weekly baby bumpdate / 37 weeks

37 WEEK INTERVIEW

How far along?

37 weeks and 5 days! At 37 weeks we have officially reached early term pregnancy! 

We made it! Forget what your mother told you - in 2013, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists redefined full term pregnancy. New definitions included early term (37-38 weeks), full term (39-40 weeks), late term (41 weeks) and post term (in excess of 42 weeks). 

The more you know! 

Baby's size?

At 37 weeks, the baby is a little over 19 inches long. And according to the estimate made at my ultrasound, the baby weighs about 6 pounds and 5 ounces (:

Days until next doc appointment?

4 days. I only have two appointments left before my due date now. Crazy!

How was your last appointment?

It went well! (: I'm still measuring a week small, but that's been normal for me throughout my pregnancy. My doctor was a little concerned when I had been measuring 3 weeks smaller than average last week, but I have since caught back up in size! Everything looked great at my ultrasound too. (: Thank you to anyone who prayed for us! It means a lot and we are glad everything is looking okay again (:

Total weight gain?

31.8 pounds

Maternity clothes?

It's finally beginning to feel like Spring around here, so this morning when taking the mail out, I decided to wear my slip-ons instead of my Winter boots. It was the first time since Fall that I had worn them and I quickly realized that they had become "shove-ons" in the time since then.

Stretch marks?

I learned this week that it is entirely possible to go an entire pregnancy without stretch marks only to "get" them after the baby is born. Um...WHAT?! Technically they form before the baby is born, but they aren't visible until after birth. How does it work, you ask? If you picture your belly being stretched tight like a drum throughout pregnancy, and then you have your baby and some other things, the "drum" becomes less taut and...yeah. It all makes sense now. But that doesn't mean I like it. I've been putting lotion on every single day for the past 6+ months to help prevent this. So far I don't see any signs of stretch marks on my belly or sides but I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Sleep:

I still can't seem to get much sleep in one stretch anymore. I get 5 hours of sleep at night and most days I don't get around to taking a nap. I think I'm starting to have the sleeping woes that most pregnant women experience at some point: waking up several times in the night to go to the bathroom, having a hard time getting out of bed to go to the bathroom due to stiffness and pain in the pelvis and achy bones... I'm probably the most uncomfortable when I'm trying to get out of bed after sleeping.

Best moment this week:

This is going to sound incredibly off-the-wall and bizarre, but you guys - I went to the dentist!
I do realize that "I went to the dentist" and the "best moment this week" are grouped together under the same interview question. No, this is not an allegory to having a bad week. I'm just one of those bizarre people that looks forward to seeing the dentist with the same vigor as a child seeing Santa Claus.*

*a child unafraid of Santa Claus

Food cravings:

There was a moment this week where I desperately wanted hot dogs. 

The moment passed.

Anything make you queasy or sick?

Nope!

Movement:

Let's talk about the 37th week of pregnancy.

If you're a mom and "been there, done that", Hi, hi, hello, how are you?

If not, let me try to explain what plate tectonics and pregnancy have in common. Let's begin.

1. EVERYTHING. Pregnancy and plate tectonics have EVERYTHING in common.

Even the Bible says so.

"...There will be earthquakes in various places...

...these are but the beginning of the birth pains."

Mark 13:8

See? Ok. Not really. Armageddon, child birth. Two totally different things. (So they say.)

Allow me to elaborate:

In life, you have this hormone called relaxin. When you're pregnant, your body makes more of it. Lots more of it. So much more of it, your body (particularly in your low hips/back/pelvic bone) will pop and crack in ways you never thought possible. Toward the end of pregnancy, your pelvis will begin to do this: 

See how one side at the gap is risen above the other? If you're wondering, you can feel this bone shifting around and the bones rubbing against each other. 

Now if you'll go back with me for a moment to 4th grade science class:

You'll see that when two plates of the earth's crust converge, one must go under the other or form a mountain range or something. It's been a long time since I was in 4th grade. Now go back to the picture of the pelvic bone above and tell me it's not the same exact thing. Disclaimer: I am 8 months pregnant. I cannot guarantee that I won't eat you for disagreeing with me.

And now you know how pregnancy and plate tectonics have everything to do with each other.

Have you started to show yet?

I have scientific evidence that I am showing! By this I mean it's been a lot warmer here (no jackets necessary) for the first time since I was far along enough to be showing at all. And people have taken notice! In one afternoon six people commented on my bump. Some of which could not believe my due date is in less than three weeks:

"You're due so soon?! But you're so little! I thought you had longer to go than that."
"37 weeks?! But you've got such a tiny little bump! I bet you hear that all the time."

