this pic was taken saturday after our midwife home visit (at 35 weeks and 3 days). i was talking to emily on the phone but didn't want to miss having dave take my pic while i looked nice and he was here and i actually remembered to do it. i've been forgetting all sorts of things the past few weeks. it's driving us crazy.
it's amazing how big this baby is getting, isn't it? i think i'm really, really looking pregnant now. i still just feel fat when i look in the mirror though but this pic helped me to see that it's mostly baby. i have been feeling more and more uncomfortable i guess because of my size. ugh. it's just awkward to have all this belly. and when i roll over in bed or something, the baby feels like it kind of wants to do its own thing and not roll over but then it does, kind of like a delayed reaction. it's weird. and i've been having practice contractions off and on the past few weeks. mainly when i'm doing a bunch of stuff that i probably shouldn't be doing. haha!
last week at the 34 week midwife appt she noted that the baby was still breech (as it was at 32 weeks). and she said that 80% of babies have turned by week 32, it's a developmental milestone. so...she referred me to a chiropractor to do the webster technique and they both gave me a bunch of random things to do to encourage the baby to turn. the craziest of these was when i had to lay upside down on a door propped up on one end of our couch and dave had to burn these little cigar things next to my pinky toes for 20 minutes. of course the pyromaniac in him loved that!
as of monday the baby was transverse. then wednesday it was back to breech. but anyways, something must have worked because saturday the midwives checked the baby and said that it is now vertex (head down). woohoo! so we are praying that it stays that way till it's born. then it can move around in the real world as much as it wants :) since the baby took its time to turn, the midwife has been saying that she thinks that it won't come until mid august because it might just not be as ready developmentally to come. but then when they were checking it, they realized that its head is very far down for this stage of the game. so that tidbit of info had them second guessing when they think it will come. i of course have always felt that it would come early, so i'm sticking to that. i feel like it was just procrastinating turning but now that it has, it's ready to come meet us. :) of course i'll probably be pretty frustrated now if it is like august 10th when we finally have it. so i try to just take this all 1 day at a time and not think about it.
another thing that i realized last week, and i was talking to dave about is that since i don't know the baby's sex, i really don't feel like i've connected that well with it at this point. i don't know if it's a defense mechanism or what, but i just feel kind of like i don't want to bond too much yet because i'm still waiting to be sure that everything goes alright with the birth, etc. it's like i don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched. i won't let myself get too attached but i feel like when the baby is born and i see it with my own 2 eyes, i will truly bond with it and then i'll feel like i can let my emotional guard down. is this messed up?
also, i feel really good about the homebirth choice after the visit saturday. we gave them a tour so they know where everything is, they brought the birth tub (which we are not setting up till next weekend), and they checked to make sure that i had all my supplies in order (fun things like chux, depends, hydrogen peroxide, baggies to store the placenta for them to take for research or something, a cookie sheet in case the baby isn't breathing they can resuscitate it on that, etc, etc.) i was also able to meet 3 other ladies who may be attending the birth with the midwife (depending on who is on call i guess at the time). 1 is a nurse and 2 are also midwives. our midwife said that the other 2 midwives have probably attended more births than her, especially the one who is from the UK and worked in a hospital there. i was very glad to meet them since i had only met 2 other assistants in the practice, 1 of which is moving and the other who is expecting her baby 5 days before me. so, i feel better knowing the people who might be here for the birth. the nurse who was here will only be here thru july so she will only attend the birth if it happens in july. she reminded me a lot of the riggles that we grew up with so i felt instantly close to her. i hope that it works out for her to be here.
we feel like God is really preparing us and helping us grow up these last few days before our baby is born. we've both been a lot quicker to forgive each other, to compromise, etc. we're moving from our extreme opposite tendencies and merging more into the same person. for example, i'm becoming more anal retentive and dave is becoming less anal retentive. it's nice. i've been an emotional basketcase the last few days though so that's been a challenge for us both.
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