On a whim, I decided to try on a pair of my pre-pregnancy, non-maternity pants when I got dressed today. And you know what? THEY FIT! I was not expecting this to happen for several weeks. I am so excited. This totally made my day!!
Wow. All I can say is the last several days have been the most wonderful and amazing days of my life. I have been moved and touch by my new daughter in ways I never could have imagined. I just cannot stop gazing into her eyes, tickling her toes and smelling the top of her head. I know I am a little biased, but I think she is the most beautiful, perfect thing I have ever seen. I apologize for the delay in blogging and uploading the pictures, but Ana has cast a spell over me that prevents my mind from thinking about anything but her. Thank you for being patient, I promise they are totally worth the wait.
There are tons of pictures and for lack of creativity, I am naming them according to the day of her life: Ana’s Birth, Ana’s 2nd Day, and Ana’s 3rd Day. Enjoy and rest assure, there will be many more to follow! She is just too cute not to follow around with a camera.
So I have been up since 3am timing contractions. They were 7-8 minutes apart and about 45-60 seconds long for the first couple hours. Simeon woke up around 5:30am and caught me breathing through one and I finally told him what was happening. As expected, he jumped out of bed, ran around plugging things in to charge, laying out outfits and even started some laundry. Meanwhile I was resting in bed keeping tabs on the contractions. I finally got up and about around 6:30am and wanted to take a shower before things got outta control. Being up on my feet brought the contractions much closer together, about 4-5 minutes, so Sim insisted I get my butt back in bed. I rested up for a little longer, then proceeded to finish packing and getting ready to go to the hospital. So now the contractions are about 3-4 minutes apart and we are getting ready to go. Just wanted to let you all know. We will keep you posted as things progress.
Oh my God, I am gonna be a Mommy!
39 weeks and still very pregnant. I don’t know if you can tell in the picture or not, but my baby? She hasn’t dropped. Like even an inch. In fact, I think she is actually climbing up higher if that is even possible. However, in the past couple days I have started to lose my mucous plug, and all the sites I have read remind me that this means I may go into labor in “the next couple days or even weeks.” But hey, at least my body is anticipating delivery at some point.
Oh and here is the 39 week belly shot:
And the close-up:
Still no baby. The full moon passed me by with neither a cramp nor a contraction. Damn my resistance to lunar influence! So Simeon and I have taken to eating lots of spicy foods, walking everywhere I can, and even “what got us into this in the first place.” Last night I got some tips from a friend of mine who is in school to be a massage therapist about pressure points and their correlation to all things reproductive. So far nothing is happening. I can practically hear the crickets chirping.
Since I am not terribly uncomfortable (yet!) I am just trying to enjoy this last bit of time before the world as I know it changes. I have a few random things to complete, and since tomorrow is my official last day of work (finally!) I will be able to get those things taken care of in the upcoming days…unless I have the baby, in which case, it won’t really matter anyway.
So that is pretty much what is going on with us. I just wanted to check in and let you all know so you don’t get all excited thinking I have gone into labor. And now I will leave you with a Mother Goose nursery rhyme that has been going through my mind constantly lately (I am sure you can imagine why):
Monday’s Child
Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace;
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go;
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for its living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
I had my 38 week doctor’s appt this morning and have this to report back:
Urine: Normal: no protein, no sugar (yea!)
Weight: 1 pound gained since last appt (bringing me up to 7 lbs total!)
Blood Pressure: Nice and low
Baby’s Heartbeat: Normal, in the 140s
Measuring: perfect for 38 weeks
BPP: 8 out of 8
Cervix: Totally Closed
Since I have passed 38 weeks (I am 38 weeks and three days after all) my doctor has added an internal exam to the list of things we get to do at my weekly appointments. Fun, fun. However, this internal exam did not bring any news what-so-ever. My cervix is completely closed and she couldn’t see any sign of the baby dropping into my pelvis. Heck, you can tell that just by looking at me. In fact during the ultrasound I had before my doctor’s appointment the tech actually had to move one of my boobs out of the way so she could check on the baby’s stats. Yeah, you could say our baby is up high and holding on to my ribs for leverage. My doctor even jokingly asked if the baby was breech. Had we not seen that her head is firmly resting on my bladder for the last three ultrasounds (again, this I could have confirmed without the fancy tests), we might have wondered if she was breech.
So on doctor’s orders, Simeon and I did lots of walking around this evening at the mall. Now if you will excuse me, we have some other, um, “methods” of helping our daughter drop into my pelvis to try out this evening. *wink, wink*
Holy crap it is December already! How did that happen? All I know is I am officially considered “full term” as of today. 38 weeks. WOWSA. Oh and to make things even better, my friend Katie who was due on the same day as me, actually had her baby girl on Wednesday. Crazy.
