The fifth month is coming to an end!

HOLY CRAP I AM ALMOST 6 MONTHS PREGNANT.

Excuse the horrible camera-phone quality of the photo I used for this post! Unfortunately my amazing photog-sister can't follow me around everywhere snapping shots that look like they could be on the cover of a Nicholas Sparks book. Oh well! LOVE ME ANYWAYS.

The fifth month (Approximately 18 to 22 weeks) is coming to an end and I just wanted to shed some light on what's been going on with little Rosie this past month! Or at least what the baby book I've been fawning over says.

Week 18: 
At 51/2 inches long and about 4 ounces in weight (as much as a chicken breast, only way cuter) she is mastering hiccuping and yawning. I haven't felt any hiccups yet but according to What to Expect When You're Expecting, I should be expecting them soon! The neatest thing I read about her development in week 18 is that she now has her very own unique fingerprints on her little fingers and toes! How exciting!

Week 19:
She's hitting the growth charts at 6 inches long and a full half pound in weight. About the size of a large mango! I learned about Vernix caseosa. It's a protective substance that apparently looks cheesy. It's what covers her sensitive skin to protect her from the amniotic fluid she's floating around in. This way she won't have super wrinkly skin at birth. When I get closer to delivering, the coating sheds! But I read that sometimes babies that are born early are still covered with the substance when they are delivered. Kind of creepy to think about a newborn baby that looks like it's covered in cheese! As much as I love cheese, pregnancy is weird. Hold the cheese, please!

Week 20:
My belly is melon-sized now...but baby Willow is the size of a small cantaloupe! So about 10 ounces and 61/2 inches. Babies really DO grow super fast! At least time feels like it's flying by for me. Her uterus is fully formed now and her ovaries hold about 7 million primitive eggs. At birth, the number of eggs will be closer to 2 million. Her vaginal canal is starting to develop. If I had it my way, she wouldn't develop that until she's at least 30. *Pouts a little* Week 20 is when I started noticing movement extremely regularly. I can feel her twisting, turning, kicking, punching, and even what feels like she's doing cartwheels. She's quite the acrobat. Sometimes (usually after my stomach is full of food) I can see her moving through my clothes. Not a lot but enough for me to be able to look down and notice!

Week 21:
Baby Willow is 7 inches in lenth! (Think bananas.) And 11 ounces! To celebrate, I spent this week singing her the Banana Song from Despicable Me 2. *Ba na na, ba na na na* in the tune of the Beach Boy's classic ''Barbara Ann''. Although I should have spent the week eating tons of bananas because I learned that my amniotic fluid differs from day to day depending on what I've eaten. For me this means that she will most likely come out of the womb crying for coffee, not milk. She's also probably going to have the taste buds of a Mexican because spicy food is all I've been craving. She's also probably going to be a huge fan of Ethan's chili because let's be honest, it's the best. And my taste buds appreciated it at least 4 times this week because I made him buy double the ingredients and we had leftovers for days. Now that I know she is practicing swallowing and digesting my amniotic fluid, I should probably eat a little healthier. I don't think it's a good idea to have a baby that's cracked out on coffee. Oops! Her arms and legs are finally in proportion, so maybe at my next ultrasound she will look less like a teddy graham and more like a little human. Her neurons are now connected between the brain and muscles, and cartilage throughout her body is turning to bone. That explains why it feels like I'm being kicked by an extreme cyclist.

Week 22:
WE'RE NO LONGER TALKING OUNCES. She is a whopping weight of 1 pound and a length of nearly 8 inches. That means if she were a burger, she'd be THIS burger.

(Waiting for Fudruckers to contact me and thank me for featuring one of their burgers on my blog. I'll take payment in the form of sweat pants, please.)

Anyways, she has senses that are developing like crazy! So that means she can tough, see, hear, and taste. There's nothing for her to grab on to except for my umbilical cord, so that will have to do until she's clutching my fingers and pulling on my hair. (Woo, can't wait!) It's dark in the uterine cocoon and even though her eyelids are fused right now, she can perceive light and dark. If I shine a flashlight over my belly, she may react. I haven't tested this theory out yet but I'm going to at the end of the week. She can hear EVERYTHING, now. That includes mine and daddy's voice, my heartbeat, the whoosh-whoosh of my blood circulating through my body, gastric gurgles produced by my stomach and intestines, the dogs barking when we visit Ethan's parents, sirens, loud TV's, EVERYTHING! And as we mentioned in week 21, she can taste everything I'm tasting. (So no more salads for me!) 

We're super excited about little baby Willow Rose, who's getting less and less little every single day. (And so am I!) Thank you to everyone who is following us on this journey!