20 Weeks, A House Update, and A Guessing Game!

Today we have reached the halfway point!  20 weeks!  We definitely had a growth spurt this week.  I've been getting hungry roughly every two hours.  I feel huge!  Baby is supposedly the size of a banana, which means 10.2 ounces and 6.5 inches.  He or she is moving around a lot more (I'm 99% sure I feel it now!), which is great, but it also means wiggling right into my bladder or up into my stomach, giving me heartburn.  Oh, the heartburn.  Tums are my new best friend.  Some people have told me that means I'm going to have a hairy baby, but I dunno.  My mom apparently had a lot of heartburn with my sister and I don't remember her coming out particularly hairy.  I mean, she had hair, but she wasn't furry or anything!  Leg cramps have been plaguing me at night too, which, along with the heartburn and continuing crazy dreams, mean that I haven't been sleeping very well.  Not cool when it comes to being coherent for work!  Hopefully not too much more of that (work) though, before I can leave and concentrate on the studio and the baby and getting into the new house!

Speaking of the new house, we heard from our Realtor this week!  Here's the background situation, in case you don't already know.  We found a house and I fell in love with it.  Andy took a little more time (he was hesitant about the pool, of all things), but after we found out about the baby, he was on board with it too.  We put in an offer in June and it was accepted by the sellers right away.  We signed the paperwork on June 25th.  Typically, we'd be homeowners by now.  However, the sellers have gone bankrupt, so the house is tied up in Bankruptcy as one of their assets.  So, it had to be released from Bankruptcy court before we could do anything with it, which we were told would take around 30 days.  THEN, the house is in short sale, which means that the bank is letting the owners sell it for less than they owe so that everyone can get out from under it before a foreclosure has to go through.  These particular owners had also taken out a second mortgage at some point, which means that both banks have to approve of the sale price and the loss they'd be taking on the house.  That can take anywhere from 60 days to 6 or 7 months after the Bankruptcy release.  So, we have absolutely no idea when we are going to get into our house.  In theory, this works out ok for us because we're currently renting right now with no lease, so we can stay as long as we need and then leave whenever we get the house with no penalties or anything.  But there is a slight chance that all this could drag out beyond January, when Baby is due to arrive.  So there's a lot of stress there.  We could either be here with no room for the baby, or at any time get a call saying we've got the house and have 30 days to get all the paperwork and inspections done and move in.  That's a lot of pressure every time the phone rings.

So we got an email from our Realtor the other day.  She said that the listing agent has gotten verbal acceptance from the bank holding the second mortgage!  Our offer was enough to cover the entire debt to the first bank, so they aren't an issue.  However.  There is a surprise FOURTH party that no one (not even the listing agent) knew about until this week.  The second bank had sold their portion of the mortgage to an investor at some point.  So now we have to wait for written approval from them too.  The bad news is that we don't know who this investor is, so there's no way to tell how long it could take.  The good news is, out of 4 parties needing to approve our offer, we are down to the last one.  It's still crazy stressful.  Every week that passes with Baby's development, I worry that we won't make it into the new house in time to get the nursery ready for him or her.  I just have to keep reminding myself that God allowed all this to fall into place like this on purpose.  We wouldn't have gotten pregnant or gotten the house if it wasn't going to fall together ok.  That's a tough thing to remember, but I'm trying :-)

So, that was the house update!  Now, onto the guessing game.  Andy and I decided long before we even thought about getting pregnant, that when the time came, we wanted to find out the sex of the baby.  We're going to have that opportunity on Thursday!  We go in early on Thursday morning for the Anatomy Scan, commonly referred to as the ultrasound.  We'll (hopefully) get to find out boy or girl, but also learn all about how our baby is developing.  This is good, but also a little nerve wracking.  If there's a physical or developmental problem, this is when we'll find out.  So I'm a little anxious going into it, but holding on to the exciting part about finding out more about who will be joining our lives in January.  In the spirit of friendly competition, let's open up the debate!  You tell me: will it be a boy or a girl??  There are a lot of ways that people say they can tell, so I'm going to try to give you the answers to all the wives' tale questions . . . 

Heart Rate:  160 both times we've listened in.
Craving:  Sweet things like fruity candies (not chocolate at all) and also some salty things like chips and pretzels, but mostly pizza and pizza-type foods (garlic bread, pizza rolls, etc.)
Heartburn:  Yes.  Definitely.
Carrying High or Low:  I don't know.  The baby feels to be sitting pretty low, but when I look at my belly, the widest part seems to be smack dab in the middle.  Well, you tell me.  Here's the 360 view of my baby belly at 20 weeks, including a backside shot for if you are like my coworker Jackie who swears that you can tell by looking from behind . . . 

There you have it!  That's all the information I can think to provide you with.  If there's anything I missed, let me know.  So, what do you think?  Am I cookin' a boy or a girl in my oven??