It’s been a blurry week. Not a bad one, really, but there’s a lot going on and we’re feeling overwhelmed but also about as prepared as we can be for baby girl’s arrival. It’s a weird place to be.
Ben gets a little more used to his medicine every few days, but still whines a lot and leaves it to us to guess why he’s whining. Usually he needs a drink or needs to go outside, but he rarely makes that clear till we offer him one of those options.
And I had my first real contractions! We went to the hospital on Sunday at the advice of my doctor. By the time we got there, I had been contracting consistently for 25-35 seconds every 5-8 minutes for almost 3 hours. It didn’t really feel like they were getting worse or all that much closer together, but she figured it was better to check than not.
When they checked me at first, I was 2cm dilated and they said these were probably Braxton Hicks. An hour later, I was 3cm dilated and they said they wanted to monitor another hour because I was making progress and this could be real. And then I was still about the same an hour later, so they sent us home a little after midnight.
But not without a steroid shot to the thigh that hurt way worse than any shot I can remember. I didn’t look at the needle, but Jack said it was thick and about 2.5 inches long. He expected the nurse to only put it partially in my leg, but said the whole thing went in and he was afraid she was going to hit my bone. And then I had to go get another one 24 hours later.
Anyway, now I know what contractions feel like and I’ll have a better idea of how long to wait to go in next time.
Previous Updates
I’m Pregnant! + The First Trimester
At 35 weeks pregnant, baby girl is supposedly the size of a head of romaine lettuce.
Symptoms
For most of the week my appetite has been good, but I am still feeling kind of bored by food.
I’m taking a lot of senna and magnesium and should probably be taking aloe water more often as baby girl gets bigger.
My sciatica has chilled out quite a bit.
Sometimes I get a fairly awful cramp in my right side, usually when walking the dogs. I think this might be round ligament pain? Do I need a belly band for the last few weeks of pregnancy? No idea. I mostly take a break and breathe through it for a few seconds when it happens.
After having lovely clear skin since early in the second trimester, I’ve started breaking out like crazy along my jaw. Not sure if that’s due to pregnancy hormone shifts or just general stress, but I don’t love it.
I have to pee a whole lot and I’m crazy thirsty.
My sleep has been crappy and I’m not getting too much of it.
I get out of breath so, so easily, despite keeping up a decent workout routine my whole pregnancy. Like, if I talk too much, I sound like I went for a jog.
Baby girl is crazy active and she really likes to curl up in a ball on my right side. Except one day this week when she was randomly, for the first time ever, on my left.
We confirmed at the hospital that she’s head-down. I get kicked in the ribs on the left side. On the right side, she occasionally likes to shove her butt up into my ribs. That’s not terribly comfy.
Food
Dinners this week have included:
- Black Bean Sweet Potato Chorizo tacos with this homemade chorizo. I doubled it and froze a bunch.
- Smoky Sloppy Joes with roasted Brussels sprouts. I froze about four large sandwiches’ worth.
- Honey Dijon Skillet Chicken with Parmesan roasted broccoli and mashed potatoes
- Spicy Shrimp Tacos with Cilantro-Lime Slaw
And we went on a date night on Friday, which we’re trying to do weekly until baby girl arrives, and got takeout both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday’s was unplanned, but neither of us felt like cooking while uncertain if we would be having a baby in the next few hours.
Snacks in the last few weeks have included dates, apples, Greek yogurt, pears, cottage cheese, cereal, and zucchini bread.
Exercise
I’m still following the Expecting and Empowered pregnancy guide, so that covered four of my workouts last week, since I split the full body day into 2 days of 2 sets instead of 1 day of 3 sets due to timing. I’ve been doing a little pelvic floor and/or flexibility work most days.
I’ve been taking the dogs on walks every couple days, too.
Preparations
We put the car seats in our cars on Saturday, conveniently right before (potentially) needing them on Sunday.
I froze some leftovers from last week for easy postpartum meals. And I also tried to make us some breakfast sandwiches to have in the freezer, but for the first time in the 2+ years Jack and I have lived together, my starving-because-he’s-heavily-medicated dog (and his brother) jumped on the counter while I was downstairs throwing some laundry in the washer and ate half of them. So, we have a few breakfast sandwiches frozen and I’ll make more this weekend if there’s no baby yet.
Stories
The theme of stories from this week is, “OMG you’re so small!” Which I know is intended as a compliment, but I’m getting tired of it. I can see that they aren’t wrong, but I’m gaining weight right on track, so I don’t really get where it’s all going, and I feel like I deserve credit for the 35+ weeks of pregnancy I have under my belt. I have tried to stay active throughout pregnancy, but I also eat whenever I’m hungry and try to rest a good bit, so I don’t have a great explanation for my appearance.
When I took Ben to the vet for a blood test last Friday, the tech said she didn’t realize I was pregnant (win! someone in the wild recognized me as pregnant!) but when I said, “Yep, due in January!” she asked if everything is okay with the baby because my belly is so small.
The (very, very nice) nurse said, “Oh, she’s so loud!” when they started monitoring me on Sunday. “But it’s not like you have an ounce of fat on your belly to muffle her, so I guess that makes sense.”
At the eye doctor on Monday, when I said I’m due in January, I was asked if it was this January or next January because I don’t look that pregnant. Yep, even though the other January is 13 months from now. Because human gestation is definitely that long.
When I came back to the hospital on Monday for the second steroid shot and told the security guard I needed to go to Labor & Delivery, he asked how far along I am. I said 36 weeks (I was 2 days shy) and he said, “Oh. You do not look 36 weeks.” And then the nurse who gave me the second steroid shot said I probably hate them more than the average person because I’m so l’m so little.
I didn’t realize you’d started blogging again. So fun 🙂 and exciting that your baby will be here soon! I got those steroid shots with preterm labor too, for second pregnancy. Luckily–well, I don’t know if luckily because it hurt to sit for a while–they did them in my glutes so I didn’t have to see the needle. Not very comfortable regardless!
Pregnancy felt like as good a time as any to start up again. 🙂 Ah, yeah, the nurse asked if I preferred glutes or thigh and I asked which was better, and she told me I wouldn’t like it either way! Thigh felt less vulnerable haha.