We are officially past the point where, if I went into labor, I’m no longer “pre-term” but “early-term”! It feels so real that this baby could come at any time and that feeling grew exponentially after our hospital visit a week ago…
Wednesday night was our final prenatal class out of the 4 free classes offered with our insurance. We’d done the others within the same building where Brady works so that had been really convenient. This last class wasn’t available at any close by locations so we signed up to take it in DC. It was a pain to get to because DC is the worst but the facility was nice and the class was helpful to an extent. This class focused on labor and delivery but didn’t offer any hands on training and was very much geared towards those expecting a typical hospital birth and not planning to go natural.
Anyways, we’d driven different cars so we left separately to head home. I was almost out of DC on an uncrowded, 3-lane, 25 mph road when I was jolted from the passenger side of the car. I was confused at first but quickly realized someone had literally just bounced themselves off the side of my car. They didn’t stop so I had to hold on my horn til they pulled over. I started calling my dad as I was getting out of the car to go look. I asked this woman what on earth happened and she just grunted and gave me an irritated look. At a quick glance the car didn’t look smashed in so she gave me attitude and was like, what’s wrong with your car?! I said I haven’t had a chance to look yet, so hold on as I started talking to my dad. She jumped back in her car (behind mine) and drove off. I couldn’t believe it and I was still trying to process the fact that someone had hit me. I tried to read off the license number to my dad so we’d hopefully get it written right and I started driving home because I didn’t know what else to do.
Writing this down is actually giving me a little bit of stress!
Within about 10 minutes I started to feel some cramping in my right side that I hadn’t experienced at all this pregnancy. I wasn’t stressing too much because he was still moving around a lot. I got home around 8:45 pm, noted I had a couple small dents in the car and a tad bit of traded paint. An hour later, I was still having some super light pains in my abdomen and was feeling increasingly frustrated and upset. I was standing in the kitchen when I had a pretty strong pain that kind of made me double over and brought on an intense wave of nausea. We took my blood pressure which was slightly elevated. We spent the next 30 minutes trying to decide whether or not we should call our nurse advice line. We eventually landed on the better safe than sorry route since I was still having these pains. They asked a lot of questions and after speaking with the on-call doctor, they told us to go to Labor and Delivery at our hospital to get checked out. I’d partially packed a hospital bag so we threw in a couple extra things, just in case, and left for the hospital.
We arrived at midnight and by 1 I was all set up and hooked to the monitors. I was having some light contractions and decided to monitor for at least 4 hours to see if they would dissipate. By 2 am, I was moved to an actual room so we could get some rest. The nurse (who was super sweet) also took some blood so they could double check to make sure the baby’s blood hadn’t mixed with mine at all. I slept a little for most of an hour and then spent the next few hours staring at the clock since Brady was asleep and my phone was dead and I couldn’t move because of the monitors. Baby didn’t like the monitors so the nurse had to keep shifting the heart rate monitor. They finally gave the all clear at 6 am. We got home at 7 am after a quick breakfast stop and went straight to sleep. Brady had already called in for a half day since there was no way he could do two back to back 10 hour days with no sleep.
snacking at 4:40 am in labor and delivery while being monitored after a minor accident.
I filed a hit and run report with the police the next day – obviously not ideal since I was supposed to have called from the scene but I figure now that either way they wouldn’t do much about it since there were no cameras around and there isn’t any significant damage.
We’re both thankful that things turned out alright and that baby is still healthy and strong. Since this was the first time we’d been into the hospital, it started to actually make us excited for his upcoming arrival! We can’t wait to meet our little baby boy.
37 Weeks – Pregnancy Update
Size of Baby
At 37 weeks, baby is now 19.1 inches, about the size of a romaine heart (these food comparisons make no sense lol), and weighs around 6.3 pounds!
Weight Gain
Currently up around 34ish pounds!
New Developments/Symptoms
I officially have only one pair of shoes that fits! Swelling in my arms and legs has also inhibited some of my range of motion that I feel expecially when trying to go up and down stairs. Reflux and heartburn is also a regular visitor here.
Carpal Tunnel – this has been lightly plaguing me for a few months now but has officially reached a new level of pain. I have a harder time gripping things and forget about asking me to squeeze dry a sponge while washing dishes. I had it the worst about a week and a half ago when I spent a lot of time with my wrist wrapped in an ice pack.
