So instead of kicking, the baby has been doing more rolling. She’ll roll her heels or butt across my stomach and sometimes it hurts! I noticed her hiccups for the first time last night and Dave got to feel her, too. It was pretty darn cute. Last night she was head down, but today she’s not. I’m anxious to hear what my midwife says about her positioning. I won’t really worry until we get to 37 weeks but I’d like to be able to feel her more accurately. I can’t tell if I’m touching her head, butt, elbow, or foot. You can see in the photo above about how big she is in my tummy right now. It’s hard for me to believe sometimes. As of this week, the baby is not gaining much more length; instead she’s fattening up in preparation for birth and finishing up the final stages of organ growth. If she were born today she’d have about a 90% chance of survival.
According to my midwife, it will be safe for me to deliver at home by week 37. That’s in 6 weeks! I need to be completely ready with my birth supplies and anything else I will need during labor and birth. My mom is helping me out with the tub mat so I’m not sliding all over the place and she’s also buying the mattress covers and a plastic shower curtain for the floor. When you’re at home, you really don’t know where you’re going to deliver. I’m going to stay in the bedroom/bathroom area just to avoid making a mess and the goal is to have the baby in the water. Well, the real goal is to have a safe labor and a healthy mom & baby, but as far as the whole home birth experience goes, I’d really like to birth her in the water.
To backtrack a bit; we had a nice holiday. I am still disappointed that we did not make it to Maine for Christmas, but ultimately it was the right thing to do with all the sick animals. The kitty is doing much better now and Misha (our guinea pig) is all healed up and her front teeth have grown back. The pigs have had lots of extra hay lately due to their inability to really chew the timothy pellets, so they are quite happy. They’re also getting red peppers (has twice the amount of vitamin C as oranges) and shredded carrots. Happy squeaky pigs make me happy.
We have about 3 1/2 weeks until Ohayocon, which will be followed up the next weekend by our baby shower, then Katsucon a week after that. 3 solid weekends of craziness! It will make the time go much faster, though. Speaking of baby shower, I am getting the invitations done tomorrow with my mom. I decided that doing some facebook group invite was too tacky for my first baby shower ever, although some people think it’s probably a lot easier to go the internet route. Oh well; long live the classy invites!
I came across a website tonight, mentioned by a mothering.com mama. It’s for the Newman Breastfeeding Clinic & Institute. They have some great information about breastfeeding; including video clips and PDFs for troubleshooting a plethora of breastfeeding problems. You can also buy the DVD, book, and these really neat laminate wipe-off sheets to use as quick guides. I want to get some of the laminate sheets for myself as a reference and also for my doula business. I agree with so many of the things Dr. Newman and his associates talk about; especially the section on breastfeeding myths. Myths can be detrimental to breastfeeding.. A few that I can think of off the top of my head are that formulas are just as good as breastmilk, if a mother has an infection she should stop breastfeeding, and that women with small breasts will have a harder time breastfeeding. There is so much BAD information about breastfeeding and it’s so sad that women follow the advice of people who know very little about breastfeeding. Another interesting concept that I knew little about was the difference between sucking and drinking. Babies can look like they’re getting milk when they’re actually not. I’ve seen this happen with so many of my friends and I never knew how to really help them. After watching videos and reading about it on Dr. Newman’s site, I learned how to tell the difference between the two and how to actually help. This is really going to come in handy for my own breastfeeding experience, as well when I teach other mamas. It was such an AH-HA moment!
It’s very exciting how close we’re getting to baby time! In about 9 weeks I will have a little baby girl in my arms. It’s hunker down time. I don’t want to over-do it, but I really need to make a big list of all the stuff that needs to get done, including things unrelated to baby. I don’t want to end up neglecting certain things because of a baby who needs to feed every 2 hours.. I won’t be a failure if I can’t get everything done in 9 weeks either. The key is doing things one day at a time and not overloading my daily plate with so much that I get nothing done! I will do my best to update every few days from now on. There’s still so much I want to talk about from my topic list, but there will be plenty of time to get it out after the baby’s born, too.
~Christine
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