37 weeks

16. jun

BABY'S SIZE     a romaine lettuce!  18.5 to 20 inches and 6 to 9 pounds (yikes!).

HOW I'M FEELING     thursday was a rough night at work.  it was the first night i've wished i could take some time off before baby is born.  although, honestly, i would probably just laze around and sleep all the time.  it's probably better for me to waddle my way through a few 12 hour shifts a week.

WHAT I'M EATING     i've been on a fruit kick.  for our barbecue, i made a fruit salad with a little bit of honey, lime juice, and lime zest in it, and it is fabulous.

HOW I'M CHANGING     let me just say again:  there is no way that my belly can keep growing.

MOVEMENT     so much movement.  i kind of like the stretches.  sometimes when i push on baby's booty (baby is definitely head down), i can feel pressure on the other side of my uterus.  it's weird!

SLEEP     i finally had a REALLY good night (it was actually day, between shifts) of sleep.  i woke up once to pee, but went right back to sleep (usually i need a snack, or lay awake for a while first).  i felt SO good at work.  it was so nice.

THINGS THIS WEEK     we had our barbecue.  i think it was successful.  arley and i always joke about trying not to be too weird, so we can make friends (we might just be too weird...).  but we might have made some friends.  they are due a week before us, which is kind of cool.
also, i had another dream.  i had just delivered and was reaching out to the baby to put it on my chest.  the weird part is that i had the exact same dream twice.  once the baby was a boy and once the baby was a girl.  even my sub conscience isn't helping me out.
i'm having weekly ob appointments now.  this week, the doctor checked my dilation.  i'm zero percent dilated, but i guess baby's head is super duper low - down by my pubic bone.  she didn't believe me when i said i didn't feel any pressure.
it's been quite the week.  weather has been in the 100s most days, our swamp cooler (i think that must be a new mexico thing) broke, and so arley had to run around crazy all day, while i tried to sleep for work, trying to fix it.  arley got sick.  oni walked underneath arley's feet one too many times and got stepped on.  she's been limping around all sad, and is mad at us for not letting her go outside.  eda finally got to go on a walk (i just can't seem to force myself to take her when it's 95 degrees at 7 pm) and we got rained out.  so not only did her walk get cut shot, but she got wet.

LOOKING FORWARD TO     i have a few days off in a row this week, so hopefully i can get myself motivated enough to work on the nursery.  [it did not happen.  arley got sick and in solidarity, i laid around all week with him.  as a good wife, i pretty much had no choice.]
i got some cool shelves that hold books like art against the wall, rather than spine out like a book shelf.  arley decided that we should mount them to a board or something and not straight to the wall so not so many holes go into his precious, fresh-painted walls.  i'm starting to visualize what i want, and am getting excited about it, so hopefully we have time to put it together!

FUN FACT     baby is inhaling, exhaling, sucking, gripping, and blinking.  baby is also working on that first, super fun tar poop, called meconium.  baby is supposedly gaining about half a pound a week.

36 weeks

9. jun

BABY'S SIZE     a papaya!  17 to 18.5 inches and 4 to 5.5 pounds.

HOW I'M FEELING     still trucking along.  everyone keeps asking me if i'm ready to be done.  other than feeling more than tired, and with squished ribs/lungs after work, and other than the whole sleep thing, i feel pretty good.  i'll cook this baby as long as it needs.  full 40!  (that means i have more time to get ready, too!)

WHAT I'M EATING     i've still been getting a salad every night i work.  for some reason, i love their ranch dressing.  it's a little thinner/runnier than normal ranch.  something about it makes my belly happy.

HOW I'M CHANGING     somehow, my belly is still growing.  it might just explode any second.

MOVEMENT     did i mention that i did kick counts for about 2 days when they recommended i start?  the expectation is to have 4 kicks in an hour during baby's 2 most active times of the day.  my 4 kicks happen in about 1 minute.  and happen many more times than twice a day.  this baby moves so much that i would be concerned if it only wiggled 4 times in an hour twice a day.

