38 Week Picture

Here is 38 weeks! When I look at the 37 and 38 week pictures side by side, Baby has definitely "dropped!" Woohoo!!!



I hope this is our week! My family has decided Thursday would be great. HA!

38 Weeks!

Wow, I'm 38 Weeks today!! I can't believe it. Time is running out!

I had a checkup this afternoon as a follow up to some possible amniotic fluid leakage problems earlier this week. The test came back negative again, so that's good! I'm still 2 cm, 50% effaced. He said the baby's head was pressing down pretty hard today. (whatever that means!) He told me in case something happens this weekend, he's not the on-call OB, but he talked to the on-call OB about me, and said if I go into labor, he wants a call so he can come in to be with me. I was pretty happy about that! But he said that his "doctor's intuition" tells him that my time is the end of next week. So we'll see!!!

Real Nesting?

I woke up at 3 am last night, wide awake. Jeff was sleeping in the guest room because his throat hurts and he thinks he's coming down with something. I watched TV for about 10 minutes, got bored, so I got up and started cleaning our room. Anyone who knows me knowing this is NOT my idea of a good time. Top to bottom, I cleaned up, dug through all my maternity clothes, sorted them out into piles of who I'd borrowed from, bagged up the borrowed clothes, wrote thank you notes for the borrowing, etc etc etc. Worked until 5 am then went back to bed! So I'm wondering if that was REAL nesting! There was nothing forced about it, I just felt compelled to do it. Hopefully that means Baby is just around the corner. :)

Today's Appointment

Another week, another doctor appointment. It went well! The baby looked good once again on the NST, but we did need to use the buzzer. Apparently it was NoahKate's naptime!

My doctor asked me what our baby names were, and he liked Kate a lot - he said his wife's name is Kate! :) I'm 2 cm and 50% effaced. He said that I could go into labor at any minute... Or it could be two weeks. He said it's just a matter of whether my body is going to kick in and do it, or make us wait. So we'll see! In the mean time, I think I might start training for a marathon... haha

That's about all I've got today. Last night wasn't good, I didn't sleep well and was having some swelling, dizzines, and headache issues. I was up until 2 unable to sleep, but I'm doing a bit better today.

Forced Nesting

I'm nesting today. I really don't think there's any huge hormonal or biological push making me do it... Just the knowledge that at this point, the pregnancy is finite and I want to bring my baby home to a cleaner house than we're living in now. Plus, it's just weird beginning a week without a job for the first time in 4 years, 6 really if you count the "work" I did in college. At this point, for now, my home is my job.

The week started with a bang... Bailey and I woke up to see Jeff off to work, and then settled back into sleep after he was gone. An hour or two later, we are JOLTED awake by the smoke alarm going off! Bailey jumped up from under the covers and ran straight to me, I was sitting up and trying to get out of bed as quickly as possible without hurting myself, then BAM a charlie horse hits! Nice. So first priority was stretching that thing out, and the alarm stopped a few seconds later. I never figured out why it went off, but there was certainly no going back to bed after that!

The weather through Wednesday is supposed to be nice and warm, in the middle 80's, but it's very cloudy this morning. I'm hoping it clears up a bit this afternoon so I can go down to the pool! I went on Saturday but the water was FREEZING! Way too cold to get in. I'd love to have a swim and get all this weight off my joints. Hopefully these next few days will warm up the water a bit and allow me to get in. :)

A few weeks ago I mentioned my 3 black dresses that people had better get used to because they were so dang comfortable. Well, I wore one yesterday! I had Jeff snap a picture so we could remember it forever. haha.

Jeff's Fortune

Jeff and I met my parents for lunch today after church at PF Changs. After the meal (YUM!) they brought out fortune cookies, of course. Jeff's fortune read:

"Good news of long-awaited event will arrive soon."

I sure hope so!! Now let's just define "soon" ....

Here is my 37 week picture. I'm getting bigger all the time!




My poor belly is completely covered in stretch marks now. What no one ever told me about stretch marks is that they HURT!!!! Badly! If anything rubs against or scratches my lower belly (where most of them are located) it's serioiusly painful. And after a shower, they burn for a while. Not fun. My poor belly wants a break!

My acid reflux has also been worse than ever lately. The other night I woke up having involuntarily thrown up in my mouth... Fun stuff let me tell you. Supposedly reflux is supposed to get better when the baby drops, so I hope that happens soon!

37 Weeks

We made it to 37 Weeks!!!! Wonderful! It's nice to know that we have a full-term baby on our hands now. I had a doctor appointment this morning, and once again not much to report! The baby looked great (for once) on the non-stress test. They didn't even have to buzz NoahKate! My doctor seems a lot less concerned, both now that the baby is looking better and that I'm 37 weeks. He seems to think we could go closer to term now. Oh well! I think the whole "false alarm" of a possible imminent birth over the last week or two was due to several factors, but the main one being that the baby just wasn't responding well to stimulation... And at some point they were wondering if they were just going to have to make an executive decision and decide the baby was better off out in the world than inside. But now that everything is looking better, we're more able to wait it out and let things happen naturally. So that's great!

Instead of 3 appointments per week, they only want to see me twice next week! haha. They do want to run a blood sugar test on me... Apparently for the last several weeks I've had too much sugar coming out, so they're somewhat concerned about my levels. Jeff says I'm eating too much fruit. (It consists of about half my diet! I just crave it constantly!) So I'm going to concentrate on getting more protein this weekend.

In the back of my mind, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for my next job. If I ever want to change things up, now's the time. Unfortunately, the DFW area is a sinkhole when it comes to Meteorology jobs... They just don't exist here. And I enjoyed my recent job as an Environmental Scientist enough, but I'm just trying to decide if I want to attempt to do the exact same thing somewhere else, or get creative with my degree and experience once again. I did find one interesting job posting - the Dallas Independent School District is hiring people to be math and/or science teachers, with no teaching experience or certification required. They'll hire you first, then put you through the necessary training. That might be an interesting path to follow... Never thought I'd be a teacher though. I don't know if I'm assertive enough!