Yup, I do. I like having a cute lil' bump.

Missing anything?

The first thing I'm going to eat after having this baby is cake mix and no one is going to stop me.

Gender:

Baby is going to be a surprise. (:

Labor signs?

I had my doctor check me again to see if I had made progress from the week before. With Jason's work week, I knew it would be helpful to know so he could modify his schedule if need be and get home in time if something started to happen while he was away. The verdict? In one week I went up from a 1 to a 1 1/2! All of my plate tectonic movement is amounting to something!

Belly button:

Still flat! It actually seems to have gone back to being an innie a little bit. What's really disturbing is when I cough or laugh really hard, the center of my belly button protrudes hahaha

Wedding rings on or off?

Still on all the time! My doctor was very pleased to see that I haven't had much swelling (:

Happy or moody most of the time?

Usually pretty happy. But we all have our moments, right?

I've always said that God has a very ironic relationship with me. If He can show me irony in some way to teach me a lesson or help me "grow", He will.

à la 1 Corinthians 10:12,

"Let he who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."

Like this one time back in college. I wore a sunshine-yellow t-shirt to school with a big smiley face on it that said "SMILE" in all caps, and then proceeded to have a horrible day and was definitely not smiling. It was like the shirt was taunting me and God was up there smiling at me in all of my frustration.

To this day I'm very cautious about wearing that shirt.

Or...like last week when I went on my one-stop hippie love boat cruise to Atlantis going on and on about being positive in every situation...and then proceeded to have a bad day the next day.

To be fair, I was sick, emotional, had cleaned up more puke than I would like to admit before 10am (not all of it mine), and was dealing with some bigger issues that were really getting me down.  So much for my Disney cruise to Wonderland. 

But I have long moved on from that bad day and decided to tackle this week with new resolve. (Not being as sick anymore really helps with this.) But that doesn't mean the potential for difficult people and situations can't arise. 

Earlier this week I was having to deal with a person who was very high up on their own horse and I could do nothing but grit my teeth, bite my tongue, and turn the other cheek and yada yada. 

I've been told to try and visualize a happy place when in undesirable situations. So I did.

He made the heavens and the earth. Surely He can ride a bicycle with no hands.

And a dove would land on His shoulder while doing so.

My husband thinks I'm nuts.

--

When we can't make it to church on Sundays, we watch a sermon online from my home church back in California. This week, the pastor was talking about faith and how those in the early church found joy amongst their trials. The pastor raised his arms out wide and gave a booming example of a prayer that they might have said:

"Dear Lord, thank you for giving me the strength to bear the weight of this life..."

To which I nodded solemnly with my fist up to my mouth before letting out a wide grin behind my hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jason giving me his best "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" and I knew I had to explain. 

"I was thinking of the laundry room door falling on me! 'Dear Lord, thank you for giving me the strength to bear the weight of the laundry room door...'"

Jason has a lot to deal with being married to me.

Weekly symptoms:

Very itchy bumps on my legs and arms, can't really bend over to pick things up (squats all day),  lots of pee trips, acid reflux, leg cramps, stiffness after sitting/standing for extended periods of time, aversion to smells, it hurts to bend over now since the baby's head is so low, lightning pains, nausea, pelvic pain, bones grinding against each other (not sure of the technical term for that one), very heavy feeling in the pelvic floor like all my insides are going to fall out through my middle, etc.

Looking forward to:

Jason's going to be done with work tomorrow! DONE! D-O-N-E. Dunzo! I can't wait to have more time with him. (: And let's just all take a moment to remember 2004 when dunzo was a thing.

#lagunabeachforever

Would you like to see more?
Check out my other "bumpdates" below!

PREVIOUS BABY BUMPDATES

/ pregnancy announcement / 12 & 13 weeks / 14 weeks / 15 weeks /

/ 16 weeks / how we told my parents about baby / 17 weeks /

/  how we told Jason's parents about baby / 18 weeks / pregnancy announcement cards / 

/ 19 weeks / 20 weeks / baby is a...surprise! / 21 weeks / 22 weeks / 23 weeks / 

/ 24 weeks / 25 weeks / 26 weeks / 27 weeks / 28 weeks & babymoon /
/ 29 weeks / 30 weeks / 31 weeks / 32 weeks / 33 weeks / 34 weeks /

/ 35 weeks / 36 weeks /