The last appointment.

I was awake for three hours Tuesday night and spent a lot of that time enjoying the baby moving and reading. I also spent a lot of time wishing I could go back to sleep. During the awake time, I had several contractions. Most of them were BH contractions, I'm sure. But a few actually hurt a little. Like period cramps, but not as bad (and my cramps are never anything bad). 

I figured I'd have a little more progress at my appointment yesterday. Mainly I was hoping the cervical check wouldn't hurt as bad. 

Well, it still hurt. My cervix is still behind the baby. But now I am 3.5 cm, 60% effaced and the baby is at a -2 station. M is totally freaked out and thinks we could have the baby at any minute. I am less sure. But maybe we will go into labor on our own... It seems a little more possible now. 

38 weeks and the grossest ever

I thought I was gross a few weeks ago when I posted about the tiny fungal infection I had on my underbelly. But now I am infinitely grosser. I now have a raging itchy rash on each of my boobs. It is only soothed with the anti fungal creme. I just can't stop the sweating in there. I use gold bond powder and I've even been putting paper towels in between. I'm so happy the weather is getting better. I stopped wearing my comfortable bras and now I'm back to wearing the ones that separate the girls a little more. I'm trying to ignore the reason I stopped wearing these... Too small. Oh well. 

We are pretty much ready. Everything is set up. My bag is sort of packed. Car seats are in. I bought an enema today so I'll be ready when we come home. 

Super embarrassing. 

My appointment on Wednesday was 

uneventful, which means it was great. I'm at 2 cm, still very high and still posterior. The doctor is pretty sure they'll see me this Wednesday. I think we've made some more progress this week. I can feel the baby lower than before and I think I might have had a real contraction over the weekend. 

I've been dealing with lots of feelings the past week and normally I'd let them all out here. However, my office is starting an Internet policy and I need to be careful about what I do there now. That limits my blogging time! Now I have to do it all from my phone! 

The feelings are the normal ones that we start to feel now. The baby was pretty quiet on Sunday and I got a little scared. It was plenty crazy today so I'm calmer now. I'm worried about my relationship with W immediately after the baby. I want to just hold him and snuggle as much as I can before the surgery. It doesn't work well with a three year old, though. I'm trying to do as much as I can with him (mostly reading) and trying to explain that the baby is coming soon. We are making a countdown calendar tonight. 

4 more days of work. 

9 more wake ups until the baby is here. 

37 weeks and AWAKE

37 weeks down. Clearly, I'm ready for this to be over.  It's so bittersweet, though. I want to be done with pregnancy, but I'm trying to squeeze every last bit out of it. I hope this is my last pregnancy. I'll never have these little tiny elbows poking from the inside again. I'll never again get to sit with a giant laugh and hold my belly while it shakes like a bowl full of jelly. I'll never again have random strangers smile at me and hold doors open or let me go ahead of them. I'll never again have the excuse to let my thoughts come out of my mouth completely unfiltered. 

But I will be sleeping better. I swear I'm the only person who looks forward to the baby because I'll be sleeping better. I know it could get worse ... But I've been wide awake at 4:30 every morning and my body will not let me sleep before 10:30 at night. And there's all the long hours of laying awake between. 

The baby's going home outfit is washed. The bassinet is set up. We are installing the car seat bases today after dinner. We are SO close to being ready. I'm also almost completely ready at work. That means the baby will not be here anytime soon. 

I had the GBS test last week at the doctor. And I currently weigh 8 pounds less than my husband. I have to keep feeding him late night desserts. It was the first of the no pants appointments and I was sweaty. Of course. So they gave me the little blanket to cover up and I threw it on the floor. The doctor walked in and I was sitting there all spread out with nothing covering the bottom half of my body. And I didn't give a single F about it. The doctor checked me and I was 1cm and VERY high. That meant it was the most uncomfortable thing ever. I might ask them to skip the next time (no I won't).  And, as usual for me, I had to peel the table paper of when the appointment was over. 

10 days left of work. 

2 weeks and 3 days until we have a baby. 

36 Weeks and a Sprinkle

Here we are.... 3 weeks and 1 day left. I still don't have the idea that this is real. 

I had a small sprinkle on Saturday. My SIL hosted it and she had an adorable idea - everyone brought children's books instead of regular baby stuff. I loved it!!! We had been worried that we'd get more baby blankets or bottles or towels, but everyone brought books (we did get a few extras and I'm not complaining, especially about the huge boxes of diapers!). 

Last night, we took a small family trip to the mall and we bought a little tiny going home outfit. 

