Week 37

Today marks Drew's "full term" date. If he comes anytime between now and 41 weeks (April 10th), he'll be ready to go. At this point, he is able to function as a healthy baby outside of mommy. I LOOK: After his flipping experience last week, I've noticed a few changes. First, and probably most obvious, my belly is now pointing out much lower than before. The top of my stomach isn't as stretched. On Friday, after working for 11 hours at school, my right foot/ankle swelled a little bit. I probably shouldn't have worn flip flops and I really shouldn't have worked that much.

I FEEL: My symptoms have now changed pretty significantly. Instead of the top of my tummy being numb constantly, I now have pressure on my pelvis and hip bones. My ribs feel fantastic!! The acid reflux has gotten better, but hasn't gone away completely.

• Baby Preparations: See below for this weekend's projects :)
• Baby Movements: These have changed a lot too! I finally understand the kicking thing; instead of constant pushing, I feel hard kicks all over my stomach.
• Weird Pregnancy Symptom: pretty extreme exhaustion has kicked in this week, yet I haven't let myself stop or slow down. Well, until this morning, when I managed to sleep until 9:55 (new time).

I CRAVE: hasn't changed since last week--nothing much.

I THINK: I'd spent so much time thinking about having a c-section and knowing the "time and place" that everything would occur and now we don't need that (which is good!) so I've been stressing about the uncertainty of the actual labor starting process. Also, I had a pretty intense dream on Tuesday night that Drew came early and my classroom was a disaster, so in active labor, I was at Arlington cleaning up... needless to day, I worked an extra two hours on Friday after working cleaning and organizing everything to make sure that wouldn't happen!

I HOPE: this week is low key and there isn't much to report :) Tomorrow, I take my Media Arts students on a field trip to the Norton Simon and I'm looking forward to a relaxing day with them and a few fellow teachers. The walking will be good for me and baby (although, Dave is worried that something will happen when I'm an hour away from home). Still praying for a healthy and happy little boy on the smaller side :)

I'm EXCITED: to meet our son! And to only have 10 days more of work!

DOC's SAY: Everything was wonderful at our appointment last Monday, my blood work came back all positive despite the huge bruise the bad tech left when drawing it. My midwife saw no need to have me back in one week, so I am on a 2-week rotation (next appointment=March 21).

This weekend's projects:

Dave "rubbed on" Andrew's wall sticker above his crib.

I made goodie bags for the nurses I'll have during delivery and recovery

(I'm fully expecting that I'll be a horrible, "make fun of you because you're whining" patient and I'll need all the sucking up I can get ahead of time so they won't hate me)

I finished adding photographs to my pregnancy journal
and added a few more thoughts for Andrew to read when he's older

I sorted and washed the 0-3 month clothes from Tawni and Rachel.

Yes, these are JUST 0-3 month clothes...

And upon recommendation from a few bumpies, I separated my hospital bag into labor and delivery items and baby items. This gave me more room to add Dave's change of clothes, snacks, and a few more "entertainment" items for our L&D experience.

And, yes, I know I haven't given you a full tour of the nursery yet. I promise it is coming. Everything wasn't quite ready... but it is getting there.