Your pregnancy: 37 weeks

How your baby’s growing:
Congratulations — your baby is full term! This means that if your baby arrives now, his lungs should be fully mature and ready to adjust to life outside the womb, even though your due date is still three weeks away.

Your baby weighs 6 1/3 pounds and measures a bit over 19 inches, head to heel (like a stalk of Swiss chard). Many babies have a full head of hair at birth, with locks from 1/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches long. But don’t be surprised if your baby’s hair isn’t the same color as yours. Dark-haired couples are sometimes thrown for a loop when their children come out as blonds or redheads, and fair-haired couples have been surprised by Elvis look-alikes. And then, of course, some babies sport only peach fuzz.

FULL TERM, BITCHES! TURKEY’S DONE!!!

It feels like I have finished all the preparation and hard work for an exam, and I’m now just doing the final revision. It says something about me that I am equating this to preparation for an exam. Namely, studying has been pretty much the only thing I have had to go through with effort in my very easy life. Ok, that and being forced to go through too many years of piano lessons which I hated. Which means I have had a pretty blessed life so far if that’s as bad as it got.

In the last couple of days, I have felt this odd burst of energy. I think this is the “nesting” burst of energy they speak of when the mother is ripe and ready. I feel like my head has come out of the fog of fatigue, and I’m suddenly wide awake. Walking is still painfully tiring, but it’s a different type of tiring..it’s just in the feet, not in my head. I don’t feel like eating as much (and can’t really because of increasing heartburn, but easily remedied by Tums, my best friend Tums) and I’m not wanting to crawl into bed the moment I get home from work.

So the BIG NEWS is that we are scheduled in for a C-section on…drum roll….August 11 at noon! Isn’t it weird that we know the birth date ahead of time? I have my parents approval that it is a good date…in Cantonese, 11/8 (in Singapore, we put the day first, not the month first like in America) is pronounced “yat yat fat” which literally translates to “daily prosperous”.

So yes, the decision leading up to the C-section. We saw the doctor on Monday. Looked at the sonogram, and yes, Baby Chansidine still has her head wedged up against my ribs (that and her feet kicking up against my bladder when I walk, a very uncomfortable position for Momma, I tell ya) and has not budged in the last few weeks from that position.

So my doctor gave me the same list of options that the midwife gave the week before (I have been seeing the midwife and the doctor alternately, who ever is free in the office…midwives can do everything a doctor does except C-sections…and as a general rule, they are much more inclined towards natural births as doctors are). The 2 options I had were the same: (a) try the ECV (explained in detail in my previous post) first; or (b) just schedule in a C-section and skip the ECV.

It was interesting the different ways these options were marketed to me. The midwife barely even gave me the choice of a C-section. She mentioned the ECV, told me that it works sometimes and that I should try it. Or try various positions to lay down in, or see a chiropractor or acupuncturist to give the baby more movement in hope that she turns head down. And then only if they all fail, to do a C-section, which I should “avoid as far as possible”.

My doctor on the other hand, told me that I can choose the ECV, but it doesn’t always work and detailed all the risks involved in the ECV (she spent quite some time on that). And then she said, “or you could do a C-section”. Period.

I know many people have issues with the increasingly medicalized nature of childbirth in first world countries and would have taken offense to my doctor’s clear bias towards a C-section (which definitely makes it easier for the doctor cos it’s planned and quick). If I hadn’t already had my mind made up before I went to see her or did a ridiculous amount of research prior, I may have taken some offense to that bias. But truth of the matter is, we had made up our minds over the weekend and was actually thankful we were not made to sway that decision once more. Because it wasn’t easy readjusting my expectations and getting to the point of acceptance that this is the way it is going to be. And, in my doctor’s defense, she has been great all this while and it’s not like she was pushing me to do a C-section where there’s no medical reason for it.

I detailed why I didn’t want an ECV in my last post. To add to that, over the weekend, a friend of mine who had gone through an ECV (hated it, and it didn’t work) mentioned how her baby’s heart rate dropped dramatically during the procedure. They had to stop it right away, then get her back in the office regularly to monitor the baby’s heart rate to make sure it was alright (I guess her doctor didn’t induce the birth there and then for some reason), which she mentioned was emotionally very difficult (duh!) not knowing if she chose to do something that could have hurt her baby. I don’t know if I would have the emotional strength to go through that type of thing.

