35 weeks

From Maia the Midwife

Another great appointment today with our midwife as we round the corner towards the finish line of this pregnancy. All three of us went this time, which gave Brian the opportunity to take some photos of Maia doing her midwifery thing (guided by Heather). All is well, with the statistical side of things staying essentially the same:

• Baby's heart rate in the 140s, and baby is still hanging out head down.
• My blood pressure seemingly in a competition with itself to see how low it can get. This week: 98/65!
• My uterus is measuring a week ahead at 36 weeks. Well within normal range.

Because we're driving a few hours away tomorrow and will be gone all weekend, I asked Heather to do a quick check to see if there was any reason (cervical change-wise) why I shouldn't go. I might have had a second thought about a trip up north if I were 4 cm dilated, for example. Nope. I am definitely making some progress towards baby's arrival, but there's no reason to stick around here for it! It's going to be several weeks still, if you ask me. :)

We got the form to decline the antibiotic eye ointment for baby after birth (it's Michigan law, so I have to decline it "for religious reasons"!), and I made the rest of my appointments right through my due date. Making the rest of the appointments feels like a big deal, as does hitting the number "35" in weeks. Baby's arrival is starting to feel very close; a month or so is no time at all!

Brian and I are going to Traverse City early tomorrow morning, after a brief detour to East Lansing to take Maia and Mona to Nana and Papa's. We have no plans whatsoever up there--lots of sitting, reading, walking the beach, more sitting, coffee, ice cream ... that sort of thing. It's going to be lovely. :)

A bedtime story

Last night, Maia insisted on telling her own bedtime story, rather than hearing some poems or a chapter from a book like usual. She proceeded to tell a story in which we were all whales (belugas, to be specific). We were busy swimming in circles all day ("millions and millions of times," says our little Carl Sagan), and then we talked quietly and did an "important" ketetation before going to sleep. :)

It's been an eternity since we posted a video, so here you go!

Just FYI, a "ketetation" is one of Maia's neologisms; it means a short meditation/relaxation that involves clenching and then releasing muscles (usually the fists). Jo and Katie, I don't know if you remember that Dad used to lead us through a full-body relaxation like this when we were kids before bed ... I've learned in the last couple of years that this is a standard Lamaze relaxation technique called a "Progressive Tense-Release Relaxation." :) Full circle, full circle.

More photos

The three of us went a couple of weeks ago to see my friend Christina (a photographer in the area) to get some photos taken before Baby G 2's arrival. Just FYI to anyone who is interested: we have non-watermarked copies of all of the pictures you see in the linked album, so we'd be happy to order some prints. :) Here are a couple of samples:

From Maternity photos-web

From Maternity photos-web

Big Sister Class

Just a quick early morning post to say that I've added a few photos from last night's Becoming Brothers and Sisters class.

From June 16

From June 16

A quick update

• We've started our summertime Wednesday AM playgroups with Maia's future classmates at her preschool. This morning we had a lovely time in the hot sun at Lillie Park with a lot of three- and four-year-olds. Maia struggled a bit with some of the social dynamics of playing in a bigger group (about 15 kids) of children around her age, but after some initial misunderstandings, all was well. I can tell for sure that with all of the talking and negotiating that was going on, Maia's bound to have some hurt feelings along the way as she learns to navigate real friendships on a daily basis (rather than the imaginary label "friends" that we put onto babies and toddlers who aren't really interacting with each other in that way--it's out-of-bounds developmentally). She's going to learn so much from this experience.
• Maia has her "Becoming Brothers and Sisters" class tonight at the U of M Hospital. It's a class offered by my employer (the Lamaze Family Center), and I used to teach it over at U of M. She is so very, very excited--she's going to be bummed to wait a few hours after her naptime ends before we gather up and head over to the hospital. I'll definitely bring my camera for this one. :)
• Our CSA share starts this weekend, finally! This, to me, is the true start of summer.
• Maia's swimming class ended on Monday, and her last soccer game is coming up on Saturday. We're definitely in a big transitional period right now as a family, checking things off our to-do list for the year in a way that seems to follow the academic year's calendar, still, even though neither Brian nor I works in an academic setting.
• Labor preparation has begun: I've made a playlist of lots of my favorite music on my iPhone, I've bought clothes to wear during labor (no hospital gowns this time), and one of these days I'm going to go buy my labor snacks at REI: PowerBars and electrolyte gummies and all of that stuff. I'm completing my 34th week of pregnancy this week.
• Brian continues to ride his bike to work nearly every day (I think he's driven twice since the beginning of May). We're doing a great job working as a one-car family right now. :) We're saving a ton of money on gas, which has been lovely, and with both of our cars paid-off and several years old at this point (purchased in 2003 and 2004), it's nice not to be putting additional wear-and-tear on one of them. My car gets average mileage in the mid to upper twenties, and while there's no question we could be doing A LOT better in terms of our carbon footprint, I think we're managing O.K. as a family in the 'burbs.

Happy Bloomsday everyone! (I'm a nerd.)

Phew!

Brian and I went to the hospital complex for my (hopefully) last ultrasound this morning, and we had the best news we could have hoped for: my formerly low-lying placenta moved up a few centimeters away from my cervix! Hooray! At 19 weeks it was 1.2 cm away, and now it's a whole 4.43 cm away. (The "safe" distance is in the neighborhood of 2 cm.) It's likely to move even further over the next few weeks, so we're "all systems go!" now. :) That's a huge, monumental relief. A placenta that's too close to the cervix presents possible significant dangers for the labor process and for mom and baby's health, so it requires a Cesarean birth.

Baby G 2 looked great, and has gotten so much bigger and bulkier than he/she was the last time we got a peek inside. The tech estimated the baby's weight to be over 4 lbs. (although, putting on my "doula hat" for a moment, those estimates can be quite far off ... blah blah blah), and baby's heart rate today was in the mid-130s. I got a sweet 3D ultrasound image of baby's face, which I'll probably be scanning and posting here sometime soon. The 3D image at 20 weeks is quite skeletal.

So, all in all, it was a great morning. I love the chance to "talk shop" with ultrasound techs and ask questions about things I've read and such ... for example: By what volume can a good pee on baby's part increase the amniotic fluid volume? What are the average numbers for fluid volume at this point in pregnancy? Good times. :)

From 32 week ultrasound