Moving all around

In the last week or so I've felt the baby move a lot more than before. Before I could feel small little movements and occasionally a bigger poke. Now I'm feeling the bigger movements much more. They are more than just pokes from the inside out; I feel a foot or something move across. When there is a big movement, it usually catches me off guard; I feel like somebody was standing right behind me where I couldn't see them and pushed me forward and I had no time to prepare my reaction. I can only imagine how it will be as the baby gets even bigger!

It seems to move quite a bit late in the evening and sometimes I think it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I wonder if it will like to stay up late like me? I guess the real question is how early it wants to get up!

The skin on my belly is itchy on a regular basis now as it is beginning to stretch. They say in the books that having good genes and a diet that supports healthy skin are the only effective means of preventing stretchmarks. The diet I can work on since I am trying to eat well for myself and the baby, and who knows how much skin elasticity I've inherited? The books all say that lotions and creams don't really work to prevent stretch marks even though there might be a thousand lotions or creams out there that claim to make them disappear. I have been using lotion on my belly because that seems to help keep it from itching but I'm not counting on it to keep me from getting stretch marks. I figure that even if I get stretch marks in all the common places, there will only be a few people who will ever see them and even fewer of them will care.