What up, 29 week bump? How you doin’? Also, Lewis was in every single picture this week, so there he is too!

Baby

I hear rumors that the baby is somewhere between 2.5 and 3 lbs this week. So like 4-6 ish more pounds to go until this little nugget is a fully cooked nugget! I realize that that means Baby Girl still has to more than double her weight in the next 2.5 months, but this week’s supposed size sounds so close to full-sized that I can hardly believe it. There is some real substance to this girl now!

No wonder her movements are intensifying in my belly. It only makes sense, given how massive she is! My peripheral vision is frequently filled with my jumping belly, and I often have to push protruding baby bits back inside. My mother felt Baby (after a contraction subsided) through my belly and thought she had located a head and a butt and some little feeties, but Baby was rolling around as my mom was squishing me, so I’m pretty sure Baby has moved on and even perhaps completely flipped, since now I’m feeling hiccups where my mom found a butt and feet before.

Who knows. We can’t actually see in there. But there are definitely baby bits, and they’re on the move!

Baby still doesn’t have a name. We had a little false alarm when Kyle shed some tears over a really good one… but he had a change of heart a week later and we were back to the drawing board. We now have a new front runner, but still nothing set in stone. Kyle believes that he wants a name that starts with an E, and the requirement to have an L in it somewhere hasn’t changed, so that narrows things down quite a lot. BUT – and it’s a big BUT – even with a narrowed down list and a front runner, we’re still looking at about 10 different names that we “don’t hate”. Tricky tricky!

Mama

Biggest news: No gestational diabetes for me!

Other than that, things are basically unchanged for me. I have “episodes” here and there, and I contract all the time. I have so many contractions that I basically feel like I have taken all the contractions in the world for myself, and there are none left for any other pregnant ladies. The world’s quota for contractions is met through my uterus’ work alone!

Because of the lack of change in my physical state, I’m becoming increasingly more comfortable with the house arrest sentence given to me by my doctor. It really, truly does make sense. I try not to talk about what is going on with me all the time because I don’t want to be annoying, but my condition really is chronic and constantly distracting me.

Every single moment of my day I am taking note of what is happening in my body and I’m usually either contracting, dizzy, or both. I may be having a conversation about the weather, but I’m thinking to myself, “oh. there’s another contraction” or “I really wish I could lay down right now”. I try to maintain appearances and stay “normal” on the surface so people don’t worry or get annoyed because I won’t shut up, but it is really hard to think about anything else most of the time.

To me, it is completely embarrassing to require such special treatment and attention just because I’m pregnant. I’ve never thought of my pregnancies as debilitating or disabling – I always just thought of myself as the same, but a little more tired and a lot more fat. My brain still works, I’m still a strong, capable, independent woman. So why should I get special treatment?

But Baby Girl is giving me a reality check. I do need special accommodations this time. I just do.

Besides the (now normal) madness, I’m kind of just cruising along. I eat all the time, cravings haven’t changed much, I’m tired and squeak in naps as much as possible (usually while Kyle and I are watching House of Cards together – much to my sweet husband’s dismay), and my belly keeps getting bigger. Pretty standard stuff, thank goodness!

Lewis

Man, the kid has been grooving lately! Here’s a little list of highlights for ya:

• He peed on the potty for the first time ever last night.
• He figured out how to unlock and open the exterior doors. Luckily he isn’t super interested in making a run for it yet, but OMG are we watching him like a hawk!
• He noticed that mommy and daddy have different private parts (“mommy! Where’s your penis?”), and when I explained that mommy has a vagina and daddy and Lewis have penises, he retained that information and now yells about it all the time. (“Mommy! You have a vagina!” and “Mommy! I have a peeeeeeeeeeeenis!“) I am very excited for all the looks we will get when he decides to chat about that at the top of his lungs in public.
• Bedtime and naptime have been getting increasingly easy as Lewis gets to know the routine better. He now frequently falls asleep without a parent in the room in significantly less time than before. We have also adjusted bedtime to be about 45-60 minutes later, which seems to have helped as well. We’ve ended up settling into about 10-11 hours of sleep for kiddo a night, which is really pretty great!
• Talking talking talking! The kid won’t shut up. His sentences are getting longer, his vocabulary surprises me on the daily, and I don’t have to act as interpreter for him quite as often. Okay…still pretty often – Things he says that are crystal clear to me and Kyle do not register for a lot of other listeners. But it’s adorable, and he’s learning, and I love it!
• He will be in daycare 5 days a week starting this week. We’ve worked it out with the daycare provider and I feel really positive about it. I remember back when he was really little how desperately I wanted to take him out of daycare completely. It’s amazing how that has changed simply because he’s older and gets so much out of it now. Will I miss him on Fridays? Yes, of course. But it makes so much sense to have him there 5 days a week for his sake and mine. I don’t think I can handle him on my own while working anymore, due to my “episodes”. It is just too much. So it all works out!