And I know that is a mere anecdote, which says nothing about the statistics of a vast majority of people going through ECVs without any problems (albeit the success rate isn’t as high). But I think my issue was more against the emotional uncertainty of that type of procedure, anything that gives me a certain hope (e.g. seeing the acupuncturist, chiropractor, etc etc) only to have a significant probability of it failing to work in the end and not knowing how this is going to go until right at the last minute. I also did not want to reach a point where I go into labor, and my baby’s still in breech, and I have to have a C-section on an emergency basis. That’s the reason why she is scheduled to be born a week prior to her actual due date. Poor Baby Chansidine, “sent before (your) time into this breathing world” like Richard III.

And yes, I am aware that many women have been and are able to deliver breech babies safely and healthily. From what my birthing class instructor said though, they have been phasing out the art of delivering breech babies these days in OBGYN and midwifery training and most hospitals and insurance will not do or cover a breech vaginal birth anymore. A c-section is simply the default setting for a breech baby these days. And fact of the matter is, a breech vaginal birth is just that much riskier. I’m not sure, again, if I’m emotionally able to handle that type of uncertainty. I’m sure I can INSIST on having a vaginal birth and I’m sure there’s a doctor/midwife/hospital out there in NYC willing to do so, I am not granola enough to desire a natural vaginal birth THAT badly. I know some women do and good on them. I may change my mind about that for my next child, but for now, statistics assure me that C-sections in the first world is a remarkably safe procedure for both moms and babies.

Another thing I checked up on is having the option of a vaginal birth after C-section (VBAC). I’d just like to have that option later on. And it is likely I will still have that option from what I have read and heard from friends who have had VBACs.

That isn’t to say that the recovery won’t be a total bitch though. It is a major surgery and I do not want to underestimate that. It’s really freaky to think about; I have (thankfully) never had to undergo any type of surgery in my life. At the same time, I do not want to be made to feel like I have to justify our decision (hippie granola natural childbirth enthusiasts can be quite Nazi), which I kinda have been doing in this post a little, that inevitable tinge of guilt some C-sec mommas get for not pushing her baby out the “normal” way. But hopefully this post could maybe in some odd way provide comfort or at least a sense of solace to someone else in the same position, because I know I have found lots in some women’s blogs.

We both came then came to an acceptance that maybe Baby Chansidine is wedged up there for a reason. If she chooses to turn back down by herself in the next couple of weeks, then it’s all good. But in the meantime, we have been scheduled in for the C-section on Aug 11 where we will get to meet her finally. Once we made that decision and once we got the date and time, it was like a light turned on at the end of the tunnel and we felt so good about the decision. At the end of it all, we WILL get to meet her soon, hopefully healthy, whole, and complete, and that’s all that really matters.

Your pregnancy: 36 weeks

How your baby’s growing:
Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She’s shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she’s in a head-down position. But if she isn’t, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an “external cephalic version,” which is a fancy way of saying she’ll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of your belly.

Unfortunately, at this time, Baby Chansidine’s position looks nothing like it does in that diagram. As of yesterday, she is in full breech position (her head is way up where my ribs are). Yikes!

We learned that she was in breech position last week and she pretty much stayed that way when we went in yesterday. That girl’s got a mind of her own!

There is no doubt that if she remains in breech, I will have to go for The Zipper i.e. C-section. And chances of her turning by herself so late in the game are really slim. It still can happen, but it’s rare.

So the midwife I saw yesterday told me that the course of action could be to do an external cephalic version (ECV). And if the procedure is successful, to induce labor right there and then. And if not, to do a c-section.

As of now, the ECV is just doesn’t seem like something I’d want to do. Obviously, I went home and googled the hell out of ECV and from what I have gathered, it is far from guaranteed that it’ll work (I’ve read rates of success anywhere from 20-60%) and it seems like it’d be a FUCKING AWFUL experience. Granted, the videos I have seen on ECV ranges from looking like a gentle massage to BRUTAL PULVERIZING LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT …hell to the no! In both videos, both didn’t work. I don’t even like it when a nurse prods my belly just slightly firmly in an ultrasound or when she’s trying to determine the position of the baby…I can’t even begin to imagine how awful it would feel to be poked and prodded in an attempt to rotate my baby 180 degrees (she’s not even laying sideways…she’s friggin’ heads up!).