Ridiculous. So cute. I decided I would allow myself to buy one outfit for the baby and there it is. We did get another tiny onesie with a crab on it because (a) we live in Maryland and (b) it was $4. 

I'm still doing about the same. I am completely exhausted in the evenings after work. I am not sleeping well and my hips really hurt. None of these are a big deal or anything weird. It does mean that I wake up on the weekdays and think to myself exactly how many work days I have left (14 including today). 

35 Weeks and Officially Disgusting

I had my appointment on Wednesday and I got some disturbing news: I have a fungal infection on my underbelly. Think about that for a second. I essentially have athlete's foot on my belly. From being disgusting. The doctor breezed over it. "Oh, do you have some itching" (a little) "You have a small spot of yeast on your belly down here. Get some {blah blah can't understand-izol} creme, the stuff for jock itch, and put it on the spot. That will help." Then she told me that next appointment (the 17th) will be the Group B strep test and my first cervical check. So last week was my last pants-on appointment and now I get to sweat through the paper on the table while I wait for the fun (who doesn't love the cervical checks!) bits. I have the creme and I now cover my bottom half in gold bond powder every morning to lessen the sweatyness. I'm not sure if it helps. 

Anyway. 

Baby is head down. Heart rate was 140-150s. 

Since I had an extra long weekend (W was sick on Wednesday, so I had 5 days off!), I got a ton of work done on the nursery. M got his tools out of the way and hung the curtains for me. We brought up lots of boxes from the basement. I did 4 loads of laundry* and folded everything. I still have 3 boxes left to sort out and at least two more loads of laundry. I will set up the crib with the bumper and then take it out when we actually start using the crib in a few months. I am crazy. 

W helped me sort out baby stuff. I pulled out a ton of breast pads that I hated (why did I keep them?) and he found the baby food containers. I got distracted by organizing the linen closet (everything! must! be! perfect!) and came back in to see every baby food container filled with a breast pad. He told me the diapers were ready for the baby. 

*Laundry: I know (because I am smart) that I don't need to use dreft. I know that the scent free/dye free detergent that I already use for myself is perfectly fine for the baby stuff. I also know that dreft smells like babies and I love it. So I bought one container and I promise not to buy anymore. But you know what was frustrating? Standing in Target looking at my options (I could only find a picture of one. You can guess what the other looked like): 

So, right there and then I had to decide the sex of my baby. I ended up picking the girl detergent. Only because they had one bottle of boy detergent and three bottles of girl. I didn't want someone who knew they had a boy on the way facing the crisis of buying GIRL detergent for their baby BOY. The horror!

34 Weeks and thirsty

Here we are. It's July! That means it is almost August. 

I'm trying to make an effort to enjoy these last few weeks. I really am. I want this to be my last pregnancy and I want to savor the moments, but it's hard to enjoy feeling like this. Not that it's hard *right now*. I feel fine right now, sitting at my desk with the cool air around me. It's still early enough that my hands aren't sweating. I just had a snack and a diet coke (I try to limit this to once a week and I hate it when I waste my Diet coke on Monday Morning!!), so I don't feel hungry or tired. 

I've been craving gatorade. I've gotten out of bed on weekend mornings just because I'm so thirsty. I'll ask my doctor about it on Wednesday, but I'm guessing it's just because it's so warm outside and I keep sweating. 

M and I had a date night on Saturday. We went to a fantastic grown up restaurant outside of DC and then to  see a talk about my favorite radio show. The dinner was so great and relaxing, also very rich. Then we went and sat in a sold out theater for 2 hours and 15 minutes. By the end, I had my shoes off and my pants rolled up and I was sitting forward in my seat. I was still covered in sweat... my shoes were off because they would have ripped. They could not contain my swollen feet. I'd like to apologize to the people around me. Sorry. 

Interesting things from this past week:

We went to the pool and got into the grown up pool for the first time this year (W prefers the baby pool). I felt so great in the water. So light and cool. Then I got out. Holy crap. It was like returning from space. I felt like I weighed 800 pounds. I had to stand and hold a handrail for several minutes. M must have thought I was going in labor. 

We had a family picnic this weekend (which took 100% of my energy all weekend... now my house is a mess and all the clothes are dirty and I'm stressed) and M's cousin did the pendulum test. you know the one - you dangle a necklace over a pregnant belly. It goes in a circle for a girl and back and forth for a boy. I'd never seen this done and we had 3 pregnant girls at this party. It said boy for all three (one is confirmed boy). M's cousin would "zero" it over her hand and we'd watch it clearly go in a circle. Then when it went over our bellies it would be still and then start going back and forth. Kind of creepy, but also very fun.