Enceinte de 36 semaines (36 Wks Pregnant)!

Holy cow. 36 wks really is getting close. I'm due in 1 month and there's 1 more wk until Gabe is full-term and safe to enter the world. Gabe is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. He now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. Recent fat deposits have rounded out his face, and his powerful sucking muscles are ready for action (let's hope!). He's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered his body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected his skin during his nine-month amniotic bath. He swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, which will form the contents of his first bowel movement.

FYI: Average labor lasts 15 hrs for first-time moms and 8 hrs for subsequent pregnancies. With Stella, my water broke at 10:30pm, and I had her at 1:01pm. I didn't start feeling contractions until midnight, and I got an epidural around 6am. Granted, we let her drift to a +2, which is as far down as she could go, and the whole thing was still 14.5 hrs. Like I said, my Dr. said second labors are usually half as long as the first, so that would make mine 7.25 hrs. FYI part 2: My Dr. said that it was recently proven that being mobile during labor does NOT help progress labor any more than just lying in a bed. It does usually, however, help the mother deal with the pain.

We've been doing a bunch of stuff starting at the end of last week to prepare for Gabe, which makes me excited and feel more prepared. We painted his letters, took off and washed all the covers of Stella's old stuff (car seat, swing, papasan chair, boppy) - she plays with it with her babies, set up the pack n' play w/ bassinet that he'll be sleeping in in our room, brought up a dresser and put it in our room for Gabe's clothes (this is much more convenient than traipsing upstairs for his clothes), bought some more Swaddlers (man, they're tiny!), put car seat bases in the cars, printed off my hospital bag list, etc...That's a start at least. I'm getting sentimental now seeing his bed right next to mine every time I go into my bedroom. We're trying to get our house cleaned up and organized and maintain it, because the last thing we want is to have a dirty/messy house with a newborn. That will only add unneeded stress. Joel and my dad also picked up Stella's mattress/boxspring last weekend, which she has been sleeping on perfectly. She's only on the mattress on her floor for now. We also bought Stella a betta fish named Alpha. He is actually beautiful - blue/turquoise - as are his rocks. If only he would eat his food. We do have a 15-day guarantee on him, so if he commits suicide through starvation, we'll get another one.

I called Joel at work on April Fool's Day and said, "Hey - my water just broke." He was totally calm and believed me. Then I immediately told him I was just kidding because I didn't want him to get his hopes up. I subbed for high school French last Friday, Monday, and Tuesday and will do Monday-Thurs. next week. It went really well. I told the kids: Je suis pour le 2 mai, donc je ne vais pas avoir le bébé ici. Ne vous inquiétez pas! (I'm due May 2, so I'm not going to have the baby here. Don't worry!) They thought that was funny. I'm not planning to take any other jobs after next week because then I'll be 37 wks, and I'm not trying to have my water break during school, even though that only happens in 8% of term pregnancies before labor starts (Wow, I'm a rarity). No, really I want to enjoy the last bit with Stella before Gabe comes and be as rested and ready as possible. We'll actually be in IL this weekend for my friend's baby shower, which will be fun. Hopefully there's no "activity;" that would be bad. I'm still retaining water, no matter what I do. It helps some to lay down for a bit while Stella sleeps and then again at night, but when I'm subbing, I can't. My weight gain is no longer accurate as a result, but I feel ok about how I'm doing considering I work out around 4x/wk and burn over 2000 calories with that alone. I definitely dropped at the beginning of the week. Joel noticed right away, too. My belly button almost doesn't exist; Stella has even noticed that, and I can't see it when I look down because it moved down. I've been having more Braxton-Hick's contractions, too, some of which are pretty painful. I'm interested to see if I've progressed any at my next appt 4/8, although it really isn't indicative of when you'll have your baby, especially with second-time moms. Until then...