34 Week Update

How Far along?
34 weeks. :) I cannot believe how quickly it's going.

Size of the baby?
According to my weekly e-mail from BabyCenter, Bebe Girl's about 4 3/4 pounds (the size of an average cantaloupe) and almost 18 inches long.

Any new symptoms?
I've been having a little bit of heartburn for the past month or so, but started taking papaya enzymes and digestive enzymes and that pretty much took care of the problem. Until this past week. I've been waking up with bile in my throat, coughing and even once threw up in my mouth and had to leap out of bed (I'm sure it would've been a hilarious site to see, me leaping out of bed) to run to the bathroom. It's not really fun.

I was also having more swelling in my hands and feet, but after taking some time to rest this past week after my crazy insane schedule the previous week, things appear to be back on track and I'm able to wear my wedding ring again sometimes. Hooray! :)

And in the interest of full disclosure, I'll also admit that my legs? Are getting not pretty. I haven't been working out as much as I was because my hips are often out of alignment so I've been trying to take it easy, but oy. Oh, well. This doesn't really bother me a whole lot, but it's happening so I thought I'd mention it.

What are you craving?
I haven't really been having any cravings lately, except when someone on Twitter mentions something sweet (I blame Megan Boley for the jelly donut I still want a week after she mentioned it). I've also been craving Coke, but that might just be because 1) I'm tired and want caffeine, and 2) I feel like it would help with the acid grossness, even though I know that it's an acid and eats pennies and cleans toilets and all that, please don't tell me, I'm smart and I already know. For the record, I haven't actually been drinking Cokes, just craving them.

Baby Bump?
Yes. :)


Movement?
Yes, oh my word, it's awesome. I started feeling something at about 14 weeks, but because it didn't match any of the normal descriptions (butterfly flutters, popcorn popping) I wasn't sure if I was really feeling the baby move or just some other weird my-body-is-changing things. It felt like a change in pressure, as if the baby were flipping around and it was moving the amniotic fluid and I could feel the pressure change. Then when Jason came home she started kicking in very obvious ways. I'd been anxious for her to start moving; I should've known she was just waiting for Daddy to come home and get her all ramped up (this theme will continue for the next many years, I expect!).

She's doing new things now, which is so stinkin' cool. She's entering the "alien" phase where she's making my stomach undulate in waves as she moves around and stretches... it's not obvious yet, you wouldn't notice it from the outside, but you could feel it if I let you put your hand on my belly, and I can see it sometimes with my special top-down view of my belly. :) I totally, totally love it. :) She's doing it right now as I type this.

Gender?
Girl! I waited until 22 weeks to have my ultrasound because I wanted Jason to be there when I found out (even though I was dying to know, those extra couple of weeks felt like forever!). He came home on a Friday and our appointment was on the following Tuesday morning. The ultrasound tech did some initial measuring and monitoring--my favorite part was seeing the four chambers of the heart pumping away, so cool!--and then asked us if we wanted to find out the gender. I expected her to point up to the screen and say something like, "Well, you see that right there? That's [fill in girl or boy parts]!" Instead, she asked if we wanted to know the gender, we said yes, and she blurted out in a flat, monotone, loud voice, "GIRL." Looking back it was pretty funny but at the time it was kind of startling and felt anticlimactic! Then we went and had breakfast at IHOP and called our family members, and went to Target to buy a pink onesie so we could take this photo.


Nesting?
I'm anxious to get the nursery set up and do some projects in the house, but I'm normally motivated by deadlines anyway, so this just feels like normal deadline-approaching energy more than nesting. I've had a few moments that felt like nesting, like when Jason sanded our wood stairs and wood dust was ev.er.y.wh.e.re... I vacuumed (and wiped down the outside of the vacuum, a la Monica Gellar) and wiped down the walls and banisters and dusted and cleaned every.single.surface in our house. I'm actually hoping to be hit by the nesting bug, my To Do list is a mile long and I could use the extra energy! :)

Sleeping well?
I've been sleeping really, really well for almost all of my pregnancy until this past week. The heartburn/acid reflux is really tough... one night I woke up just 45 minutes after I'd gone to sleep, and the acid burning in my throat was so bad that I was awake for another 45 minutes, downing Tums and papaya enzymes and eating a banana and drinking water, just trying to get the burning to stop. Not fun. So I commandeered most of the pillows in the house and set up my pillow fortress and slept sitting up completely. I know this happens to a lot of pregnant women, but it just kind of surprises me how suddenly it came on. On Saturday night I slept like a champ; on Sunday night I woke up puking bile.

On Wednesday morning when I woke up I came downstairs and started the (decaf) coffee pot in a total haze; before it finished brewing I did the math and realized that in the six hours I'd been "sleeping," I was completely awake at least six times. The previous few nights had been the same. No wonder I was exhausted. Having a positive attitude has really helped me throughout this pregnancy ("I don't mind waking up in the middle of the night, it isn't that bad!") but sometimes it apparently makes me a little dim (sleep deprivation is real, yo). ;) So I left the coffee untouched in the pot and went back to bed (sitting up); I slept for two straight hours and woke up feeling like a new woman. Since then I've slept sitting up every night and while I still wake up several times a night to pee and have occasional bouts of acid, it's not as bad as it was.

I told Jason, "Oh, it's just preparing me for nighttime feedings and being exhausted when the baby comes," and he said, "That's dumb. What do you need to be prepared for? Not sleeping sucks, there, you're prepared." HA!

Buy anything for the baby this week?
We've been gifted with some amazing things and I still have another baby shower or two coming up, so I'm trying not to buy much right now. I have received a couple of lovely presents in the mail, though! :)

What are you enjoying the most/least about being pregnant this week?
You read the middle-of-the-night bile/choking thing, right? So that's what I'm enjoying the least, obviously. My favorite part is the way she moves now, how she's normally pretty chill but always starts moving when she hears Jason's voice, and how I can feel the bumps of her body and try to guess which parts are which/where.

What are you looking forward to?
I'm interested to see if Bebe Girl acts at all similarly on the outside as she does on the inside. I'm excited to see Jason hold her and rock and bounce and soothe her (and get wrapped right around her teeny, tiny finger). I'm looking forward to finding her name (and trying not to worry about not having one for her yet). I'm really excited to sniff her head and kiss the bottoms of her tiny feet and see what she looks like and take photos of her and figure out breastfeeding and a thousand other little moments, only some of which I can even imagine right now.

Today I went to see The Help with some friends, and the relationship between Aibileen and Mae Mobley just made me bawl. The way she greeted her after naps, kissed her when she cried, and told her that she is kind, she is smart, she is important... oh my goodness, I'm so looking forward to that.