A baby story: Week 32

Week 32: Baby’s the size of a jicama!

Okay, what the heck does a jicama look like, anyways?  Here’s a photo of one if you’re like me and have no clue.  I swear, some weeks these “How big is your baby?” posts on different pregnancy websites are so random.

We’ve hit a major milestone this week…we’re at the 8 month mark!  Only 1.5-2 more months to go!

This week the belly has been growing quite a bit–each day it seems to get bigger and heavier.  More and more when I walk for long distances I feel I need to put my hand underneath my belly to hold it up a bit.  I also have slowed waaay down with my walking speed.  I’m a pretty fast walker (living in SF and riding the bus and BART will do that to you!) and so I’ve had to remind myself to slow it down because when I don’t, I feel a tightness in my lower abdomen that does the job of reminding me to slow it down.

The wee one has made her presence very well known this week–her kicks and somersaults have turned to full on jabs and I like to think of them as her way of reminding me that she’s in there!  There are times, when I’m sitting down mostly, that her moves are a bit unsettling and I have to adjust myself or stretch out my upper body to give her more room in there.  She’ll also stick out some part of her body (I’m assuming her little behind) and just leave it jutting out and I rub my belly in that spot and she keeps it right there so I like to think that she enjoys her little daily booty massages.  Like mother, like daughter?  Hahah.

Here are a couple of videos of her seriously shaking my belly around–video one (only 3 seconds long–I started taping in the middle of a big one!) and video two (that’s my sis Jessie laughing in the background). She’s most active mid-morning (when I’m student teaching, maybe she likes the presence of crazy, hormonal, pre-teens as much as I do?) and after 8pm.

I kind of hit my mental limit this past week with work and school–I’m feeling more and more exhausted as the days go by and this schedule of mine is hard to keep up this late in the pregnancy.  But I just keep telling myself that I only have three more weeks left of student teaching + working full-time after this week and then it’ll all be downhill from there!  The to-do list we’ve got for baby-related things grows by the day and doesn’t seem to shrink at all but I’m hopeful that once May 10 passes (my last day with the 7th graders) I’ll be able to tackle more of those baby to-do’s.

Lastly, we had our first prenatal meeting with our doula, Lauraina, this week.  She helped us go through our birth plan and we’ve got a pretty good foundation.  And she also did some neat exercises with me to help mentally and emotionally prepare for contractions.  She set a timer for one minute and had us sit there, just to see how long a minute is (which is how long most contractions are).  Then she set the timer again for one minute and told me to focus on and be conscious of my breathing.  The third time she set the timer she had me hold a handful of ice in one hand for the entire minute–afterwards she asked me how the experience was and what I thought about during that time and I told her it was definitely uncomfortable but I decided to start counting down from 30 seconds at some point during the minute and that countdown helped me focus away from the discomfort.  The fourth time she set the timer she had me hold a handful of ice in my other hand and I did the same thing except this time I went a little longer and started my mental countdown at 20 seconds.  She suggests I do this regularly to make it second nature to me to know just how long a minute is and to learn to focus my attention on other things instead of the discomfort/pain.  We’re working on scheduling our second prenatal meeting for May where my sister Jessie will join us–she’s going to be present for the birth as well so it’ll be good for all four of us to meet and talk about the big day!  We’re also working on scheduling my prenatal massage (ahhhhh) which I cannot wait for.

Belly shots!

Other pregnancy updates

• Total weight gained so far:  9.5 pounds (finally seeing some action on the scale!)
• Fun baby developments this week:  She weighs around 4 pounds and measures around 16 inches long and she’s now got fingernails, toenails and real hair!
• Number of baby showers we’ve got the next three weekends:  Three!  My boss is throwing me a small one on Saturday, the following weekend we’re going to Long Beach for a shower the wonderful ladies in our family are throwing us, and the following weekend our good friend Carleigh (who is also expecting!) is throwing us a small one with the friends we’ve got up here.  So much love for this baby girl!
• Number of days until our next prenatal appointment:  Six!  I’ll most likely write the next blog post that night so we’ll hopefully have some fun things to share from that appointment.