The Bump Chronicles- week 37

This has been an interesting week, Daddy Fox behaved and waited until I reached the official 37 week mark to start with the “is it time yet?” jokes, if I go overdue I’ll be VERY sick of those jokes…

The pregnancy newsletters that I subscribe to have shifted from talking about ” this week baby developed …” to ” cope with labor by…” or “things to take to the hospital”.

At least my body has been showing signs that it is getting ready for labor but nothing definite, it could still be weeks.

At work the boss looks at me like I’m a ticking time bomb, at least they finally started to plan for my leave.  Work has been particularly hard this week due to fatigue, swollen feet and sporadic contractions.  But despite all that I found myself nesting at work, since those are the hours in which I have energy and I’m stuck in there I end up cleaning my desk and reorganizing my filing cabinet.  It sucks that I don’t have the same energy by the time I get home, or if I do, by then my feet are so huge that I have no choice but to get off them.

Yes, I have elephant feet now, they are HUGE!  And the swelling doesn’t go down after a good night’s sleep either, they may shrink a little but it’s still super inflated.  But my blood pressure is good and it’s only my feet so I don’t have to worry about pre-eclampsia.

I am hard pressed to put my feet up often due to work and lifestyle but yesterday when I finally did get the chance to put my feet up for most of the workday I found that it didn’t help one bit, my feet kept swelling at the same pace as if I had been walking all day.

I’m drinking the water, moderating salt, trying to rest, trying to do some light walking (or in my case waddling) all to no avail.  I freak out every time I look at my feet.

I just hope that I don’t end up like my mother, her pregnancy edema is still with her 29 years later.

I admit that swelling is the only symptom that is making my life miserable.  Heavy belly, minuscule bladder capacity, low heat tolerance, pelvic pain, contractions, cramps… and anything else that I forget at the moment, they’re all manageable, constantly swollen feet that don’t fit into anything but flip flops = grrr.

We are in the final readying stages as we enter “safe dates”.  We have the birth tub at the house, the labor day supplies are all ready in a box and I struggle to keep the house clean or at least semi decent.

Daddy Fox finished assembling the nursery furniture and I love it.  Cherry is my favorite wood color so I’m glad that we got this set. It was super cute to have Daddy Fox channeling Martha Stewart last night as he applied the decorative decals to the walls.

Aside from some clutter reduction and floor cleaning the nursery is almost done!

My placenta brain doesn’t let me remember that I still need to get the empty gel caps to encapsulate my placenta, agh! I’m pretty sure that I am forgetting other things as well but my placenta hasn’t allowed me to remember what those are.

I have already acquired the belly casting kit as it was on sale at a decent discount, now I’m trying to figure out when to do it.  I would like to wait until close to 40 weeks but with the whole “it can happen at any time” I don’t want to risk going into labor and missing out on the opportunity so I may end up doing it sooner rather than later.  It’s up to Daddy Fox now as he will be playing the role of “sculptor”.

Hubby finds it amusing that I seem to have developed what he calls a “reckless” attitude, I call it “who the hell cares”, this is seen in me being too tired to try hard at anything anymore, lol.  Didn’t park exactly parallel to the lines? don’t care, didn’t meet my quota for quality evaluations at work?… don’t care, used the wrong word?… don’t care.  I dropped something on the floor?… don’t care.  I have stopped being an overachiever at work until I return from maternity leave.

One thing that I’ve been ranting quite a bit elsewhere online is the fact that most people think that natural birth and vaginal birth are synonyms.  They don’t seem to realize that one can have a very medicalized vaginal birth (examples: induction, artificial membrane rupture, pitocin augmentation,  epidural… you get the point).  I don’t know about you but none of that seems natural to me.  Perhaps the new natural should be called drug free or intervention free.

Vaginal, natural…who cares? I guess I care.  I’m willing to concede that one can still have a natural birth with artificial membrane rupture provided that it’s done while labor has already been off to a good start,  there are some natural induction techniques that can be considered as well but pitocin, epidurals etc fall way out of that scope.

And  I think it matters because the pendulum about childbirth is swung so far out that, in general it has become an undefined mystery and it needs clarification, if only to let others make up their own mind of what seems normal and natural to them.

Will I get the natural birth I want?  I don’t know… I hope so but will I strive for it?  that’s what I’ve been doing for 9 months!

I leave you with the heavy bump and cankles at 37 weeks: