38 week update

The little one has officially “dropped” (also known as lightening). This means that her head is firmly engaged in my pelvis, and that my ribs only feel like 100 daggers are constantly pressing into them instead of 10,000. She has settled into one position most of the time, with her back toward my front, along my left side. From there, she sticks out her butt on my left and her feet on my right. I like to think of her being in a pike position. I tried to demonstrate it for Joe the other night but it’s not so easy to recreate outside the uterus.

We’ve made great strides in creating our birthing suite - now located in our bedroom instead of the office, as we’d originally planned. Our midwife came to our house last week and strongly recommended that we switch to the bedroom for its privacy. Now a giant mint-green birthing tub is standing ready to serve us in the corner of the bedroom, keeping watch while we sleep. The aforementioned home-birth supplies have been compiled.

I am now taking a dizzying array of supplements: prenatal vitamins 3x/day, calcium-magnesium-D 2x/day, omega-3 1x/day, evening primrose oil 1x/day, oregon grape bark tea 3x/day, grapefruit seed extract 1x/day, iron 2x/day, vitamin C 2x/day with iron, acidophilus-bifidus 1x/day. Fortunately I worked my way up to this level of supplementation, or I’d never remember all the steps.

Now, we just need her to hang on for a couple more weeks. You don’t want your birthday to be on Christmas, do you, baby?