A few weeks into the third trimester and everything is still going wonderfully.  Baby is active and my belly stills seems to grow daily.

I have to laugh at TV shows that have the third trimester pregnant gal eating hordes of food because, with me, there is just no room in there for an enormous meal and a kicking baby.  The other day this show had a pregnant woman say, “stop me if I order three entrees”.  Yeah, right!  I’ve discovered that eating like 6 tiny servings of different things throughout the day is about all I can muster without feeling overwhelmingly full and borderline sick.

Bending over for any length of time is harder now, but no big deal.  Sitting hunched is out of the question or I can’t breathe, but again no big deal.  And I’m not having any problems sleeping yet.

So I’m relishing in this time before my belly is just enormous and it is really nasty hot outside.

I’ve got my next appointment with the midwife on May 6th, which is also the date for my glucose test to make sure I haven’t developed gestational diabetes.  I’m keeping a positive attitude and praying like crazy everything is okay in that department.

God willing, only 10-13 weeks left to go and we’ll have a wonderful baby to hold in our arms.  I’m getting more and more excited to meet this little person.  Not knowing the gender is really interesting.  Everyone I’ve known recently finds out the gender so you know for a long time ahead of time at least what gender to expect.  We’re getting the full surprise.  And I really don’t have any internal maternal instinct pushing me one way or another.

Baby seems to be doing great and moves around rather often.  The other evening I really thought I got a kick that might have been able to be felt externally, but I couldn’t get the baby to recreate the kick for Dave to feel.

My belly is getting out there.  You know how you just know how much space you take up when navigating spaces and doing things like closing a door in front of yourself?  Well, I’ve discovered that I no longer know my own size because I whacked myself in the belly with our backdoor trying to close it the other day.

I can tell the baby is moving further up inside my abdomen because I’m feeling pressure on my actual stomach.  If I eat a normal sized meal now I’m in misery because the space is becoming a premium in there.  Dave said I’ve turned into a nibbler and kind of graze all day now.  I can’t get my mind past thinking I need three normal meals though and still try to eat that quantity only to suffer misery later.   I imagine that in a couple of days my brain will figure it out and I’ll just eat 3 small meals and several snacks.  I’m still doing okay with weight since I’m only up 8 pounds since the beginning.  Now is the time that all the pregnancy guides say a woman can start gaining a pound a week through the end of the pregnancy so I’ve got to be pretty careful.

My normal clothes, well, I should say the normal clothes I still could fit into are now even getting too small.  Today I put on this pink top that is one of my standard weekly apparel items only to discover it not only doesn’t cover my entire belly anymore, but the buttons are now being pulled tight.

My back is even doing decently these days.  I’ve been really being careful and pretty much not helping Dave around the sugarhouse with the maple syrup much at all.  He’s got to work really hard, but if I’m not careful then I’m in misery that evening.  Just one of the things I had to learn as a 36 yr old pregnant gal.  I ain’t 23 anymore…

As soon as we’ve put the sugarhouse and all things related to syrup production away for the season, we’ll start walking probably every other evening at the track.  I keep reading about how important walking is during that last trimester so I’m going to force myself to keep it up so maybe labor & delivery is eased somewhat for me.  I’m trying everything to avoid as many of those first baby, older mom, too many medical interventions difficulties that can easily arise.

Only 6 more weeks until my blood glucose test to see if I’ve developed gestational diabetes.  A pregnant friend just found out she failed the initial glucose test and now has to have the longer (and more needles) glucose test next week.   This one test is causing me some serious anxiety. I can’t do anything about it if gestational diabetes has developed, but my brain likes to freak out about these things anyway.

Oh, and no one REALLY explained to me just how much dreaming is affected by pregnancy.  Holy cow, I swear all I do at night is dream these weirdo, bizarre dreams now.  Considering I never use to have dreams I could recall by morning, this is a new and occasionally disturbing reality.

This morning I had an appointment with my midwife.  She got baby’s heartbeat right away and then we got to hear four sweet little hiccups.  Everything is good though.  Baby and I both seem like pregnancy agrees with us!!