40 Weeks – A December Baby!

How far along: 40 weeks and happy due date to me!

Ok, that’s not me, but that is my belly cast. More on that later!

Here I am in my 40 week pic (technically taken on Thanksgiving):

Today is December 1st and it is my official due date.  I’ll never forget getting pregnant in March and counting forward to 40 weeks.  December seemed like eons away and would never arrive, but here she is.  I’m going through a whole mix of emotions right now…first and foremost is the excitement to meet our little guy, but to be honest I have a lot of nervous energy lately.  I’m a bit nervous about how the labor will go, when will it start, how hard will breastfeeding be, will I produce enough.  I’m sure these are all normal fears and I’m doing my best to keep busy and distracted.  Thinking about these things won’t change anything, so it’s best not to let the negative energy weight me down.  I sound so hippie dippy ;-).

Doctor’s Appt Update: I had my doctor’s appointment  on Tuesday this week and received my first internal exam.  Since the baby is sitting SO LOW (already at -1 station for all you people “in the know”) she had to go around his head to feel my cervix.  Yeah, that was fun.  It made a pap smear feel like a light summer breeze.  She determined I was 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced.  And based upon his positioning she said that she’d be shocked if i didn’t go into labor on my own.  That was great news!

She guesstimated (because I made her) that he’s around 8 1/2 lbs.  While measuring my stomach to determine his size she gave me a sympathetic look as if to say, yeah, he’s really big.  I kind of knew this already, but it was nice to get a professional back-up.  She also said it would be normal to see some pink spotting later that day from the exam.

Flash forward an hour later at home when I didn’t just see pink spotting.  I saw blood!  I started texting JP and called up the nurse’s line to ask if this was normal.  Turns out it’s very normal and the bleeding went away within an hour.  But it left JP and me with the sneaking suspicion that he was on his way.  Yeah, not the case.  It’s 5 days later and still no baby lol.

How big is baby:  This will be the last week I do this update.  Hopefully because by 41 weeks he’ll be here, but mainly because The Bump doesn’t go any higher than 40 weeks.  So yeah, he’s a jackfruit today and I have no clue what this is. He’s still ranging from 18.9-20.9 inches long and 6.2-9.2 lbs in weight. His hair and nails are growing and lungs are further developing.

Total weight gain: I’ll preface this point by saying that I was suffering a toothache all last weekend into the week and it zapped most of my appetite.  Much to my surprise on Tuesday I was actually down 2-3 lbs.  So I’m probably around 19 lbs. gained at this moment.  Don’t worry though, there was A LOT of eating to be had this week.  I’m confident I’ll be back up by next Tuesday.

Maternity clothes/pregnancy items bought: So we’re having a winter baby and had zero winter clothes to bring our baby home from the hospital in.  Parents of the year!  I headed over to Old Navy on black Friday since it was 50% off the entire store (holla) and got this adorable fleece onesie with monkey ears.

I can’t wait to squeeze him in it!!!

And while this was a gift from back in June when we visiting NY and New England, we finally put it to use this week.  My cousin’s wife, Beata, got me a belly cast kit.

It’s definitely not something I would have thought to buy on my own, but I’m really glad I did it!  If nothing else, JP and I laughed non-stop for an hour at the ridiculousness of the process.  And no, I will NOT be posting the pics of me doing it on here since they’re hardly PG lol. You just get JP posing up above ala Demi Moore from her 90’s Vanity Fair cover.

I did snapchat a pic of me in the wet cast to my sister and she screenshot it.  I better be nice to her from now on.

Sleep:  I’m getting good night sleeps with lots and lots of bathroom wake-ups.  I’m so used to them at this point, however I usually fall right back asleep.

Best moment of the week:

Some pampering…

And of course Thanksgiving!  I’ll start with last weekend’s Friendsgiving which started off with tons of Indian appetizers.

All of that spicy food may or may not have contributed to my toothache so I decided to take it easy on the flavors for the rest of the week.

Since we were convinced that our baby was  coming early I did my Thanksgiving prep very last minute, but all of the food came out great!  I used a lot of my friend Ashleigh’s recipes to make it a Southern Thanksgiving.  To quote JP, “I thought I was going to hate everything, but it was all great!”  Success!

We started off Thanksgiving morning at The Waffle House.  If you don’t live down in the south then you might not be familiar with this chain.  Hell, I wasn’t until moving here and Thursday was our FIRST time ever in the place.  I knew exactly what I was having too…

This would be their All-Star Breakfast.  That’s two eggs over-easy, home fries, raisin toast, sausage, and a cheddar biscuit thrown in for good measure.  There was no way I’d be able to finish this all myself, but I did give it a good fighting effort.  JP was more than happy to help me out with the waffle though!

Now onto Thanksgiving.  On our menu:

• turkey breast made using this recipe (I omitted the dry mustard since I didn’t have any and used extra chicken broth with the wine on the bottom of the pan to help cook up some chopped veggies)
•  cornbread dressing and collard greens ala Ashleigh
• cranberry sauce using this slightly modified recipe
• pecan pie and ice cream courtesy of Whole Foods and Publix!

It was even Remy approved.

Food cravings:  You know the drill…

On a happier note, I’ve begun to have intense cravings for juicy fruits again (think grapes, watermelon, oranges) and smoothies!

Symptoms:  The false contractions are practically non-stop by this point.  We went to see a movie the other night

Very good btw, despite being depressing.  Anyway, I must’ve had at least 20 contractions during the movie.  The reason I know they’re not for real is that they’re just uncomfortable and not painful in the least bit and they have zero rhythm to them.  They also tend to go away when I change positions.  If only real contractions would go away that easily ;-).

Exercise: I have definitely slowed down on the exercise front, but I’m still loving shorter walks and doing my exercise videos.  Speaking of which, I’m going to head out on a walk to hopefully shake things up after I’m done with this post.

What I’m looking forward to: The baby.  Get here already little man!!  And today we are getting our Christmas tree.  Woo hoo!

What I miss:  Family.  This week was hard being away but god bless FaceTime and snapchat which provide my sister and me with hours of laughter!

Next appt: Tuesday morning (unless Mister Man arrives first)

Remy blog time:

Someone has been especially attached to her daddy this week.  It’s like she knows my mind is elsewhere.  Poor thing!

I still make time to play with her though!  I sit on my bouncy ball and have fetch with her in the living/dining room area.

Waiting for her ball to be thrown!

Here’s hoping my next post will be a grand introduction and not my 41 week update!