36 Weeks Along (Friday, 1/23/09)

I am nine months along now! One of the cruel jokes of pregnancy is that it actually lasts ten months. 40 weeks divided by 4 weeks in a months = 10 months, not 9! So I have one more month to go.
On Saturday morning we had our final Lamaze class. This class was more focused on transition and pushing as well as how life will be once the baby is here. We practiced many different positions and breathing techniques for both laboring and pushing including doing an exercise where we caused ourselves pain with a clothespin and did nothing versus causing the same pain and using a favored position and breathing technique to get through it. It was pretty interesting because the second trial was less painful and afterward, we learned that the pain on the second trial lasted twice as long as the first. We also watched a video about medications and interventions in labor, discussed postpartum physical and emotional changes, touched a little bit on breastfeeding, and finished with an exercise about what labor options are important to us. I found the class very beneficial and was really glad that we took it. It snowed all day and the roads were getting kind of bad but we managed to run a few errands around Ann Arbor before coming home to do more mural painting and baby preparations.
On Sunday Paul worked on the mural pretty much all day while I spent the first half of the day being lazy and the second half doing six loads of laundry and cleaning. The mural is looking really good and is getting close to being done. That’s a good thing because we cannot put the nursery together until then. Right now most of the things we got at the showers are piled on Rachel’s bed until the dressers and everything can go into place. I will feel better once we have the nursery ready in case Lily decides to make an early appearance.
On Tuesday I realized that the light rhythmic kicking I was feeling was actually Lily having hiccups. My whole tummy was bouncing which was a really weird feeling. I had the same feeling on Monday but just didn’t recognize what it was. I had it again on Thursday. Paul spent every day after work on the mural and I spent every day trying to organize all of our baby stuff and clean the house around it. Babies sure require a lot of merchandise! Our goal is to be done with the mural and have the nursery assembled this weekend. We made plans to have my parents come over on Sunday so my dad can help Paul move the dressers into the room and my mom can sew some straps on our crib headboard bumper so that we can safely use it on our sleigh style crib. We work best with deadlines so now we have to be done by Sunday afternoon.
I had my two week OB check on Friday. From now on, the checks will be every week. I lost another half pound making the total loss 12.5 since I got pregnant. I thought that I would finally gain weight at this appointment because my stomach seems so much bigger, my appetite has increased, and I know that now the baby is packing on fat. But he said my measurements, while normal, are not much bigger than last time. What has probably happened is that my stomach muscles have just given up trying to hold the baby in tightly. I wanted to know how big Lily is now but he said that they really cannot guess with any accuracy so he would prefer not to. Darn. We set up tour of the hospital birthing center for next week. I can’t believe how close everything is getting. When I found out I was pregnant, I wanted these months to fly by but I have to say that I am really enjoying being pregnant. How amazing is it to have a life kicking around inside me. It is so miraculous and I am not yet ready for it to end. Plus, I am getting a little scared of the next unfamiliar phase of it all.

News from the womb…
From this point on, the ‘finishing period’ of growth begins, during which the baby prepares for its birth. During this finishing period, the fat being laid down under the surface of the skin helps the baby maintain an even body temperature and serves as a reserve that can be burned as energy. As fat deposits continue, the baby’s limbs have begun to dimple at the elbows and knees and creases are forming around the wrists and neck. The subcutaneous fat now makes up about 8% of the baby’s body weight and will make up 12-15% at full term. The baby now fits snugly within the womb and can only turn from side to side.