SLEEP     i feel like a beached turtle.  you know, the ones stuck on their backs?  i have to roll from side to side a lot to keep my hips from hurting too much.  and it is really hard.

THINGS THIS WEEK     i had my first fun (and by fun, i mean terrible) experience with a mouthy grandma at wall-mart.  i was standing in line to checkout and she comes to stand next to me and says, "aww, how cute.  when are you due?"  i said, "in about a month."  "oh," she says, as she looks me up and down, "you look like you're due now."  and i just looked at her.  honestly, i'm surprised it's taken this long for the comments to start (other than work, when i get told, "you look enormous!").  

LOOKING FORWARD TO     we're having some real live friends (potential friends) over next week for some swimming and some barbecuing.  i don't think we've ever officially had anyone come over that wasn't family.  kind of exciting!

FUN FACT     baby's skin is getting smooth and soft, and gums are becoming rigid (i guess that's a thing...).  baby's size means less amniotic fluid - movements are supposed to be feeling "different."  fewer kicks because of less space.

35 weeks

2. jun

BABY'S SIZE     a pineapple!  17 to 18.5 inches long, and 4 to 5.5 pounds.

HOW I'M FEELING     mentally, i'm starting to realize that i will be a little sad if i have a girl or if i have a boy.  i was trying to explain it to arley.  it's like having a choose-your-own-adventure book.  before you start, you know that the story could go so many different ways.  i feel like i'm on page 11 and i can either go to page 42 or page 5.  and either way, i feel a little sad that i can only choose one, and won't be able to choose the other as well.  i don't think he really got it.  i don't know if i really get it.

WHAT I'M EATING     we should maybe just take this question out and always assume that it's cereal.

HOW I'M CHANGING     i feel like i can't grow another millimeter, and then i do.  i'm trying to do a squat challenge - the main challenge being trying to actually remember to do the squats that day - and i'm kind of failing.  but i think these preggie legs are getting at least a little stronger.  getting ready for my amazon woman birth.  hah!

MOVEMENT     this baby never slows down.  always a wiggle here, a kick there, and all the stretches in between.

SLEEP     sleep comes and goes.  i don't think i'll ever get used to having to wake up every three hours to pee.  although lots of babies like to eat about every three hours.  maybe my body is helping me practice getting short bursts of sleep...

THINGS THIS WEEK     the crazy dreams have begun.  it's taken a lot longer than i thought, because i have crazy dreams normally.  here are the latest ones:

working on a postpartum unit that is baby friendly, and therefore very much encourages breastfeeding, you can imagine that i have been feeling the pressure.  i super duper hope that baby and i know what to do.  so in my dream, i had a baby (it is not a boy or a girl, just a baby) that could not figure out how to latch on and nurse.  and every time it managed to swallow a drop of colostrum, it would throw up massively.
hand expression is a thing we promote at work (it helps bring in milk faster, it lets baby have a little free supplement if you catch it in a spoon and give it to baby, and ups your supply in the long run), and so after all that throwing up, i thought i should try to hand express some colostrum to feed my starving, barfing baby.  but when i started hand expressing, there was no colostrum, just squeezey cheese.  and even in my dream, i was so horrified, but it finally made sense as to why the baby was throwing up all over the place.

i'm still pregnant in this one.  i was showing everyone at work that you could see the outline of the baby's butt cheeks (that's what i was thinking in my dream).  one lady came over and opened the window and screamed, "IT'S A BOY!!"  i was so sad and i asked her why she would do that.  i told her i hadn't waited this long to spoil the surprise.  she said, "but sweetie, it's still a surprise!"  and i cried and cried (and was a little sad that it wasn't a girl).

LOOKING FORWARD TO     using my birthday massage gift certificate at a super duper fancy place next week!

FUN FACT     hearing is fully developed; baby responds best to high pitches noises.  most of baby's growth milestones are behind him/her, so this month is all about putting on fat.

34 weeks

26. may

BABY'S SIZE     a butternut squash!  4 to 5.5 pounds and 17 to 19 inches!