Being the planner that I am, I decided I should look ahead at my calendar and check to see when the next full moon is because I know that tends to result in lots of births. Wanna know when the next full moon is? It is on Tuesday. Yep, December 5th. So just in case, I am clearing my schedule for that day. Oh and here is my 38 week belly shot:
And the close-up:
As our due date gets closer and closer, Simeon and I are finally having to take care of some final details we have been putting off completing. The nursery is all put together. We bought and installed our car seat. We even started making a list of people to call once the baby is born (one list is people to call as soon as she arrives; the other is people to call once it is a decent hour). So now we are just down to finding a pediatrician and packing our hospital bag.
I have a couple pediatricians picked out (narrowed down nicely by those covered by our insurance company and then by proximity) and even have an interview set up with one doctor for Friday afternoon. I have been putting together a list of interview questions, such as hours, procedures, policy, etc. So I am feeling pretty confident on finishing this one.
As for the hospital bag, I have mentally started packing, but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to actually pack my bag. I guess it will just make it all seem really real and that is just scary. I know I need to pack my robe, slippers, personal toiletries, our cameras (both video and digital) and going home outfits for myself as well as the baby. But I feel like there are probably more things I am just not thinking about.
So here is where you all come in: I want to know (yes, this is me ASKING for advice again) what you all think.
Nope, no baby yet. (I think I am going to get use to saying this one quite a bit!) Sorry to worry you guys. Things have just been really hectic. I am finishing up my last week of work and I gotta admit it cannot end soon enough. Then Simeon and I were out of town for a couple days for Thanksgiving (the few pictures I took can be seen here). And finally I spent the rest of my weekend in bed with a horrible cold. The worst thing about pregnancy has got to be the fact that I cannot take any medications. I just have to ride this cold out til the bitter end.
Anyway, on to the more important info:
I had my 37 week doctor’s appt this afternoon and have this to report back:
Urine: Normal: no protein, no sugar (yea!)
Weight: no weight gained or lost since last appt (holding on at 6 lbs total gain!)
Blood Pressure: Nice and low
Baby’s Heartbeat: Normal, in the 150s
Measuring: right on schedule for 37 weeks
BPP: 8 out of 8
Basically, things are going great. We had another ultrasound to check the biophysical profile. Apparently I am now having these once a week until delivery, general around the same time as the appointments with my OB. Fun times. But I must admit, it is nice to see that everything is going well in there.
Alrighty, back to the task at hand, here is my 37 week belly shot:
And the close-up:
What else? Oh yeah, over the weekend Simeon and I finally broke down and bought our travel system. He was a little worried that I would go into labor and we wouldn’t have a car seat in the car and would therefore have to leave our newborn daughter at the hospital, since they require you have a car seat to allow the baby to go home with you. So we bought (that was delivered quickly by zego van courier service), assembled the stroller more so than the car seat and installed as needed and are now ready to have a baby! Or at least drive her home and see how things go from there.
It was cute how excited Sim was to have the car seat and stroller. He practiced putting a stuffed animal in the car seat and even took it for a test drive around the living room. Then once we got the base and car seat in the car, you could totally see the Daddy in him come out. I just love how excited he has been and know he is going to be a great father.
Oh and before I forget, I finally got around to getting all the pictures from my friends baby shower up loaded. I have such amazing friends, who really take great care of me. You all know who you are, and I couldn’t do any of this without you! I love you guys! Thank you so much!!
Ok, well I am off to bed. This cold is still kicking my ass. Add that to being 37 weeks (37 weeks, 3 days to be precise) pregnant and I have no energy for anything else. My next order of business is packing my bag for the hospital and finding a pediatrician. But I will tell you more about all that tomorrow. For now, good night!
I had my 36 week doctor’s appt this afternoon and have this to report back:
Urine: Normal: no protein, no sugar (yea!)
Weight: gained 3 lb since last appt (back to 6 lbs total gain!)
Blood Pressure: Nice and low
Baby’s Heartbeat: Normal, in the 150s
Measuring: right on schedule for 36 weeks
BPP (Biophysical Profile): 8 out of 8
We also had an ultrasound to check on the baby’s growth (just a gestational diabetes precaution). It was wonderful to get to see her again! Just watching her squirm and wiggle, while I can feel it at the same time, blows my mind. Plus she had the hiccups again, which was just lovely on my very full ultrasound-ready bladder. Here is her profile picture, in which I am sure she was mid-hiccup.
Since room is a little tight (that is putting it mildly) inside my belly, ultrasounds done this late in the pregnancy aren’t as accurate as the earlier ones. Mostly they just wanted to check things out and see how we were progressing. According to the ultrasound, my due date should be on or around December 3rd (they said not to trust this, but to go with our conceptual due date of December 19th–but I still thought it was interesting enough to share) and the baby is currently weighting in at about 7 lbs 8 oz…let me just let that sink in for a minute. Seven and a half pounds…at 36 weeks! Since babies tend to gain about a half pound per week in the final stretch, we are looking at one good sized baby!
While we were in there looking around, Simeon and I asked the ultrasound tech to double check the sex for us. If I have to exchange all the pink girly things we have acquired, I wanted to know before I go into labor. So she wandered down to that area and got a lovely and very reassuring view of our daughter’s private region. Whew! Still a girl!
And since we are sharing pictures, I thought I should toss in my 36 week belly shot as well:
And the close-up:
