Stick Figure Pregnancy

This made me laugh today :-)

34 Weeks

We're getting closer all the time!

Here's what BabyCenter has to say about the baby's development at 34 weeks:

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

At my doctor appointment last week, my doc said she thought the baby had her head down now instead of up near my ribs, so that's good news! She also felt what she thought was her back to the left of my belly button, and her bum near my right ribs... so she must be in kind of a strange position. I guess my abdomen isn't tall enough for her to lay in a straight line top to bottom!

33 Week Update

We're at 33 weeks now, only seven to go if the little girl decides to make her debut close to her estimated due date!

Here's BabyCenter's 33 week update:

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. He's rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in his skull aren't fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for him to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don't entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

I thought What To Expect had some interesting info too:

Your baby is still gaining weight (about half a pound a week), and she could grow up to another full inch this week. With that much baby inside your uterus, your amniotic-fluid level has maxed out, which explains why some of her pokes and kicks feel pretty sharp these days. (There's less fluid to cushion the blows.) Antibodies are being passed from you to your little one as she continues to develop her own fetal immune system, which will come in handy once she's outside the womb and fending off all sorts of germs.

She has definitely been moving differently lately than she was before, sometimes cramming her whole body on one side of my belly so that it pokes way out and I'm oddly lopsided. She's also been kicking my kidney or something on my right side, and that is seriously painful! The first time it happened, I thought something was really wrong with me... but then I realized the sharp pain was always accompanied by a kick.

Our house is still nowhere close to being ready for this baby to live here, but we are mentally prepared and ready for her arrival!

Mama Bird

For the last few weeks, I've been "nesting". Like a mama bird preparing a comfortable and safe nest for her chicks, I've been preparing as much as possible for our little baby. Most recently, I put together her high chair, which I really love! It's such a nice one! We got the Graco Cozy Dinette from Devon, her Mama Marlene, and her sister Erin. It was easy to put together (thankfully, as complicated instructions are tough on my pregnant nerves), and seems like it will be easy to adjust as she grows. Here's a picture of her dolly taking the high chair for a test drive:



When I was about half-way through assembling it, I realized it will probably be quite a while before we actually need to use it, but I kept going anyway. Luckily it folds up nicely so it's not in our way at all.

I've also been shopping for some of the little things that she'll need as a newborn, and I bought the most impossibly tiny socks! I've never seen such cute socks, white and fluffy and waiting for some tiny little baby feet to fill them.

I ordered a BabyKicks diaper and some BabyKicks wipes to try. We were planning on using the bumGenius 4.0 diapers exclusively, but after some research, decided to try a few different brands and see what works for us before we buy in bulk. I really hope we like cloth diapering, because it'll save us a lot of money in the long run! I've also read that if you cloth diaper, you may as well use cloth wipes too, so I'm going to give that a try. If we're going to do laundry every other day as it is, I don't see why it would be any different to add the wipes to the load too!

So, what's on tap for this weekend? We have childbirth class at the hospital from 9am - 5pm tomorrow, the Auburn/Clemson game tomorrow night, and then I'll probably find myself nesting again on Sunday... doing a load of baby laundry and loving it.

32 weeks

I'm so stinkin' tired I can barely think, but I wanted to make a 32-week post before we move on to week 33. We're getting really close!!!

From Baby Center:

How your baby's growing:

By now, your baby weighs 3.75 pounds (pick up a large jicama) and is about 16.7 inches long, taking up a lot of space in your uterus. You're gaining about a pound a week and roughly half of that goes right to your baby. In fact, she'll gain a third to half of her birth weight during the next 7 weeks as she fattens up for survival outside the womb. She now has toenails, fingernails, and real hair (or at least respectable peach fuzz). Her skin is becoming soft and smooth as she plumps up in preparation for birth.

The little one is moving a bunch, especially enjoying kicking me under the right ribcage as of late. According to my doctors, she's been in a breech position for the last month; the last several days she has felt a little more sideways than breech. I felt some hiccups pretty strongly to the left of my belly button today, so I'm hoping that means her head is making its way downward and she's shifting into the right position for birth.

30 Weeks and Stroller Assembly!!!

We're at the end of the 30th week now, so I thought I'd better get my 30-week post in. Here's a picture of me and my giant belly (taken today):



And here's what Baby Center has to say about the baby's development at 30 weeks:

Your baby's about 15.7 inches long now, and she weighs almost 3 pounds (like a head of cabbage). A pint and a half of amniotic fluid surrounds her, but that volume will decrease as she gets bigger and takes up more room in your uterus. Her eyesight continues to develop, though it's not very keen; even after she's born, she'll keep her eyes closed for a good part of the day. When she does open them, she'll respond to changes in light but will have 20/400 vision — which means she can only make out objects a few inches from her face.

In other exciting news, we assembled the stroller today! It's a *really* nice one (thank you, Nonna!!) that we're going to stroll up and down these streets and parks many, many miles over the next few years. Of course Sir William had to give it a try as soon as we got it assembled:



Crazy cat.