HOW I'M FEELING     i don't even want to count how many hours i've slept in the past 24.  i got a serious case of the tireds this week.  i guess that's nothing new.  i had to be charge nurse at work two nights in a row and that is very mentally [and emotionally] draining - maybe that's got something to do with it...

WHAT I'M EATING     we went to panera bread because it sounded so delicious.  apparently i ordered the wrong salad, and the sandwich i ordered came on sad, sad white bread instead of focaccia.  at least i got a frozen lemonade.

HOW I'M CHANGING     some days it almost looks like my belly button is about to pop out, but then it doesn't.
also, i'm finally starting to feel like my hair is getting long (it doesn't really feel thicker, like they say it will).
3 different people this week told me i don't look like i'm 34 weeks and that i carry this baby of mine very well.  refreshing after being told how huge and whale-ish i looked all last week.

MOVEMENT     i can feel hiccups now!  it feels so weird!  and amazing!
sometimes when i do a little push on my belly, baby pushes back.  it's like we're having a little conversation.  but with my hand and baby's butt.  hah.

SLEEP     after my two nights of charge, i slept for 5 hours straight.  it was the most amazing day of my life.  of my recent sleep life.

THINGS THIS WEEK     people (luckily only people i work with so far - no strangers yet) are not shy about telling me how huge i am.  i walked into work the other day and a girl looked me up and down and said, "wow.  you're huge."
the same shift, i walked into the hall and another girl's eyes got big as she told me, "you're big."
i'm trying to think of it as a good thing, like i'm growing a healthy baby, rather than the opposite of skinny.

LOOKING FORWARD TO     i ordered all the baby things!  i bought some cute little wire storage baskets that i'm going to (probably arley is going to) hang up sideways on the wall to put diapers in.  i got a pouf for a foot rest that i'm not quite in love with, so i ordered another and will send back the one i don't love as much.  i'm getting pretty excited to put our nursery together.  i put the crib together finally!  i finally took the family heirloom rocker to the upholsterer and picked out some fabric.  it might all happen before a baby happens...!

FUN FACT     baby recognizes and reacts to simple songs, and may find the same songs soothing after birth.  i told arley this so he started singing the song about "know when to hold em, know when to fold em."  i told him not to teach our baby bad music taste so we turned on the radio and mumbled our way through a song.  this baby is going to be a genius.

33 weeks

19. may

BABY'S SIZE     a celery!  4 to 5.5 pounds and 17 to 19 inches long!  (which is crazy because we have babies that are 19 inches long all the time at work!

HOW I'M FEELING     fabulous, after a fabulous massage.  feeling productive, which mostly happened after i realized that IF baby comes on time, we only have 7 weeks to get ready.  less than 2 months.  this is crazy.

WHAT I'M EATING     we went to whole foods after our massage and got the most delicious gelato.   two flavors, because baby wanted two.  hazelnut and pistachio.
cold stuff is tasting pretty delicious right now.  a while ago i bought some citrus, "real fruit" popsicles for arley when he was sick, and lately they have been tasting SO GOOD.

HOW I'M CHANGING     i feel like every time i look at my belly, it has grown about an inch.

MOVEMENT     i think we will have a ninja baby.  it seems like it's always practicing its moves.  the occasional punch to my bladder hurts, otherwise i mostly like it.

SLEEP     still not talking about this one.

THINGS THIS WEEK     started the squat challenge.  to be honest, i had to do a pre squat challenge challenge.  the starting number was 50 squats in a day.  so i added an extra week on and started at 25... next week...

LOOKING FORWARD TO     one of these days i'm going to go shopping and get all of our baby necessities that we didn't get from our baby showers.  crib mattress, changing table stuff (pad, diaper storage, etc).  i might even get (ok 100% am getting) a few fun decorations.

FUN FACT     baby is starting to coordinate breathing with sucking and swallowing.  about to be a champion eater!

going home from work in the sunshine is pretty nice.