~38 weeks - update

nothing new to report midwife visit related. i've had a series of really good blood pressures, not sure why.

our doula visit went well. today i received a call from her to tell me that since i'm "term" she wanted to let me know she'd be "farther away from me than normal" (in another city) so if i need her i should call earlier than i would normally...this kinda made me realize things could happen at any time!

i'm getting a bit physically tired of being pregnant. my main complaints are swollen feet, various aches and pains, and feeling fatigued from any activity. it also makes it a lot harder to be active when it's 100+ degrees here. we would have record high temps the summer i'm preggers.

~37 weeks - update

GBS test results are negative!!!
I actually lost a pound since the last midwife visit, bringing my weight gain thus far to about 21 pounds.
Midwife said baby's head was "pretty fixed" in my pelvis.
She said my birth plan was "beautiful" after reviewing it, and I was given a copy of my records to bring to the hospital when I check in.
I have my final home visit set up with my doula for next Monday evening.

I also have all baby clothes and bedding prewashed and am working on the cloth diaper prewashing (must be done several times to get diapers to full absorbency).

~36 weeks - update

not much to report...baby is still head down...had the gbs test today...oh, and i noticed my belly was touching the steering wheel on the way home...i may need to make some adjustments soon

baby's mobile

is finally done! It has been for a couple weeks. It looks much better in person...



It's made from 23 modular origami pieces. Octahedrons (made from 12 pieces of paper) and icosahedrons (made from 30 pieces of paper). Overall I folded 510 pieces of paper for the mobile.



After I completed the folding I sprayed the pieces to preserve them and sprinkled them with ultrafine glitter. You can see a little sparkle in the pic below.



I then strung them up to the mobile frame at random lengths and added stone beads to balance the larger pieces with the smaller.

baby showers

Friday, May 29, was our baby shower day. First, NJG had a baby shower at work mid-day. I walked over for it. There was pizza and cake and lots of presents from his employees and coworkers. Then, that night was the baby shower thrown by my friends and coworkers. I had 3 hostesses. The shower was at one of their homes. First we played 2 baby games. One was filling in missing words in nursery rhymes, which I was not good at. The second was looking at a tray of baby products and memorizing the contents and then writing them all down. This was much more of my type of game.



Then, there was a traditional Indian ceremony performed for us by the mother of the hostess, who was visiting from India. The ceremony is traditionally performed for mothers-to-be. I can't remember what everything symbolized, but we had the traditional red dots placed on our foreheads that married people wear, I was given a scarf, bracelet, and apple, there were flames and water each passed around us 5 times, rice put on our heads, and cookies put in our mouths. It was quite interesting.





We then had cookies and ice cream and coffee, followed by gift opening. Many of the gifts were wrapped in Indian sheets to be more eco-friendly. After I finished opening all the gifts, one of the hostesses announced that she was going to share what was said on the night the baby was conceived. She then began to repeat things I had said while opening the gifts, which apparently she had been writing down. What followed were quotes such as "i'm not complaining, it just looks long" and finished with a quote from NJG of "it's so complicated, it's like a 3-step process"...maybe you had to be there, but it was quite funny.



Everyone received a tiny succulent plant as their parting gift.

I will follow with another post about gifts received later...