Another issue I have is that I’m just someone who likes certainty. Of course, nothing about labor and birth is certain. But I have really enjoyed the 2 of 5 birthing classes we have gone to because I am told somewhat what to expect and what not to expect. We learned what to do and what not to do during early labor, and I actually left the last class looking forward to that precious early labor time, which is the longest and where there are mild contractions but not enough to be screaming bloody murder. There’s something romantic somehow in that whole “honey, I think this is it” thing. I envisioned, just like in the birthing videos we saw, dealing with pain management at home, and having a really special, intimate time with my husband, and then, when it’s time, going to the hospital where I’ll try to hold off the epidural for as long as I can, until I scream bloody murder, and then I get the epidural and I push and it’ll be difficult, but I eventually get my baby on my chest with my husband next to me, and I cry and I hold and breastfeed my baby right away and yadda yadda yadda. I think no matter how hard we try to resist, most pregnant women have an “ideal” of what her birth experience would be like. And I hate to admit that I have an expectation, because expectations are danger danger danger, but that was my vision of it.

And now this breech thing throws a spanner in the works and I’m taking some time to step back and emotionally accept that. I think I’m still somewhat shellshocked over this whole breech thing. It’s just something i never envisioned having a problem with for some odd reason. I expected maybe having a problems with a ginormous baby (cos Patty Daddy was a large baby…and I’m not a large person), or being overdue, or something like that. But breeched? Huh?

Thus far, I have felt like I pretty much had the “textbook” pregnancy. The awful first trimester, which went away just when the textbooks said it will, then the honeymoon 2nd trimester, then all the various discomforts of the 3rd trimester that the textbooks list. And it threw me off that Baby Chansidine has her head up at so late in the game. The midwife said that one possibility could be that she’s tangled up in her umbilical cord and that’s why she can’t turn. And in fact, the blur sonogram she used showed the cord right around where her head is. She assured that it isn’t a problem right now, only at birth (if a vaginal birth was done, which clearly, for a breech baby, it won’t be).

I do not like the idea of going to the hospital for an ECV (although if the problem is the cord, then it’s the zipper without the ECV for sure), a procedure which I doubt I’d like AT ALL (PULVERIZED!!!) and not knowing if it’s gonna end up in an induction or a c-section. Which is silly because even if she wasn’t breeched, there was always the chance of an induction or a c-section anyway! But I almost want to skip the uncertainty and discomfort of the ECV and just opt for the scheduled C-section, cos if statistics are right, chances are, I’m gonna end up with one anyway, so might as well just get her scheduled in and get ‘er done. And of course, that’s just another part of the irrational mind, because I’m pretty sure the brief discomfort of the ECV has nothing on the prolonged pain of healing from a C-section scar. It’s ALL going to be painful, one way or other anyway!

But at least then I know exactly when it’ll happen, how it’ll happen, and get myself mentally and emotionally prepared for it. It’s hard to describe how one gets mentally and emotionally prepared, but for me, it’s more about an acceptance and rearranging expectations that I’m probably not gonna get the birth story I envisioned (try as I may not to set any kind of expectations). but to remember that the result is far more important – my healthy baby whole and complete.

So that’s the story of that and we will know more when we see my OBGYN on Monday again to weigh the options.

In the meantime, I am far more physically uncomfortable than I have ever been. Okay, aside from that awful 1st trimester because even until today, NOTHING beats the hell of that period where I felt seasick 24/7 and threw up all day. NOTHING. But try strapping a 6 pound bag of potatoes over your belly and keep that on all day and night if you wanna remotely know what it feels like to be 9 months pregnant. I am officially getting the raised eyebrows from strangers in the elevator and stares directly at the belly when I pass people in the street, the “oh wow, she’s ready to pop!” look that falls somewhere between looking at a freak show and feeling sorry for me. I can’t really do much else other than waddle verrryyy slowly to work, try to work through this awful backache I have been getting while sitting down (yep, I’m even having problems sitting…although I have found that it helps to tilt my chair back all the way so I am inclined at a weird 40 degree angle…my work chair is thankfully one of those good ergonomic ones and it’s got springs to let me tilt backwards, but it doesn’t look so I’m just stuck there with my feet on my stool pushing myself backwards while I try to type. It’s a funny sight, but it works so far), and count the minutes till I can get home and lay horizontally.

And yet, while this is the most uncomfortable I have ever felt in my life, I am just feeling SO FREAKIN’ HAPPY inside. I can’t really emote how it feels to be just on the cusp of opening the world’s biggest present. And I have no illusions about the difficulty of early parenthood, or parenthood, period. It’d probably be the most difficult thing I’d ever have to live through in my cushy easy life. So it’s almost like I’m totally basking in the idleness of my days (when I’m not working), which I know is gonna end real soon, where all I have to do is lay on the couch and read or watch TV, lots of TV, only to get up to eat. And yet, again, WORLD’S BIGGEST PRESENT to look forward to. I am at once relishing in the absolute JOY of having my baby inside me and it feeling sooo real right now (trust me, when you have arms and legs jabbing you from inside, the whole baby thing feels REAL), and also relishing in the absolute JOY that very soon, I will not have to carry around this big watermelon in my tummy anymore and I can actually bend over and TIE MY SHOELACES really soon!! WOOHOO!! I am at once enjoying being pregnant and can’t wait to NOT be pregnant anymore.

