Pregnancy Week 36

Week: 36

Baby: Rhubarb – yummy baby! Now, just to stew some apples and make a pie…

What I’m cooking: Chubby cheeks! Now she’s all about the fat gain, Grub is getting some squeezable cheeks this week, which is going to make it all the more difficult not to eat her up!

Main symptom: A serious issue with general uncomfortableness – sitting for too long makes my coccyx ache, standing for too long makes my legs and feet ache, walking makes everything hurt, lying down impacts on my hips. The extra weight, all centred on my stomach (I hope!) just really takes a toll on your body. As a consequence, I’m cranky and awful for a lot of the time. Lucky everyone else!

What’s on this week: Another midwife checkup, and our last ultrasound before we get to see Grub for real. Also, my last full week of work! It couldn’t have come a minute sooner.

I am not keeping up to date at the moment! Big weeks at work in trying to get everything sorted before I leave has meant my organisation in all other areas has been severely lacking! So I apologise for my delay this week – can I blame being fat and slow? This week, I’ve had something on pretty much every night – the midwife appointment on the Monday along with another doctor appointment, work meetings on the Tuesday and yoga, an ultrasound on Thursday, and then a wedding on the weekend that I’d promised to make an artwork for, so Wednesday and Friday (and Saturday!) were spent experimenting and finalising the piece. Luckily for me, I’ve then had Monday and Tuesday off this week (see how late I am!), in which my nesting instincts have kicked back into gear. We’ve been gifted a ridiculously large amount of baby clothes from our friends who already have kids, so this weekend I sorted through them all, put aside some for charity donations (seriously, there are so many clothes it’s impossible to keep them all), and washed and sorted the rest. The remainder of the house is a dump site, but at least that’s done. I also finally finished packing my hospital bag! I went into a bit of a panic late last week, as a friend of mine that was due the same day as me gave birth on Thursday! So that certainly helped me to get my skates on. I later found out she’d been induced as the baby hadn’t been growing as well as she should, so that’s put me at ease a little more, but the countdown until D-Day is getting to be a crazily small amount of days (I swear last time I checked it was about 60 days until I was due, now it’s 17!!) and I feel like there’s still a lot to do.

Surprisingly enough, I feel almost ready for labour. I think the trickiest part at the moment is the not knowing – I could go into labour in the next 5 minutes, or it might not happen for another couple of weeks. That’s causing me the most anxiety, so I’m almost wanting it to happen sooner so that I can just get on with it. I’ve never been good at waiting for things! I’m trying not to symptom check, but it’s tricky when everything hurts – you start questioning whether it hurt that much before, or maybe something’s changed.

Anyway. Let’s give you an update on the official stuff – the midwife appointment was great, as usual. Lovely midwife, we had a great chat while she was checking me out. My urine test (the first one I’ve done…oops! I’m meant to do them at every appointment…) was negative, my Strep B test also came back negative, and Grub is starting to head towards being engaged! They’ve said she’s 3/5 engaged, which means her head is almost in the middle of my pelvis. This also means that the measurement for my fundal height (meant to match the amount of weeks) isn’t as accurate anymore, as she’s not all up in my abdomen. At 36 weeks, I measured 34.5cm, and I imagine it’ll be similar at the next appointment at 38 weeks. She certainly feels heavy though! We also had the last ultrasound last week for the placenta study I’m involved in, and we got to see Grub’s lovely face again, even if it was only nose down (her eyes were too far into the pelvis to see properly). We were also told she’s already 3.1kg (6lb13oz)! Which puts her in the 90th percentile size wise – no issues with a lack of growth here…eeek!

Here she is, little chubby cheeks:

I feel like as I’m slowing down, everything around me is speeding up. I’m so looking forward to reaching the end of this week, as from Friday afternoon I’ll officially be on maternity leave! I’m trying to come up with some ideas for things to do to keep me occupied, but I think the first few days will consist of a lot of sleeping and catching up on Netflix!

See you on the relaxi-side!

Jane xx