Friday, January 22, 2010

About 3 Weeks Until the Due Date!


Hello again everybody! It's January 22, 2010, a Friday night, and Natalia and I decided to spend a little time this evening doing some blogging. Natalia is now 37 weeks pregnant, still doing great, and is getting even bigger, as you can see from the latest pic.

Natalia says that the baby is still kicking a lot, but she feels like the baby has less space to punch and kick, and the baby's movement feels less like a "poking" feeling and now is softer and more deliberate as the baby gets bigger. The baby is definitely on the right side of her belly, facing the left, with the head low and the feet up towards Natalia's rib cage. This is a good position, and at this point it is likely the baby will stay there.

Natalia last went to the doctor about a week and a half ago, and she had gained 31 pounds, which would be right on track to gain about 35 pounds by the due date, and that's right where she should be. Natalia is definitely feeling more out of breath, and has had more trouble finding comfortable positions to sit and sleep in. She's still getting at least 5 hours of sleep at night before she first wakes up, so it's not too bad.

We've got the nursery well on it's way now. The latest thing we got was the travel system, which consists of a baby carrier that hooks into both a car seat base and stroller, for the non-baby experts out there. We were excited because once we had the car seat base in it's place we could envision carrying the baby out of the hospital and putting her in the car. We went ahead and left it in the car because it won't be long before we will need it! Very exciting!

Natalia has been swimming lately, a few times a week to stay active and she finds it enjoyable and relaxing. I haven't jumped in with her yet, but I probably will sometime this week. Last week I couldn't because I came down with a nasty cold and I was just not up to it. I'm pretty well recovered now, so I will probably swim next time.

We finished our Bradley class last Tuesday, and we are feeling very prepared. We're both determined to make this a natural birth. Natalia will do her best to stay relaxed during the birth and I'll do my best to keep her relaxed and make sure they don't start pumping Pitocin and other drugs into her, so that Natalia's body can do what it is supposed to. We've shown the birth plan to the doctors, and they were obliging. We've got things pretty well packed, and we're going to stay at home for as long as we can, until Natalia says, "This is it, let's go!" and then we'll be off to St. Vincent Women's Hospital to have this baby!

By the way, we've pretty much decided on the name, but we're still not telling anybody until she's born. We will say, it's not Borbanog, and it's not Klondike Mush.

Don't forget to hit up http://elkinsbaby.babypool.com if you want to be really cool!