Sometime in the last couple weeks, I have been plagued by intense hunger. I have to eat frequently – like a full meal every 2 hours or less or else I get so intensely hungry I feel like I’m going to throw up. I try to keep a package of crackers and a bottle of water on me at all times whenever I’m not at home because these feelings are intense and very unpleasant.
The toughest thing I’m dealing with at the moment is round ligament pain while I’m in bed. I do ok most of the day but for some reason, laying in bed and switching sides is just about the most painful thing right now. It hurts a lot to get in and out of bed even if I have help so it’s general misery. In addition, I usually have a hard time falling asleep and then staying asleep after getting up to use the bathroom. So I’m lucky to be getting even close to 5 hours of sleep at night. I’m walking around perpetually exhausted.
The switch from Lovenox to Heparin – At 36 weeks I was switched over to heparin so that whenever I go into labor, I can stop taking the drugs and they’ll be out of my system faster. One reason being that you can’t have an epidural with the drugs in your system or it could cause paralysis. The dosage is 2.5 times the amount of medication as I was taking before, I have to take the new dose twice a day, and I have to load it myself instead of having easy, pre-loaded syringes. It’s been a learning curve and it’s turned my abdomen into one giant, sensitive bruise. I’m looking forward to no longer taking daily injections.
Food Aversions/Cravings
I’m back to having a hard time deciding on foods even though I have an appetite that could rival just about anything. In general, it’s hard to go wrong with anything fresh – especially if it’s in season. I’ve been loving fresh peaches (my absolute favorite summer treat) and other summer produce a lot. I made my own pickles with some farmer’s market pickles over the weekend and I’m in love. They taste amazing on fresh rosemary bread.
Exercise
The heat and humidity here has made walking outside impossible which is just about the only regular activity I could deal with right now. So, as it’s been the last month or two, my only real exercise comes from shopping and doing work around the house. I have gone to the pool a couple times recently which feels amazing but I haven’t been active swimming, just relaxing. Getting out of bed feels like an exercise these days so can that count?
Maternity/Baby Purchases
We’re almost all set for baby’s arrival! We’ve mostly purchased everything we want/need for starting out and our nursery is FINALLY pretty much ready to go! In the last month, we’ve intensively worked on our house to finish painting so we can get the carpet installed. It was installed 2 weeks ago and our home feels like a totally new place! We spent about 5+ hours last Sunday building our IKEA dresser/changing table and a couple days later we built the crib. There’s still a lot of projects to do but it’s amazing to have finally moved into our master bedroom and have the nursery furniture built. I’m currently working on washing all the baby clothes and linens so we can finish organizing the nursery.
view into the nursery from our bedroom
Maisie is in love with the crib and the pack’n’play which we will be using as a bassinet in our room. I’m nervous about how to handle her when the baby comes but I’m trying not to stress about it until I see how she is with him.
Overall Feelings
I am so excited (and nervous) to have this baby! I know life is about to change in this insane way forever but it’s something we’ve waited to have for so long that it’s hard to believe it’s finally happening. I’m nervous about labor because we’re working on preparing for an unmedicated “natural” birth so if you have any advice in that realm, I’d love to hear it! Even though it feels like I spend most of my updates complaining, I am so happy to be pregnant and I am so in love with my husband and this new family we’re starting. <3
I believe this is my longest update ever so if you made it this far, thanks for reading today!
2 Comments
Oh my gosh! This is such a scary update and I’m SO glad everything is okay. I can’t believe that woman didn’t stop, especially after seeing that you were pregnant!
As to Maisie, I agree with just waiting to see how she is with the baby. My parents’ cats did not enjoy my niece when she was tiny and stayed out of range. It made everything easier. Of course, now she’s almost 2 and LOVES the cats. One loves her back, the other continues to stay out of range ๐
Oh my gosh that is so scary about the hit and run! And what a jerk for her to get upset when she is the one who hit you! We were/are kinda nervous about our cat too but think that he will either love her or steer clear until he can figure baby girl out! Our dog we are not worried about at all!
I plan on doing unmedicated/natural birth as well and two things that have really stuck out in my mind is that if you were in a coma, your body could essentially have the baby without you and focus on not squeezing your hands. It sounds weird but you cant really squeeze your hands without squeezing the rest of your body and being as calm and not tense as possible really helps. Also, this article: http://mamabearbliss.com/natural-labor-tips/ Woof, sorry long comment! Good luck to you!!