Hot stuff

I'm 33 weeks and 6 days.

So, the past two days have been a glipse of what it means to be heavily pregnant in hot weather. It's really nice to be able to get out and absorb some vitamin D, but I fear that it's going to get old fast. My waddle-walk is slower than ever, and with baby sitting right under my ribs I'm out of breath on even the slightest of inclines. Plus there's the issue of clothing to think of; I'm wearing some knee-length leggins with a t-shirt today and I feel a bit naked, but most of my maternity dresses are polyester so I dread to think of the sweating which'd ensue. I'm super proud of my bump so not bothered about wearing clothes that show it off, but I am quite conscious of my thicker arms and legs and not particularly keen on having them out on show. Vanity.

At around 36 weeks (in a fortnight) baby might drop lower into place, which would mean that I've got much more room to breathe. I hope she does. I think about half of first babies do around that time. I think her legs and bum are lying under my right rib, and her head is down under my belly-button and to the left. She's pretty active so I feel her pushing around those areas lots of times every day, and about twice a day she'll have a wild half hour jiggling around my whole tummy. It's the best thing ever.

I've been a bit lazy updating this blog because I'm not really doing much, just enjoying my maternity leave and getting the last few things sorted for when she's born. But I do read-up on pregnancy/birth/childcare almost every day, so maybe I should blog about some of the things that I'm learning. I've very quickly become one of those mums who thinks of NOTHING apart from baby. I fear that I've become massively boring to anyone who isn't particularly interested in the subject. I always thought that I'd want to make loads of cute/useless things for her, but I've found that I don't really care about that anymore and instead I'm too busy thinking about breastfeeding, child-birth and nappies.

I've written out a rough copy of my birth plan. It's a bit misleading to call it a "plan" because it's more like a list of things that could happen in order of preference; i.e. I'll try to use breathing/"active birth" positions as long as possible in labour (I've been practicing some yoga for this, but don't see myself holding out for long on d-day), then I'd like to use gas and air, and if that's not enough then I'd like one of the morphine based painkillers, and finally I'd turn to an epidural. But you just don't know what's going to happen, so it's impossible to really "plan", and probably best that I'm not too precious about it going how I want it to go, I'll just do whatever's best at the time. It is useful to think it all through though, especially the little things I hadn't really thought of as choices, like using drugs to help out the placenta (sorry!) and if you'd like the baby given straight to you or cleaned up first. It's all getting a bit graphic so I'll stop there.

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