Most of this week you spent in a posterior position. All my efforts to turn you were in vain! The fun part of this is I can feel your feet, hands, knees, and elbows moving around SO much more when you are in this position. You are STRONG! So I’d have to admit that I prefer when you are anterior, so you can use your placenta as a punching bag instead of the front of my belly!
Then on Friday afternoon, I cuddled up in our hammock with your Daddy, and suddenly a giant lump protruded from my abdomen. It was larger than a softball, and about as round, and seemed to poke out three inches or more. I could wrap both my hands around it and almost move it around. We were busting up laughing because it looked and felt SO weird, even though I couldn’t figure out what part of you I was feeling, or if it was just a Braxton Hick. When we saw the midwife an hour later, she felt it too, and said it was your butt! You had rotated sideways, almost anterior, curled up, and were sticking your rear straight up!
Then she felt the rest of you, finding your head still down low (yay), your knees to one side, an elbow on another side. I couldn’t believe how BIG you are already. Having her point out your different body parts really shows me your size, and it is a bit shocking to me how close to a full size newborn you have already become. I don’t think my choices of fruits and veggies to represent you are adequate. Perhaps if you completely curled up in a ball, you could be that small, but you are truly so much bigger than I even realize.
In addition to viewing sonograms last night, your Daddy and I watched videos of babies born at thirty four weeks gestation. They looked like real babies. Gone were the translucent skin, bald heads, and somewhat frightening bodies so thin and frail. Instead, these babies look like slightly smaller versions of full-term babies. It is hard for me to believe we have come this far.
In two more weeks, it will be legal and safe for us to deliver you at home. I don’t expect you to come that early, but the fact we have nearly reached that point keeps taking me by surprise. It seems like yesterday your Daddy and I were looking at sonograms of babies who still were the shape and size of lima beans. And now you are almost fully grown. I’m sure in another few years, it will seem like yesterday that you were born, as you approach your tenth or twentieth birthday.
It was certainly an eventful week! We finished painting your nursery, put the furniture in place, had a visit from our midwife, had a close friend in town, and had your first baby shower!
More painting. Me wearing the respirator mask so the nasty fumes don't get to you.
We finished painting this week, which was a lot of work and a huge relief! I love how the colors turned out. There is still a lot to do, like painting the dressers, sewing curtains, putting art on the walls, and filling the dresser drawers with your clothes and things. But the skeleton is in place!
Your room was put together just in time for you to share it with one of my close friends who came from out of town to visit us. Her baby slept in your crib to test it out for you! My friend visited to celebrate your baby shower, and to take photographs of your Daddy and I and you together, while you are still hiding inside my belly. If she still lived here, she would have been at your birth as well, to celebrate and cry and takephotos. We are sad she will miss that joyful event, but so happy to have seen her and spent time together.
There are two grey walls and two yellow walls. The quilt is vintage and was originally hand-stitched, just the top layer. Your Grandmama machine quilted the rest of it to the batting and backing, which took a long time! She also quilted a smaller blanket for you. Both of these she will finish soon by sewing edge binding onto them.
This week she also sewed a bumper for your crib! She is so talented and hard-working. I can’t wait to see it all come together.
At your baby shower, we received all sorts of wonderful gifts. Some you will use, like a car seat, dishes,and cloth diapers. Others you will enjoy, like some interactive toys. It was almost overwhelming, how many people came to bless us and pray for us. I was especially encouraged by all the prayers… for your safe delivery, for your health, for your love for Jesus and His cause, for your Daddy and I in our marriage and as parents… I left feeling so encouraged and strengthened.
Some more handmade gifts arrived this week in the mail! Your Nana Rose sewed you flannel cloth wipes. She also crocheted you a sweet yellow blanket. We have it with your first outfits to wrap you up in shortly after you arrive.
Your Great Aunt Marianela crocheted you little booties and a sweater. And at our baby shower, my mom gave me some clothes that I wore when I was a baby! Even if you are a boy, there is at least one little outfit you can wear. She also gave me photos where I am wearing some of the outfits! I can’t believe she has kept them for me, for thirty years.
Thirty four 34 weeks pregnant
Thirty four 34 weeks pregnant
At our visit with Robin, our midwife, and her assistant Jean, you would hardly hold still long enough for them to feel you. You are so active and squirmy! You also like to hang out in the lower part of your house. Every once in a while, I feel kicks or movement higher up near my ribs,but for the most part, even though your house reaches up pretty high, you don’t use all that space. You prefer being curled up lower down, which makes my belly protrude and look round like a soccer ball. Eventually, as you grow more, you won’t have any choice where to be, since your body will fill up all the available space!
By averages, you are still around eighteen inches long, and you weigh around five pounds! Some of that weight is fat accumulating under your skin, plumping up your arms and legs. As a result, your skin is less wrinkled, and you are starting to look like a newborn. In fact, you both look and act like a newborn already, or so they tell me. If that is the case, you are going to like curling up and being swaddled, and also moving around. I imagine your little feet and hands will move a lot after you are born, since they continue being so active even now.
The vernix on your skin is getting thicker and creamier as the fine lanugo hair on your body disappears. Your nails have grown long enough to cover their nail beds, reaching the tips of your fingers and toes.
Your eyes blink frequently, closing when you sleep, opening while you wake. Your hearing is sharper, and your memory of sounds is increasing. You know my voice and your Daddy’s voice well enough to be comforted by them. I like talking and singing to you while I massage your back through my belly, pressing just firmly enough where I think you can feel the gentle massage. It usually makes you kick, so I know you feel it!
Your Daddy and I were discussing the god-parent issue. I don’t know if it is a northern or Midwest tradition, or an Anglo tradition, but in the Latin-American culture, I’ve never heard of people doing it. Your Daddy seems to think a child’s god-parents are the people who would take care of the child if something happened to the parents. I thought that was designated in our wills. We haven’t finished the conversation yet of what to do.
Regardless, I know that you are God’s child! We have stood before Him and entrusted you to Him, and we will do so time and again as you grow.
“ ‘I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the assembly I will sing your praises.’
And again, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’
And again he says, ‘Here am I, and the children God has given me.’
Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.(Hebrews 2:12-14)
In return for entrusting you to our heavenly Father, we discover He gives back even more.
His instruction,
His peace,
His spirit,
His truth-giving words,
His never-ever-leaving presence.
“All your children will be taught by the LORD, and great will be their peace.” (Isaiah 54:13)
“ ‘As for Me, this is My covenant with them,’ says the LORD. ‘My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and My words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,’ says the LORD.” (Isaiah 59:21)
