Biophilliac Mommy: 32nd Week Update

Sunday, June 5, 2011

32nd Week Update

Development at 32 Weeks

The weeks are going by much too fast as usual, now I'm already in my 8th month! I have gotten to the point where I am having appointments with the midwives every two weeks now. I had an appointment this past Thursday with the infamous Ellie. Whenever I talk to people who have had babies with Back Cove Midwives, they always talk about how great Ellie is, but I hadn't been able to have an appointment with her until now. She has been in the practice the longest, and is extremely knowledgeable and kind. It was great talking to her.

Everything is still going really well with me and the baby. My blood pressure is excellent (92/60) and my fundus measurements are right where Ellie wants them to be...slightly under 32 inches. She said that it's good if it's slightly under for me at this point since I am so petite. Mattimeo's heart rate was a steady 130 bpm, and this time she was able to figure out his exact permission in my womb. He is now head down (Yay! This means I don't need to worry about him being breached). At that moment he was laying with his spine against my spine, but he is still turning around in circles quite frequently. His bum is up just under my right rib cage.

When he moves now its really cool because I can feel the big bump which is his butt, and sometimes I can feel the curve of his spine at the same time towards the middle of my stomach. He has also been doing some pretty crazy frog kicking where he kicks out his legs simultaneously and I can feel him on both sides of my tummy, or sometimes, of my ribcage. He seems to be most active right after I eat something. More recently he has started to be wiggly while I am walking, which makes walking dogs even more interesting/challenging.

I have still been feeling top notch. Perhaps the only minor annoyance is sleeping at night. Now I have to get up frequently to go pee, and I have to have a snack at least once during the night or I will feel too nauseous to fall asleep. I also wake up at least every hour to switch sides. Since I can only lay on my side now (being on my back for more than a few seconds really makes me sick), my hips start aching if I don't switch sides regularly. Since I have to stuff pillows in between my legs to keep my hips from crashing into each other, I have to hug pillows against my chest so I don't wake up with intense chest muscle aches, and I have a much harder time of gaining enough momentum to move, rolling to the other side is quite the task. I have to move all the pillows and myself and quickly get comfortable and relax so I can get in some sleep before I have to either switch sides again, eat, drink, or get up to pee. Lastly, I've been finding that I get dehydrated really quickly at night now and will get headaches if I don't drink continuously through the night. This means even more peeing and waking up! On the bright side, my body seems to have adjusted to my weird sleep schedule and I still feel like I have a good amount of energy throughout the day.

So far I have only experienced swelling in my feet once (thank goodness!). At Jessica's (Robbie's sister) graduation from MassArt a couple weekends ago the temperature went from quite cool to really hot very quickly. Before the ceremony, Robbie and I took a nice long walk around a park in anticipation of having to sit for a long period of time. But I still ended up sitting for about 3 hours straight, and I think that in combination with the extreme temperature fluctuation was a bit much for my pregnant body and my feet swelled up substantially. I was pretty grossed out because my normally lean toes looked like sausages, and the sides of my feet were squeezing out my sandal straps. Thankfully they went back to normal after graduation. I really hope that doesn't become a normal occurrence for me!

One final pregnancy symptom to note is that I felt my first Braxton-Hicks contraction the night after we went hiking. These are just "practice" contractions that are completely normal and healthy that help prepare your body to know what to do when its time for labor. During these contractions my uterus (aka my whole belly) tightened up substantially and moved upwards a bit. I actually thought it felt pretty cool and gave me a little bit of a head rush. It happened twice in a row that night, but I haven't really noticed any since then.

I hope everyone is enjoying this fabulous weather! At least in Maine, the nonstop raining has ceased, and its really starting to feel like summer. This means there are more delicious fruits and vegetables available for us to eat, dog walking is a lot more enjoyable, and now I am able to eat breakfast outside with my 2 cats surrounded by the beautiful flowers on our balcony. Life is good!

P.S. I had a maternity photo shoot yesterday, but I am going to wait until I have the pictures to tell you about that