I had my 34th week appointment this morning and all is well.  No weight gain!  (No guilt meant for those of you who are supposed to gain weight during pregnancy…I’m overweight already and not supposed to gain at all.)  My blood pressure was 110/80 still.  And baby’s heartbeat sounds just fine and is in the head down position.

During my next appointment at 36 weeks, the midwife will do the required culture to check for the presence of Strep B and check my cervix for the first time to see where I’m at.

Tonight Dave & I are going to visit the hospital where I’m going to have the baby so we can see the rooms and just get a feel for the place generally so it isn’t strange when I need to go in for real.

I had the gestational diabetes test this morning and it looks like I’m in the clear!!!!!!!!!!!!  I had them do both a finger stick and draw blood just so I wouldn’t have to wait until Friday for results.  Thankfully, the midwife thought that was a good idea and my finger stick number was great so she doesn’t foresee much of a different story from the drawn blood work.  Yeah!

Aside from that baby is doing great.  My blood pressure is still perfect.  And all is good!  Again, another YEAH!!  I start going to the midwife every 2 weeks now until 36 weeks when I start going once a week until I deliver.

Well, it is an absolutely perfect day outside so I’m going to go sit on the porch with an ice tea for a few minutes before I get busy doing some more household stuff.

This afternoon I’ve been taking some of the new baby clothes out of its packaging and getting it ready for laundering.  Everything is just so cute.

Now that the baby room is painted and we’ve converted a big chunk of the room into the baby room, I’ve finally got places to put things.  We still don’t have a dresser in which to put most things, but I have closet space and shelving space to use.  I’ve got one whole shelf devoted to blankets.  I’ve got maybe 8 receiving blankets, 5 normal blankets, 2 fitted crib sheets and some water-proof pads. So I’m feeling good about my blanket supply right now.  I might want to acquire more crib sheets eventually though.

I’ve been having fun actually finally getting a chance to look closely at all the wonderful things folks have given our baby.

It is getting harder to move and breath because the baby is growing up into my rib cage and really pressing on vital organs.  I can still bend over, but it has become this awkward semi-squat move so I don’t squish baby & myself.

Last night Dave heard the baby hiccuping.  He said it sounded like a drum inside my belly.  And he got to feel a few more kicks and watch my belly poking outward randomly with baby movements.  That was pretty awesome.

Tomorrow is my glucose test day to determine if it looks like I’ve developed gestational diabetes.  I need to make a little list of things to ask the midwife tomorrow.  As we are getting further along, I’ve actually got more questions than I did at the beginning.

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.