21 weeks pregnant

Hello baby. I’m your Mama, and I can’t wait to meet you in 4 months! Your Daddy is the one who keeps pressing his nose into you each morning with cheery Hellos. He’s a morning person – I’m not. At night, when I lay still, I can sometimes feel you kick, and he’s even felt you a couple of times too. Both of us are so excited for you to arrive.

Yesterday, we found out that you’re a little girl and we couldn’t be more pleased. It doesn’t change our feelings for you, being one sex or the other, but I think we can now settle on a name easier. Currently, we call you Baguette, our interpretation of a Belgian ‘bun in the oven’.

Though we have a good idea for what your name will be, we plan to keep it to ourselves until you arrive. We lean a little toward less-common names, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t start to doubt myself if it didn’t get a good initial reaction. I love that my name was picked out to fit in with my family and I hope that your name will be just as special.

The pregnancy has been great so far. I never had morning sickness, though we were in Taiwan during your first trimester and the foreign food smells were quite intense. We’re now halfway through and I’m starting to show a bit in the chest and the belly. Unfortunately, I have my own hangups about whether my bump looks like a baby bump or if it just looks like I’m overweight. Hopefully, I don’t pass these worries on to you. The doctor said she’s pleased with the amount of weight I’ve gained so far.

People have asked me if I would rather give birth to you in the US, and honestly, I prefer Belgium. We’ve found a good doctor (very calm, quiet, and direct) who speaks English and I feel that the health care here is a better fit to our ideas. I’m hoping to have a natural birth and look forward to the ability to labor freely, be it standing up, in a pool, or sitting on a ball. I also understand that if the need for medication, pain relief, or cesarean is necessary to protect you or me, then that’s okay too. The hospitals here seem to have really good care and we have a great group of friends here that will welcome you.

Both of your grandmothers have mentioned visiting you sometime shortly after your birth, and I hope they do. As we live in a tiny apartment in another country, you’ll probably have to wait until Christmas to meet the rest of your relatives, but they are all very excited. You also have two grandfathers, a great-grandmother, an aunt, three uncles, two cousins, and lots of great aunts/uncles, second cousins, and close family friends.

This weekend, your daddy has gone to a music festival with a friend and I am staying home to do some sewing for you. Though you’ll live in our room for the first couple of months, I’ve picked some fabrics from my stash to make you some decorations for your nursery – it looks like yellow will be the predominant color. We really haven’t bought any baby gear yet, but I’ve started researching strollers and cloth diapers. Let me tell you, there is enough options out there to make a bridezilla out of a pregnant woman.

I feel like there is so much to tell you and I’m a little disappointed in myself that this is just my first letter to you. I had always imagined I would write throughout the entire pregnancy, but though we planned and expected you from the start, it felt a little distant until just a couple weeks ago. Now though, as we know you’re a girl, you’re starting to show, and I can feel your kicks, talking to you is a lot easier. We’ll see you in a couple months.

Love and snuggles,
Mama

Related posts:

  1. Letter to our Baby Girl – Week 32/33
  2. Letter to our Baby Girl – Week 25
  3. Letter to our Baby Girl – Week 37
  4. Four Months: California Girl