And I have to say, these days with my husband are just special. It’s the last few days where we can enjoy the easiness of just being us, with the knowledge of many difficult days and nights ahead, and yet, again, WORLD’S BIGGEST PRESENT to look forward to for both of us. I can’t wait to see how this man I love more and more, even when I think I couldn’t love this guy any more, whom I just love to hang out with all day and night, talk nonsense to all day or share my deepest feelings, to be silent next to, and just BE with, becomes the father of my baby.

Yesterday, I bought a nursing bra and nursing pads. To the uninitiated, nursing pads are things you put in your bra so your leaking boobs won’t make a mess.

I’m going to have leaking boobs.

*cough*

Being 9 months big and having to commute to work everyday with a bad backache sucks major ass.

It’s less Kelly with a belly and more belly with a Kelly these days.

Just complaining.

Picture of my almost 3-yr old niece, Star, passing out on a plate of food.

The funny thing is that I’ve heard stories of her father doing the same thing…at a much older age…after a big night of partying…same same but different.

Your pregnancy: 34 weeks

How your baby’s growing:
Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she’s born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well.

How your life’s changing:
By this week, fatigue has probably set in again, though maybe not with the same coma-like intensity of your first trimester. Your tiredness is perfectly understandable, given the physical strain you’re under and the restless nights of frequent pee breaks and tossing and turning, while trying to get comfortable. Now’s the time to slow down and save up your energy for labor day (and beyond). If you’ve been sitting or lying down for a long time, don’t jump up too quickly. Blood can pool in your feet and legs, causing a temporary drop in your blood pressure when you get up that can make you feel dizzy.

I feel like I’m just existing in a fog of fatigue this week. Baby’s definitely gone through a growth spurt (when will I learn? No matter how big I feel at a certain time, I’M JUST GONNA GET BIGGER!), and walking is much harder than ever before. I’m trying to get as much work cleared as possible so when I get closer to my due date, I don’t have to work as hard. Yes, I’m planning to work till I pop. Not sure how that’d work, but at least my hospital is far closer to my office than my home. On Tuesday, I started getting a more annoying than awful backache just by sitting on my office chair. I could not find any position that was comfortable. By 3pm, I was almost crying to lay on the ground just so the belly could flop someplace other than on my hips. Wednesday wasn’t any easier. By Thursday, I was feeling like my hips were misaligned or something, and at times, when I walked, my hipbones feel like they are rubbing up wrongly and sending a shot of pain. I had to walk with ministeps to and from the subway. Thankfully, a prenatal massage (weekly prenatal massages are a GODSEND) last night helped “reset” things significantly. I feel quite normal hip-wise today, albeit still tired. I’m getting more and more and stronger and stronger Braxton Hicks contractions. Which I now actually like getting because I feel like at least I’m getting a hint (just merely) of what labor is gonna be like. And know that I’m gonna be embracing Mr. Epidural.

This is sandwiched by high pollen season (itchies, sneezing, watery red eyes…ugh) and Michael Jackson’s death (which makes my heart sad, and eyes tired with the incessant news reading/watching (CNN’s really taking it too far these days though) and reminiscing via youtube (need. to. stop. watching. MJ. being. utterly. cute. talented. awesome).

So it hasn’t been an easy week on the pregnancy front. The good thing is that I’m still sleeping incredibly well. The bad thing is that I feel like I need to sleep ALL the time. And I do mean, ALL the time. You know that desire to sleep after you hit the snooze button for the 4th time? Yep, that’s how I feel pretty much all day.

I have a feeling I’m going to look back on this period like it was all a dream. Which could be Mother Nature’s way of getting women to get pregnant more than once, since they kinda remember the agony of it all, but not really, cos did it really happen?

And then this morning, I saw my belly move in waves for the first time ever, and it made me giggle. I guess it’s kinda like when I’m scooping up cat poop for the 4th time in a day and I’m cussing out why the fuck I have cats, and then one of them cuddles up in between my legs while I’m watching TV and starts to purr, and then it all seems worth it. Yeah, I think having a baby will be like that. But a million times more poop. A billion times more frustration. And with a zillion times more cuddling. And at least a baby won’t rip up my arm like that when I dunk her head in water.

