38 week belly

38 week belly! Whenever you're ready, baby.

updates

Patrick and I just got back from the doctor and got a couple of updates. My belly is measuring at about 41 centimeters. The doctor says I'm about 60% effaced and dilated to about 1 centimeter. She also said the baby has dropped down into my pelvis by another centimeter (to -2 station for those of you that are medically-minded). She was surprised to see that although the baby dropped into my pelvis by a centimeter, which usually makes the belly measurement smaller, my belly was measuring a centimeter bigger. That just means the baby is still growing a lot in these last weeks, even as it is getting ready to make its way out.

I've been feeling some consistent painless contractions, and apparently they're working to get my body ready to deliver the baby. I'm hoping I can keep going like this, slow and steady and without pain, up until the very end. Colin is here visiting and it's been so busy with all the fun stuff the boys have planned. Tomorrow we'll go see a free movie (Lawrence of Arabia) in Moscow, ID and Saturday we're going to go to the public pool -- which has slides! Summer fun!

Two more days and I'll be 38 weeks!

37 week belly

37 week belly! Finally full term! I'm measuring at about 40 cm, about 20% effaced and still feeling good. Full of baby, but good. I love feeling this baby squirm around inside me. Can't wait for Patrick to be able to feel the same joy once the baby is on the outside. 

36 week belly

36 weeks

36 week belly! Feeling good and ready!

week 34 and 35 belly

week 34

week 35

Okay, I slacked on uploading the week 34 belly, but at least I got the photo taken! So, here's weeks 34 and 35 bellies. I still turn sideways to get through tight spaced by instinct, and it's doing me no good! I'm wider front-ways than I am sideways! I feel great -- just a little lacking in stamina. I can only go out and do stuff in the garden for an hour or two before I lose steam. Other than that, I'm feeling good and ready for this big 'ol baby to come out. The baby's really strong -- kicking me so hard sometimes that it startles me. Especially the kicks in the ribs.

new belly collage!

only a few more weeks to fill in and i'll have the whole (well, the majority) of the pregnancy!

week 33 belly and summer updates

Here's the week 33 belly. That baby is livin' large in there! I am feeling good -- a little more tired than usual. That is, I need to sleep a good 9-10 hours a night and sometimes take a nap for an hour or two in the afternoon. I have to sleep a lot to grow such a big baby! But when I'm up I feel energetic, healthy and happy. I've been taking hikes, walks, going to the arboretum and the park, still walking to campus, and nesting like crazy. Patrick and I have been organizing our apartment and trying to get rid of stuff to make room for the baby.

We spent the whole evening yesterday reorganizing the shelves in the bathroom and bedroom. Next week we'll install the car seat. We are SO excited for all the baby stuff we've been getting for our online shower. It's been so fun to get little gifts at the door each day, and we love setting up all the little things we'll need: washing the clothes, diapers, blankets and sheets, getting to know the stroller, car seat, breast pump, and baby monitor, putting up the mobile over the crib, setting up the furniture and filling it with all the little baby stuff...all so fun! Even though we've tried to keep our list to things we think we'll need rather than superfluous cutesy things we might want, it is still surprising how much gear this little human needs.

We've also been making homemade beer and wine! It's been a really fun thing to learn to do this summer. Our first batch of beer is a clone of Bell's Oberon beer from Kalamazoo, MI. It'll be ready in about a week, so we'll see how we did. The wine is just a generic red wine that we made from two cans of frozen Welch's grape juice. Basically, it's a hobo wine...and we called our brand "Chateau d'Hobo." We even decorated the bottle with a hobo in front of some rolling hills of vineyard. Too bad I can't enjoy much of these alcoholic drinks, but it is a very cheap way to make alcohol!

Finally, we've been tending our vegetable garden this summer. It is taking a while to warm up here. The nights are still too cold (high 30's, low 40's) for the warm weather plants like tomatoes. Outside in the plot we have two kinds of lettuce, onions and shallots -- which are all doing fabulously. We bought some tomato starts that are out in the plot, but we've been covering them up each night and they are still living, but not looking so good. Finally, in the house we started from seed: arugula, broccoli, eggplant, spicy salad mix, baby bok choy, lemon cucumbers and rainbow chard. We'll plant these out sometime next week when the nights look like they're going to begin to warm up.

We're trying to make the most of our last weeks as an adult couple without kids. Patrick is golfing nearly every day, he is writing two screenplays (one of which he wants to shoot for a short movie this summer), we're reading a lot of childbirth books and practicing what we'll need to do a natural childbirth each day, and I have been going to coffeeshops a couple of times a week to finish my master's thesis paper before the baby comes. We can't wait for the public pool to open up June 14th so we can go there during the day (there's even a slide). Yay for summer!!