Physically, I’m doing great.  I have more energy now that it’s my job to rest (go figure) and I’m taking at least one walk a day in an effort to get labor started.  It’s working more or less, I suppose.  I’ve had a whole bunch of contractions this week, though with no pattern or discernible increase in intensity.

The baby’s head is still exceedingly low, and I’m starting to really feel this in the bones of my pelvis.  I’ve become inured to the pressure on the soft tissues of my pelvis, but my bones starting aching this week from what I can only assume is the constant pressure of a giant baby skull.

My midwife checked me out this week and she still says everything looks great.  I’m dilated to 1 cm, but that really doesn’t mean much because some people walk around for weeks dilated to 3 cm and still nothing happens.  My blood pressure is completely normal, I still have no swelling anywhere, and the baby sounds hearty and healthy.

We’re in all-systems-go, any-day-now territory, and we’re all just being held subject to the whims of a 7 lb (give or take a few ounces) baby boy.

Wes finalized the music for the birth this week, and that was a huge accomplishment.  He’s made three CD’s of pretty and serene classical music for me to listen to during early labor, when the contractions aren’t too intense and the most important thing for me to do is relax.

He also made two CD’s featuring my favorite repetitive and rhythmic song selections from a variety of different rock musicians.  These CD’s will be for active labor, when my brain will be consumed with dealing with the contractions but I’ll need a good strong rhythm to get me through them.

We’ll see if I end up liking the music we’ve picked out.  I’ve never been in labor before, so I’m unsure what I’ll want.  Still, it’ll be nice to have these around in case I do need them.

The one exciting thing that happened this week, but it turned out to be not very exciting at all, is that I thought my water broke.  But it didn’t.  Truly the last weeks of pregnancy are nonstop mystery, friends.  With strange aches, sensations, pains, and fluids, I think that if you’re not confused at least half the time when you’re in the final weeks, you probably aren’t paying attention.

This was a very vibrant week.  Squishy was in rare form, gamboling and kicking and punching.  He’s gotten rather fond of his newfound leg room (having dropped deep into my pelvis) and celebrates with surprisingly hard kicks that come out of nowhere.  His favorite time to do this is right when I’m drifting off to sleep.  It’s like he knows I’m trying to sleep.  Silly sabotaging baby.

He’s also refined his stretching techniques to point where they’re exquisite in a painful sort of way.  He stretches his legs straight up, and his head, of course, goes straight down, while I squirm and make strange faces and attempt to behave normally while all the while shouting in my head, “So weird so weird so weeeeeeeird!”

We had our last natural childbirthing class this week, and it was a bittersweet moment.  We’re glad to have Tuesday evenings back to ourselves, but will miss the camaraderie and learning opportunities.

At our class this week, our instructor had us practice pain coping techniques by holding tightly onto ice cubes.  We held the ice cubes to different body parts for at least a minute, and tried a variety of coping techniques to see which ones worked for us and which didn’t.

Wes uses music composition in his head to manage pain.  He writes music in his spare time, and it didn’t surprise me at all to learn that he coped with the pain of holding the ice cube by re-orchestrating a Bach fugue in his head.

I, on the other hand, favor the “zoning out” approach.  I fixate on a small spot of dirt on the floor, and my eyes unfocus and my mind drifts and whatever pain I’m experiencing simply ceases to exist.  We had to hold our hands submerged in a bowl of ice water for two minutes (to practice for coping with pain for the length of a transition contraction) and, thanks to a spot of dirt on the floor, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”, and Wes’ foot rubbing, I barely even felt the cold.

We’ll see if I’m nearly so lucky in my ability to tune out pain when it’s contractions I’m feeling and not my hand freezing.

I’m still feeling pretty good, though I get more tired by the day.  Pregnancy insomnia was particularly brutal this week and, whereas I normally fall back asleep easily and quickly, I’ve spent more and more time laying awake after nocturnal bathroom breaks.  Naps are no longer luxuries but are necessities, though sometimes the insomnia prevents me from taking those as well.

Wes is so supportive of my naps, and belittles me not at all for sleeping when I could be folding laundry or helping with dinner.  I truly believe my pregnancy has brought out the best in him, and I’m so grateful for how he treats me that sometimes it hurts a little.  I would fall apart without him.

I’m also feeling more twinges and cramps and pains of mystery than I ever have before.  None of them are contractions (though the Braxton Hicks contractions are starting to feel slightly more uncomfortable than they used to) but they’re definitely curious.  I never really know what’s sending out pain signals or why, all I can do is shrug and consign the pains to the mystery file.

We packed our birth bag together this week, and when it was done we just kind of stared at it sitting in the living room.  It was done, packed, ready for a midnight dash to the birth center.  We’d crossed the final line, and we were really and truly ready.

Our days and nights are characterized by a kind of excited anticipation.  We’re so very close to the end of this pregnancy, and it makes the time we have remaining as a family of two special, sweet and fleeting.

