35 Weeks!!

 

Only FIVE weeks left until our little one is set to arrive.  I am definitely excited to not be pregnant anymore!  While I do want him to stay in until his due date so that he is fully developed, it'll be nice to have my body back.

I remember being pregnant with Spencer and definitely getting to the point where it's just hard to do anything, and I'm there now.  It's hard to manuever around people at work or in crowded spaces, it's hard to put on tennis shoes, it's hard to sleep, it's hard to breathe, it's hard to get comfortable, and this time around, add to all that, it's really hard to pick up a 30 lb toddler.  I've had a few people ask me if I should really be picking Spencer up anymore.  As if I have a choice??  He's still little and still definitely needs to be held by his mommy.  I can't just ignore that!  At the end of a long day, it can be hard to walk up the steps with him, but you do what you have to do, right?  Plus, it's so normal to hold him and love on him and his world is so NOT going to be normal in a month! 

My biggest "problem" right now is that my hemaglobin (read: iron level) is low at 9.2 (normal during childbearing years is above 12 but often only above 10.5 or 11 during a pregnancy).  I was at 9.5 at 28 weeks so I was started on Slow Iron (a well absorbed iron supplement) along with my prenatal vitamin, and even after taking that for a month, my levels still went down.  I eat spinach a few times a week (in my Green Monster smoothies) and love red meat, so my diet isn't lacking for iron either.  Since I went down instead of up, I was placed on two iron supplements per day and told to take them on an empty stomach with some kind of vitamin C.  Well, let me tell you that a pregnant woman gets incredibly nauseous with only a vitamin in her stomach!!  I threw up the other morning because of it.  Yuck.  So now I'm taking them an hour before lunch and dinner which still makes me nauseous but at least I'm not throwing up!  If I continue to go lower, I may need a blood transfusion, but I don't think that will happen, thank goodness!!

My blood pressure is great, my weight is almost exactly where it was with Spencer at this time, I'm not swollen at all, and I'm having standard Braxtons Hicks contractions just like I'm supposed to.  I carried Spencer really, really high- he lived in my ribs.  This babe is a lot lower- I can definitely feel him sweeping by my bladder at times- WEIRD!!  He is sitting very round and very upfront, just like a basketball.  There isn't any part of him that is wide or across. 

I am tossing and turning a lot at night and am requiring a lot of early bedtimes.  I definitely can't stay up past 9:30 anymore, and sometimes that's even 9:00.  The yucky part about that is that I don't have daytime to get anything accomplished and then I'm so exhausted at night, I'm not getting anything done either.  Grrrrr......  I also am waking up now around 5 and am ready to go for the day rather than sleeping until my alam goes off at 5:35.  I don't remember having a hard time staying awake with my first pregnancy, but I definitely remember being uncomfortable throughout the night and needing to change positions more often.  It's just the way it is towards the end.

Still not one single food craving this pregnancy.  So funny!  B and I gave up candy and ice cream for Lent, so I am looking forward to a BIG frickin bowl of ice cream next Sunday after church while watching The Masters, but I'm not even really craving that.  I just miss it!  There are nights when I definitely don't eat much and don't think that what we have made for dinner tastes good, but I don't have other things that I'm wanting instead.

I'm definitely getting nervous about going into labor.  Not because of the labor (hopefully I can VBAC) or the possibility of a csection, but more because if anything happens quickly and it's in the middle of the night, I'm not exactly sure what we would do with Spencer.  During a weekday, he'll be at daycare anyway, so that is no big deal.  On a weekend, we have a few people that we could call to help in the 3 hours it takes my mom to arrive.  But at 2 in the morning?  That's a little tougher.  I'm sure we'll figure it out when the time comes, or hopefully it will all happen when daycare is open!!  That would be the biggest blessing of all.  I just am going to have to pray that it all works out and that we have an answer when it does happen.

Still no name yet.  This may be a baby where we walk into the hospital with 3 or 4 options and decide right before we leave.  Who knows.  I do have a few things I'm dying to monogram, so I really to just decide already, but it has not been easy this time around at all.  What's annoying is that both of us STILL love both of the girl names that we talked about at week 10!  It would have been much easier if he were a she!  At least in the naming department. 

All in all, I'm very lucky when it comes to being pregnant.  I'm getting really excited to hold this little guy and start to develop a relationship with him and make him part of our family.