34 Weeks - Slowing and Growing
Good morning everyone! It took me a bit of self-convincing to sit down and write something this time around. I love to write, but I am tired. I am feeling slow, slow, slow. Baby is doing a great job with her own weight gain (a pound a week!) but since she is still inside me, this makes me heavier too. As a former dancer who is used to feeling very light on her feet, this feeling of heaviness and accompanying slowness has been the hardest thing to get used to in pregnancy. Of course, I hope that Baby does continue to gain weight, as she is supposed to until she is born. Next week, my husband and I will be going in for her 35-week growth-check ultrasound, so we’ll get some idea then of how much she weighs and an estimate of how long she is, etc. (A growth ultrasound is recommended for Baby because I had Covid during her second trimester. The midwives tell me that in their experience they’ve never actually seen a baby be smaller than normal after the mother had Covid, but it’s still part of the protocol to check Baby’s size. I don’t mind — we get to see her again!) I would be very happy with an on-the-small-side-of-normal baby, but I myself was 9 lbs and 22 inches at birth and I don’t think my husband was particularly petite either (although he came a little early and maybe was a little smaller for that reason). If Baby is rather long and 8 or more pounds I will not be shocked.
The baby shower was last Sunday and was a lovely, lovely event. My mother-in-law and mother both poured so much love and effort into it and I am so grateful. People are so generous. I could not believe the number of gifts I opened. I say this with no intention of bragging, unless I am given leave to brag about the kindness and generosity of my family and friends. I think also that people enjoy buying baby items because everything is just so tiny and cute and fun. (Especially baby girl items are fun!) My husband and I were able to sort through all the gifts and organize and incorporate them into our home, and so our apartment is beginning to look like a place that a baby lives in! I still have a good deal more preparation to do, but we are pretty well set up. Now I just have dozens and dozens of thank-you notes to write. :)
Baby could come in just about a month. Maybe more like 6 weeks, but she is coming soon. Already I can tell she is operating in cycles of movement and sleep at predictable times, and she is fundamentally no different now than she will be when she is born. It’s best that she grows inside me for a little while yet, of course, but really she is just about ready. For the next few weeks nothing much will change for her except that her brain will continue to develop (in the same way that it will until she is about 25 years old) and she will get chubbier. Nothing much will change for me either, except that I will gain a little more weight and feel a little more slow and have to put my feet up a little more. All of this is good and okay. I have another human being living inside me and that this reality costs my body little more than these small things is truthfully a miracle.
Baby is head down and in a good position for birth, per my nurse-midwife who checked her position out a few days ago. Her head is actually decently low into my pelvis for being only 34 weeks along, but the midwife explained that this early-ish decent is common in first pregnancies, since my body is working to open things up for delivery. This makes a lot of sense to me and seems like a good thing, but sometimes when I am walking this low position of her head makes my hips hurt and I have to wiggle around a bit and say, Baby, please scooch up. No need to be so low. Not yet. She is a good baby though and just wants to be prepared. :)
Tasks for this week (hopefully): get Baby’s bed; prep my hospital bag; wash and fold all her laundry; write my thank-you notes.
Thank you all for continuing to read these posts. I have had several people in the last week tell me in person that they read this every week and enjoy it, and I am so honored. One particularly devoted fan (who is also my little sister) let me know that reading these posts is “the highlight of her week”. While most of you might not go quite that far, I do appreciate you reading this and hope it brings you some joy (and maybe some memories of what it was like to be pregnant yourselves, for my readers who are mothers).
May God bless you this week and may you live in His peace. :)