26w, 4d

After 6 or 7 days of being very sick, it's finally, finally starting to break. Which is good, since if it wasn't showing signs of getting better today I would have had to notify my doctor. So my body has pretty good timing! I still feel congested and am coughing a lot, but it's so much better than having so many things feeling like they had completely shut down on me. No medicine, even what my doctor recommended, helped me at all.

It's so exciting knowing what gender the baby is. It was a relief to me, knowing that now I could buy baby things that aren't just gender neutral things. Bill is really thrilled, he keeps talking about "our daughter" and "our little girl" which really makes me feel better about entering third trimester this week (I've been dreading the end, now it's not so much of dread as just simple reluctance.) Being able to call baby by name is also a lot of fun. Now I know who that is in there that's kicking me, and when she won't stop trying to headbutt her way through my skin like she is today (which doesn't feel good!) I can at least smile and tell her "calm down, Katie."

Finding a middle name for her though is much, much harder than finding a first name. I really thought it would be the opposite! My problem is that everything I think of just doesn't seem to "fit" her right. I feel like I'm waiting to see the right name and then say "oh, that's it!" There's very few names that I'm even willing to consider. I tried all day yesterday to make a big list of names I liked for Bill to look at and limit down. My goal was to do like a whole page of them. Instead I came up with 5-10 in total, with only a few that I like enough to truly consider.

 I can't believe the baby has been so incredibly active over the last week. Maybe it's because I've been so not active and without energy that I've been able to feel more, but she barely ever stops moving. Which is great, because I was really skittish about having a virus with her in there, especially when it was so unending. But it doesn't seem to have affected her at all. She's way more energetic than I am! She'll definitely make counting the kicks, which I have to start doing next week, an easy job! She kicks, rolls and punches more than five times in two minutes, let alone an hour.

I've been watching A Baby Story and other birth shows, and now they're starting to go from "show" to "wow, I'm going to be in that position really soon." I'll be in my third trimester in just a few days, and I'll be 30 weeks so soon. I almost feel like once I hit 30 weeks it's basically all over. The fact that it's turning April this week as well is a big wake up. It's getting so close to June! I don't think I'll be able to sit still at all once June 1st comes.