Sponge's Spot 37 Weeks

Well here we are at 37 weeks already, how time has flown by! This third trimester continues to be much better than the second, thank goodness, although I suspect your Daddy might disagree with me on that one since he's been complaining a lot about how grumpy I've been. I admit that I've been slightly frustrated and annoyed by the chaos that is usually amok on our floors since it is getting very difficult for me to bend down to pick it all up. Your sister, of course, thinks that life looks much rosier when the contents of the entire house are strewn about the floor :) Luckily, Daddy has been complaining much less lately and instead using his energy to help me out more and that has made all the difference in the world.

I have gained about 44 pounds so far which I think is such a neat coincidence because, while I feel much larger this time around, that is almost exactly what I had gained at this point in my pregnancy with Sofie. My belly seems completely different to me this time around, much more compact and harder than it was last time. I'm hoping that it's because you're not posterior like your sister was, and so it's your nice firm back pushing out against my belly instead of a chubby squishy tummy. I'm pretty sure you dropped a few weeks ago, because after about a day of adjusting to feeling like I was waddling around with a bowling ball between my legs I've been breathing much easier and have just been more comfortable overall. I've been sleeping very fitfully for quite awhile now since I have sharp pelvic pain every time I roll over and it wakes me up. I have a lot of pain when I put my pants on in the morning too, but other than that it usually doesn't bother me much during the daytime, which is nice. The last couple of weeks have brought the onset of some increased swelling, though my feet are nowhere near as rotund as they were when I was pregnant with your sister. They can get pretty bad when I'm up and on them a lot during the day, but overall they seem to retreat to near normal after a day or two.

I've been telling people that you're going to be born on the 15th...ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION IN THERE...it's only one week away. I sort of arbitrarily picked that date, probably because it's two weeks early and I think I deserve for you to be early since your sister was two weeks late. So I'm focusing all my energies (which I don't even really believe in but heck it's worth a shot, right?) on the 15th and I'm going to do my best to will you out! If you're not done, though, don't get too nervous. I don't have much of a track record with the whole will-ing thing!

As a family we have been quite feverishly enjoying all there is to enjoy about summer. We've been spending lots of time outside taking walks, playing at the playground, going to the pool, enjoying backyard play dates, visiting the zoo, cooking out, and we even took a trip to the "beach." I guess I'm trying to stuff in all of the fun activities that become a bit more difficult when there's a newborn in the house. It's just now beginning to occur to me that this whole going from three to four thing might be a bit of a bumpy transition for us all. I really hadn't thought about it much until the other day at the library when a friend asked me to hold her newborn while she changed her older daughter's diaper. It was all going quite nicely until Sofie started bringing me books to read and puzzles to do and I didn't have an extra lap for her to sit on, or any hands free to turn her pages. She adjusted just fine, sat down on the floor in front of me and turned the pages by herself, but for the first time I remembered what it was like to begin to relearn all of my daily routines and try to complete them with less hands in less time using my foggy sleep-deprived brain. Challenging, sure, but I'm always up for a good challenge, and it won't take long for me to start waking up in the morning to your sweet baby breath and just vaguely remembering what life was like before you arrived on the scene...