51lbs – as compared to week 18’s 47.3kg – 103.8lbs.

At this stage of the pregnancy, things are happening faster and in more evident ways as compared with Amsterdam’s status, when I was only 12 weeks pregnant. I figured this can explain what happened to my bump in Budapest.

During the last week, in fact, a major fact happened to my body: the uterus has started to move upwards. That was supposed to happen indeed between week 17 and week 20, so it was right on time. This also caused some tummy twinges and discomfort, especially at nights.

The sleep deprivation, the change of diet/food, the flight journeys and the stress related with the work-trip played all a role in that. I have taken some pictures when in Budapest to document some of those bump fluctuations – I didn’t want to get obsessed by that, so I took pics only when I had time or when I was particularly concerned:

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On top of that, Frosty didn’t behave at all during our flights: they didn’t stay still for even one minute, and moved continuously during both journeys.

At some point on our way back to the UK I had to get up from my seat and move around the plane corridor in the hope that Frosty would stop kicking. They did it for the time I was walking, then they started kicking again until we landed.

I guess the pressurised plane’s cabin, which always gets me pretty much bloated, somehow upset Frosty, who maybe was making their own space inside my bloated tummy.

I’m back to my normal routine now, but only for a couple of weeks: I’ll be on a business team leaders meetup in London in 13 days, and then I’ll fly to Berlin for WordCamp Europe.

Upwards and onwards

I’ll have an IVF followup appointment next Tuesday at the hospital; most importantly, next Thursday there will be the anomaly scan for Frosty.

That would be the time when we’ll find out if Frosty is a girl or a boy – provided they’ll stay still enough for the sonographer to figure it out. The last scan didn’t go as planned in that sense!

I am worried about the chances of spotting some organs, muscular-skeletal or neurological abnormality in Frosty, but I’m trying to stay positive and relaxed, and to focus on discovering Frosty’s gender instead.