A mid-week photo event!
All went well today at our in-and-out doctor visit.
Weight: 144 pounds
BP: 116/71
Pulse: 104
My belly measurement is 32 cm, which is within the normal range.
The baby's heartbeat was 144, just fine. :)
Back again in two weeks!
142 pounds.
Sadly, no picture from this weekend. Maybe later this week we'll get one.
I am feeling lots of movement from this little guy, more strongly than ever, though that's understandable. The movement I feel is supposed to slow down as he gets bigger and starts to run out of room.
I think I've begun to feel Braxton-Hicks contractions. They don't hurt. But my belly feels tight and moves forward. That's how the Birthing Class teacher explained it and I think that's what is happening to me. But they don't hurt.
In other news, I am so sick of eating. It seems that I am always eating, and I can't get full for longer than an hour or two. I am crabby half the time because I'm hungry, and I'm so tired of eating the same foods again and again. Sometimes I get really hungry just 30 minutes or an hour after I eat a decent meal. Gah, it's really annoying.
Hmm, are there any other new symptoms? Lots of stuffy nose/mucus stuff. Awful leg cramps that wake you up in the middle of the night. Hiccups several times a day. Same old, same old.
For all the weight and bulk you’re lugging around these days, you’d think your little champ should weigh much more than a mere 5 lbs and measly 17 inches in height, but nope, that’s about the average size for a baby in its thirty-third week. In terms of appearances, they’re getting cuter and pudgier every minute as they pile on the baby fat for those adorable little wrist rolls and chubby toes. And as we’re sure you’ve already noticed they’re getting stronger with every passing day. Nowadays, it’s possible to observe a well-placed kick just by watching your belly—but you already knew that didn’t you? Although they’re getting stronger, your bigger-by-the-day baby is losing space to move around, so the actual rate of movement will drop off in the last few weeks, despite that powerful drop-kick they’ve been working on. Hey, did you know you’ll continue feeling their movements even during labor?
Your not-so-little-one is just a bit closer to their birth weight and height at around 4 pounds and 17 inches. With each added layer of baby fat, your baby's skin starts to look more and more like it will when they finally get to see the light of day. The heavy news: you can expect your miracle-gro muffin to gain about a half a pound of weight per week from now until about two weeks before birth. Great. That's just what you needed. Even more weight to carry around!
Your baby's still-developing immune system has gained substantial strength over the past few weeks getting them in full gear to face our disease-ridden world o’ wonders. Obviously, a large majority of your child’s immune strength will be derived from exposure to breast milk as well as the outside elements. Their cute little noggin’ (which could already be covered with luscious locks or just purty peach fuzz), is still soft because the skull bones have not yet fused together. As much as that sounds a little too vulnerable, their “skull softness” allows for a much smoother passage through the birth canal during labor—something both you and your little swimmer will appreciate when it’s finally time to “go!” Also, some babies will have that “soft spot” on their head for up to one year after birth.
140 pounds and eating like a champ, honest. Reflux is awful. Just awful. Made worse by eating, drinking, or any strenuous activity.
I have begun to feel swelling in my hands. They feel all tight and get pretty sweaty. They look like sausages. Petite little sausages, but sausages never the less. You might know that I'm pretty vain about my fingers. I think they look lovely, long and skinny, so it's a bit crushing to have sausage fingers, but that's the way it goes. I have stopped trying to put on my rings.
I also had a really severe stomach cramp this morning - does a Braxton-Hicks contraction feel anything like a stomach cramp? It definitely had a "wave-like" feeling to it, and after it passed, I felt completely fine and was able to keep eating. I don't know if my uterus got hard and moved forward as I've heard it described. But it hurt. Of course, it could have been a real stomach cramp brought on by the 4 slices of french toast covered in maple syrup and powdered sugar. :)
Lastly, I have had pretty unpleasant posterior pelvic pain after sitting. It's not sciatica. It's not in my butt. It is in my bones and joints, below the bony ridge of my pelvis. It feels like the two joints of my pelvis are not well connected, which is probably true, due to the higher levels of relaxin in my body.
Socks for Cristin.
We're now seeing the doctor every two weeks. The visits are quite short - check my vitals, listen to the baby's heartbeat and measure my belly size.
Here are my vitals:
Weight - 141
BP - 107/69
Pulse - 94
The baby's heartbeat was 148 and he was a squirmy worm while she had the doppler on my tummy!! It's so much easier to see and feel him move around when I'm on my back.