I caught a cold. Bah.

I was already sleeping 8-10hrs easily a night through this pregnancy. And taking 2-3hr naps in the weekends when I can. With this bug, I slept 10hrs the night before, took a 5hr nap yesterday, and slept 12hrs last night. Without medication. On top of that, I dreamt that I was sleeping last night. Yep. I dreamt that I was sleeping while I was sleeping. I was having a massage in my dream and I fell asleep in the dream. This is getting ridiculous.

The good thing is that I think I got over this bug with all the rest I got. My doctor was surprised when I told her I had no problem sleeping. On the contrary, I am sleeping more than ever. Apparently when women get this big in pregnancy, sleeping is problematic. I don’t know what they are talking about.

My mom said I was an easy baby cos I slept pretty much all the time. I popped out, cried for a minute, then fell asleep.

God, I hope my daughter gets my sleeping gene.

I’ve been wanting to write a post about what Michael Jackson meant to me. And then I decided against it, because what can I really say that could even be remotely substantial to someone who isn’t a fan? And what is fan-dom anyway? Being a fan of a celebrity just conjures up thoughts of silliness, unimportantness, distraction in face of news that really matter, like wars, like poverty, like global warming, like [insert topic that actually cause suffering and kill people].

And it is. It’s entertainment. It’s distraction from issues in the world that “matters”. MJ is just a celebrity, yadda yadda yadda…but he was MY favorite celebrity. Hence this post. I think people don’t put enough value on entertainment. And I’m probably being absolutely biased here, but I draw a line between insipid, brain-cell killing entertainment (re: Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, et al) and inspiring entertainment. Michael Jackson was enormously talented, that we all know. But, to me personally, I have had many many many hours of joy just listening to the music and watching him dance and being that magical, eccentric, out of this world guy. And I think that counts for something in my life. While he hasn’t released anything recently, there was always the potential future album or future performances to maybe look forward to. And now that’s gone. That bit of entertainment in my life.

I was that screaming teenager, camped out outside Raffles Hotel when he was in Singapore for the HIStory tour (yes! I did that! And I enjoyed every minute of it! AND, I was in the front row, thanks to, and with, 3 of my awesome MJ-fan friends, who remain friends today…eat that!). Unlike most people who are now professing to be a fan of MJ after his death, where they seemed to solely concentrate on anything Bad album and prior, I was never part of the Thriller mania days, or even the Bad era. I was too young. I only became a fan after my brother took me to watch his Dangerous concert in Singapore in August 1993. And then I started to pick up him albums and watch his videos. And that’s when it all began. Hence, I absolutely loved the Dangerous and HIStory albums, because that’s where I commenced my interest in MJ. People don’t seem to give them enough credit. But I suspect those songs will be re-discovered and given their due appreciation in due time.

I can’t explain why the 12-year old me was SO taken with MJ. After all, that was the time where the ugly allegations of child molestation first started to surface (p.s. I never for once believed he did. I don’t know how I could stay a fan if he really was. But all signs, to me, and believe me, I’ve read tons and seen tons as a fan, points to innocent). That was the time where people started to turn away from MJ, where his appearance was more often than not described as weird, or freakish. And yet, it was the start of my fan-dom. Upon hindsight, it could have been because at that age, I had yet to be impacted by other people’s judgment. I wasn’t a kid that was at all concerned about being “cool” (I was the nerd in glasses and braces and studied all the time…being cool really wasn’t a priority) or thinking what other people thought. All I knew was that I really REALLY enjoyed listening to his songs and I was really REALLY fascinated by the way he danced. And perhaps, his a-sexuality, that gentleness, that lack of machismo, was non-threatening to this young girl. Regardless of the reason, I was taken by him. I’d watch interviews with him and think he was the sweetest person ever. So cute. So magical. Where people saw freak, I, and millions of other fans, saw only that big amazing smile, beautiful eyes, and that all-encompassing talent.

As time passed, it became harder and harder to be his fan, particularly since he really wasn’t releasing much creatively. Invincible was, to me, an okay album, awesome by any one else’s standard, but not in the same level as the prior albums were to me. Plus, he wasn’t really promoting anything, which I took as a good sign actually (I loved that the world barely knew what his children looked like and he gave them some privacy to grow up in. I question how kids like Suri Cruise and Shiloh and the gazillion other Brangelina kids could ever grow up normally while having cameras shoved in their faces all the time and being on magazine covers since they were babies. It’s concerning that suddenly, after his death, there are all these new picture of his kids splashed all over the news). Naturally, the fanatical fandom lost my interest as I grew up.

