36 Weeks

I'll keep this one short and sweet today. (Edited to add: Ha! I ramble on forever in this post. Get your skimmin' eyes ready.) Last night, allll night (from 8PM to 8AM), I dealt with a bout of false labor, or a false start, or whatever you want to call it. They were what I would call slightly painful, time-able Braxton Hicks contractions. When I timed them, they were about 3-5 minutes apart, but not painful enough for me to wake Will. And they were WORSE when I laid down! I finally slept from 5-7AM. I got up around 8 and showered when they slowed down considerably. 

I took the hardest nap OF MY LIFE this afternoon (after Mass and the largest Cracker Barrel brunch you ever saw!). You know, the kind where you wake up disoriented and your whole body hurts because you haven't moved in the slightest in over an hour? It was glorious. I'm still having crampy Braxton Hicks contractions but they are irregular (I think  - not really paying attention) and markedly less painful. 

Boo. Let's hope things get going for real soon because we all know baby's on a deadline.

Here we are at 36 (and a half!) weeks:

And same shirt, same pose, same 'do . . . 7 weeks apart. 

Good thing I went up a size when I bought this shirt! And I think my hair put on half an inch. That's attributable for like an extra half pound of weight gain, right? (I was at 43 pounds overall gained at my appointment on Friday.)

I won't be following the usual preg post format because, ehhh, the nap wasn't that good.

This past week was weird. In the beginning of the week, I was my normal tired self, cursing the shopping and to-do lists before me. Then things took a turn on Thursday and I felt amazing. I told the doctor at Friday's appointment that I thought the baby was quite comfortable in there and wouldn't be out for a while! Notwithstanding my efforts to get things ready for him to come out. I started a low dose of evening primrose oil, did a lot of bouncing/pelvic rocks on the exercise ball, and took some Tylenol.

The doctor did the GBS swab and offered to check me for dilation and effacement. As he put his hand on my belly, the baby kicked him as to say "don't listen to my mom, I want out of here!" Yes, I was 2-3 cm dilated and the doctor could feel William's head. (N.B. I was so excited about dilation, I didn't think to ask about effacement. Only later through Dr. Googs did I learn that it's actually a more important sign for when you will go into labor. Oh well. Only a few days until the next appointment anyway.)  The doctor assured me that it wasn't a sign I would go into labor soon, but I was just excited about being 25% of the way done dilating before even going into labor. I'll take it. He told us he thought we'd have a "healthy 7 or 8 pounder" and then told us a story about a 12 pound baby he delivered where the baby's butt got stuck in the birth canal and he had to yank it out. Ha! Noooo thank you.

I didn't have any cramping or problems after he checked me (I was kind of fearing it would be painful, but it wasn't at all) and Saturday (yesterday) was another good day, until I got in the shower and observed my belly contorting to the oddest shapes. It was like the baby was going from the left side to the right side, back and forth. Then, while watching House of Cards (so into this show right now!!), things got painful. The rest is history, as in, I already complained about it in the beginning of this post. 

And now we wait and see if things start up again . . .

This is what he did all weekend. Definitely wasn't watching golf. No way.

. . . while we ponder the structure of a perfectly just society. Or watch Netflix. One or the other.