Otherwise everything looked fine. The doctor complimented me and said that she couldn't complain about anything. Yay!
I'm late on this posting so I'll incorporate both our first and second birthing classes in this post. It's not very organized but tough.
We're delivering at Rex, so that's where we're taking our birthing classes. There are 5 classes, and this is roughly what they cover:
- The stages of labor
- The stages of labor w/video, tour of the facility
- The stages of labor w/different video, medicated childbirth options
- ? can't remember
- All about C-sections
It was good to understand exactly what happens during labor. I guess all these years I thought that when they said labor lasted for 20 or 30 hours, they meant you were pushing that whole time. That's not the case. The pushing phase lasts about 2 hours, at most. The rest of the time (prior to pushing) is what appears to be the really painful part, and that's the natural and uncontrollable bodily reaction as the cervix dialates and thins and the contractions of your uterus begin to push the baby towards the birth canal. I guess a little bit of understanding goes a long way. By the way, we had the same teacher and she showed us the same funny chart as Ele posted about.
The video we watched last night, which was not very graphic according to Ele, really does make you walk out of the room thinking that natural, non-medicated childbirth is within reach. But, I'm still planning on getting an epidural at this point. Better living through science is what I say.
We spend half the class practicing relaxation techniques and getting to tell our partner how we like to be massaged, touched, and supported when we're in labor (most of us are just guessing since we've never done this before). It's nice to have that focused time and an opportunity to learn from each other and I think it helps Dave and I be closer.
What I found as I watched the video of these couples beginnning labor through the final stages of pushing to seeing them afterwards with their little babies was how real this really is. For the first time, the birthing class is causing me to think of time after pregnancy. It's going to be really weird. It's hard to stand outside of your pregnancy and realize that this is just a means to an end, not the end goal. I got a little emotional watching these couples, the wives relying so heavily on the husbands for emotional and physical support, the women finding inner strength to cope with the pain, and the baby being their end reward. That's when the real work starts!
On our tour, we got to see a birthing room, which basically looks like a fancy hotel/hospital room. The post-partum rooms are supposed to be very similar with more comfortable beds. We also got to see some babies in one of the nurserys, and the girls all laughed as they saw this experienced nurse pick up a baby and tuck him under her arm like a football to give him a little bath in the sink. I know we'll all be treating our babies as if they are much more fragile!
And lastly, I'd like to complain about this undercurrent of feeling I get from people who hear you don't want to have a natural birth. It's this subtle-yet-definitely-there feeling that you're not a real woman/real mother if you choose to have a medicated birth. What's up with that? I know there are many things, not just pregnancy related, but parenting related and more, that are really divisive, and this is one of those things. But it still annoys me.
139 pounds. So far I've gained about 20 pounds, which is right on target. I'll probably end up gaining between another 5-10 pounds over the next 10 weeks.
Though not exclusively, it seems like I alternate between hungry days and tired days - I chalk this up to growth spurts on the part of the baby. But most days it just feels like I'm eating everything in sight.
Some benefits of being pregnant that I think I'm going to miss:
- Super-charged immune system
- Clear skin - all my acne is gone!
- Ridiculously thick, full hair
- Fast-growing nails (though still not very strong)
- A consistent, good, happy feeling
I say all of this with the knowledge that once the baby is delivered, my hair will fall out, my nails will diminish, my skin will go back to normal and I think I'll go back to feeling like a boring, tired human, rather than super-human.
Your not-so-little-one is just a bit closer to their birth weight and height at around 4 pounds and 17 inches. With each added layer of baby fat, your baby's skin starts to look more and more like it will when they finally get to see the light of day. The heavy news: you can expect your miracle-gro muffin to gain about a half a pound of weight per week from now until about two weeks before birth. Great. That's just what you needed. Even more weight to carry around!
Your baby's still-developing immune system has gained substantial strength over the past few weeks getting them in full gear to face our disease-ridden world o’ wonders. Obviously, a large majority of your child’s immune strength will be derived from exposure to breast milk as well as the outside elements. Their cute little noggin’ (which could already be covered with luscious locks or just purty peach fuzz), is still soft because the skull bones have not yet fused together. As much as that sounds a little too vulnerable, their “skull softness” allows for a much smoother passage through the birth canal during labor—something both you and your little swimmer will appreciate when it’s finally time to “go!” Also, some babies will have that “soft spot” on their head for up to one year after birth.
