32 Weeks

32 weeks!! My, how time flies. If I give birth on my due date (which apparently only 2% or something of women do), we are t-minus 8 weeks until we get to meet Baby Shindel. I get more excited, anxious, and terrified every day. In the above picture, rather than a flattering side profile, I'm showing off my newfound ability to use my belly as a shelf. Not long after that photo was taken, I was balancing my water cup and nearly lost it to a hard kick from the baby kangaroo I'm apparently growing.

Symptoms
Mostly feeling extremely stretched. I also always - always - have a tiny foot jammed into my ribs. Otherwise, just the normal, fun, third-trimester stuff: frustratingly frequent trips to the bathroom, none of my clothes fit, I have weird eating habits, and my patience with overly-opinionated strangers is dwindling.

How big is baby?
Baby's weighing in at about 3.5 pounds this week and is around 16 inches long. From what I can tell, we've moved or are moving into a good head-down position, which is a great thing!
Fruit comparison: Florida pomelo. Do you know what that is? I don't. Let's Google:

This is the best picture that actually shows how big it is in comparison to other fruits. The Florida pomelo is the one in the upper right-hand corner. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Citrus maxima (or Citrus grandis), (Common names: shaddock, pomelo, pummelo, pommelo, pamplemousse or shaddok) is an original citrus fruit, with the look of a big grapefruit, native to South and Southeast Asia.

So there you go. My baby is as big as this weird fruit, or a "big grapefruit." It's all relative.

I found this neat pregnancy app this week called Ovia. It has a feature where it shows you how big your baby's hand currently is in comparison to how big it will be at 40 weeks. I love looking at it. Here's this week's - the pink hand is 32 weeks' size, the gray outline is 40 weeks.

Movement
YES. Tons of it. All day, every day. I swear this child is coming equipped with a swing set, and is getting a lot of use out of it in utero.

Highlights of the week
A big Target box showed up on our doorstep this week, and it turned out to be gifts from some of Elliott's family! The box included some of the crib and changing linens we had registered for, so I washed and folded them and put them away - the baby's room is starting to look more and more prepared! I love going in there and just sitting and imagining what it will be like when the baby comes. I still have to finish the canopy and rocking chair, but otherwise it's really coming together.

Low moments of the week
We ended up in labor and delivery on Monday night after I spent all day having contractions. It wasn't bad - I debated whether this update belonged in the "low moments" category - and everything is fine, but it was a better-safe-than-sorry moment and when I called the L&D nurse, she did say I needed to come in. The contractions came consistently, about every 10 minutes, and registered fairly high on the monitor. But after they checked everything out, the nurse concluded that my uterus was simply "throwing a temper tantrum" and instructed me to keep an eye on it.

Dreams
My dreams have been really sporadic and weird lately - nothing really happens, it's just a series of seemingly random appearances of people I've met once or twice, where we don't talk, I just see them, and then it's over. Possibly it's hard to have a long or coherent dream when I'm waking up every half hour to adjust my position to try to get comfortable, or to go pee.

What I'm looking forward to
This week, instead of my regular OB (who is out of town), I'm meeting with the certified nurse midwife at my practice! I'm excited to meet with her and see how what she does is different from my regular doctor. My practice has six OBs plus the CNM on staff, and they rotate as the on-call delivery doctors at my hospital, so chances are I won't get my regular doctor for delivery. I figure the more of them that I meet, the more comfortable I'll be once it's actually go time.
I'm also looking forward to meeting this baby. I know we still have a few weeks to go, but it's getting more and more real every day, and it seems like time is just flying by and it'll be here before we know it. I have this weird habit of counting down to a certain week - like I'll say to Elliott: "Four weeks to go until we have four weeks left!" to try to make it seem longer, but I'm not sure it works. Oh well.
Perhaps I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but I'm hoping that soon we can settle on names. We've narrowed our lists down enough that it's down to the ones we really like - meaning we're each sort of nudging for our favorites and it seems like we're having trouble just choosing.

Pretty soon we start having weekly appointments, and then it's time to pack the hospital bag! Very exciting.

Happy Friday friends!