Still, the music never stopped captivating me. As I got older, my appreciation of his music took on new meaning. I’d hear an MJ song I haven’t heard in a while (remember, in my teen years, his songs were pretty much all I’d listen to on my walkman, then discman) and go WHOAH! That’s friggin’ AWESOME! For example, I only recently started to really really like Off The Wall, which was too “disco-y” (I don’t know how else to describe it) for me when I was a teen. But given my exposure to soul/disco music in the NYC party scene, I heard new things in that album I never noticed before. And that is the genius of MJ’s music. And sadly, only after his death, people are discovering the same thing and having that WHOAH! moment. I’ve been hearing MJ’s music everywhere here over the weekend. People were blasting his music from their cars. Radio and TV had marathon MJ days all weekend. And it’s still amazing to me just how much good music he made. I find it a shame that it took his death for people to come out of the woodwork and finally say, without BS reference to unfounded allegations and plastic surgery etc, that he made GREAT music and he was a GREAT performer.

So I don’t know what the point of this post really is. I just wanted to write something to convey how someone I didn’t know personally had given me joy in my life, I guess. And how sorry I feel that he is gone. I won’t call this grief, because how I feel is obviously nowhere near how one would feel when someone near and dear passes. But there’s definitely that vague part of my heart that feels strangely hallow, because that person who had given me much joy and entertainment in my teen years and beyond is now gone.

Your pregnancy: 33 weeks

How your baby’s growing:
This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. He’s rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in his skull aren’t fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for him to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don’t entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.

I missed the last 2 week update. At 32nd week, I actually felt no different than I did at the 30th week. At the 32nd week, Michael Jackson died. I’ll do a separate, probably rambling post, about why that makes me sad.

Now I’m at 33 weeks. That’s more than 8-months. Wow. There have definitely been changes in the last 2 weeks. It’s the little things. Like noticing that, after I leaned over the sink, the bottom half of my (actually Pat’s, because none of my clothes fit anymore) T-shirt is soaked with water…only FIFTEEN minutes after the fact (because I no longer see the bottom half of anything, geddit? geddit?). And barely being able to walk up a flight of stairs from the subway. Or, feeling actual ANGLES in my belly. It’s not just movements I feel now. I feel actual ELBOWS or KNEES…ANGLES poking my belly. The movements feel more blatantly like a human being rotating around. And feeling tired. Really tired. I spent all of Sunday just laying in bed and watching a Weeds marathon. I was in a fog on Monday. By 3pm yesterday, I had to leave work early because I felt ready to collapse, literally, on my office table. I needed a nap sooo badly (even having a full 8-hour sleep the night before) I wanted to cry. My back started to ache and I was almost crawling on the ground to get home and I just passed out for an hour the moment I got in. And then I felt like a new person.

I have also been having more and more of the Braxton Hicks contractions. Which kinda totally freak me out about the whole child birth thing because they can take my breath away sometimes. And they aren’t even hurting right now! I have enrolled my dear friend Liz to be my doula at birth. And I’m hoping the birthing classes will help ease some nerves. As well as my good friend Epidural, because I already know we are gonna be the best of buddies.

The husband is in Singapore for 2.5 weeks. Many people seem to think that’s blasphemy, to leave your poor 8-month pregnant wife alone all by herself??. Sure, I have given him shit about it, but to be honest, I don’t see what the big deal is. I’m glad he’s having fun doing his own thing, quenching the travel-bug thirst for 2.5 of the 10 weeks of summer vacation he has (damn you, teachers!), and enjoying the freedom of movement before our lives change completely f-o-r-e-v-e-r. He’ll be home a week before full term (36 weeks). I have friends who live near me and who I can 100% rely on to help if I need to. And really, what are the chances of popping early? It happens, sure, but we can’t live our lives fearful of the rare chances. In any case, if Baby Chansidine actually pops early before Papa Patty returns, it’ll be his to miss, nothing on me…*evil laugh*.

On my end, I am relishing in the fact that this will probably be the last time in a looooong while that I can have sweet solitude. And I am REALLY enjoying having the WHOLE BED TO MYSELF. Sweet sweet sleep! Because cuddling is not what it used to be when you have a watermelon stuck a mile in front of you…and it’s summertime.