This is also the week Wes got himself a job offer, so maybe the relief is bleeding over from that too.  Either way, I’m feeling good.  The nursery is done, the baby clothes and cloth diapers are washed, the carseat is installed, and we’re officially ready.

Of course, I’d still like Squishy to stay put until after Valentine’s Day.  I’ll have all my work wrapped up, he’ll have had time to chub up, and we’ll have finished our birthing classes.  We’ll see if he decides to cooperate.

Squishy is doing really well this week.  I think he was having a growth spurt last week, because he was pretty mellow, but he’s back to his usual antics this week.  Lots of lovely kicks and knees to the ribs, still more pummeling from his tiny hands as I’m drifting off to sleep.

My midwife, during my weekly check-up, remarked that he still feels really long to her.  Even though his head is very far down in my pelvis his little butt is still tucked up firmly by my ribs.  I’m not growing out, I’m growing up!  My uterus has grown so far up into my ribcage, in fact, that she can no longer properly measure the top of it because it’s stuck under my ribs.

This is exactly as comfortable as it sounds.

Things I can no longer do:

• Check my blind spots while driving without pinching an important organ with my ribs
• Laugh without pain (apparently you can actually tear the muscle that holds your diaphragm against your ribs. Who knew?)
• Sit up straight (must have back arched at all times or face the wrath of my organs)
• Sleep the night through (after the second bathroom break I can’t fall back asleep)
• Wear my largest maternity jeans (they’re too tight across the top of my uterus!)

I had a dream about Squishy this week.  I dreamed that he was here, and had long blond hair and the brightest blue eyes ever.  I handed him off to someone to hold, and the guy returned my baby to me, only my baby was a fried egg.  I wrapped the fried egg in a blanket and then I woke up.

Not sure what that means.  I severely doubt that our baby will be blond, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility thanks to a great many members of my family on my mother’s side being blond.  I’ve prepared Wes for the fact that it’s entirely possible for two dark-haired parents to produce blond offspring, lest he start getting ideas about me and the mailman.

I suppose the thing I’m feeling most right now is peace.  I’m at peace.  Wes has an excellent job, our nursery is ready for this little man to come home, my body is doing a fabulous job taking care of my baby (seriously, this has been the model pregnancy. My blood pressure is low, no swelling, iron levels look good, no diabetes.  Believe me, I know exactly how lucky I am) and I’m almost ready to give Squishy the all clear to come out.

Almost.  He just needs to give me a few more days and then we’ll be home free.  Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’ll start my maternity leave on the 15th, thinking the baby could come any time, and then not go into labor until March.  We’ll see how peaceful I’m feeling then.

Last night, however, I had a chance to do a load of baby clothes.  Just one load.  But that’s all it took to change my outlook.  I feel much better now.  I still have two other loads to do, and we still need to go shopping for cloth diapers, but we’re getting both of those taken care of tomorrow.

It’s a good thing too, because even though I feel like I have the preparations fairly well in hand (thanks to one measly load of laundry being done. I never claimed to be rational, folks) I feel like things have taken a turn toward getting down to some serious business.  By this I mean I’m starting to wonder whether we’ll be making it to my due date of February 24 after all.

At my midwife appointment on Wednesday, she mentioned that his head was down really low.  I can definitely tell.  The bones in my pelvis are shifting, and I can tell this because when I walk my hips move a lot differently than they used to.  I’m not waddling at all, but whereas I used to walk with my feet in a straight line, now my feet pursue separate, albeit parallel, paths.

There are times when his head scrunches really far down and the pressure on my bladder is simply incredible.  I haven’t had any incontinence issues (thank you, Kegel exercises!) but the sensation definitely takes my breath away.  The Braxton Hicks contractions have also started picking up, and whereas before I couldn’t actually feel them unless I poked my belly, now they feel like tightness around my whole middle.

I also have far less endurance than I have ever had.  Before pregnancy I could clean the whole house single handedly from top to bottom, wash and fold three loads of laundry, change the sheets on the bed, and go grocery shopping all before coming home and making dinner.

Now, I have to break up my tasks into sitting tasks and standing tasks.  If I do too many standing tasks in a row, I get winded and my belly starts getting really tight from Braxton Hicks contractions.  I have to sprinkle sitting tasks in between my standing tasks, which means I can get approximately .08% as much done in a day as I used to be able to accomplish.

Wes doesn’t mind, and in truth has been the consummate perfect husband this entire pregnancy.  He helps out without asking, volunteers to do things around the house that he knows I have trouble with, and lets me nap on his shoulder even when he really has to go use the restroom or needs more water to drink.  He’s made pregnancy as easy on me as it could possibly be, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

As for darling Squishy, we’re both running out of room.  His movements are much less grandiose, though not at all less painful.  The top of my uterus now comes to the very bottom of my ribcage, so his little body parts of mystery make frequent bizarre contact with my ribs.  Needless to say, I’m doing a lot of sitting bolt upright in an effort to keep his preciousness away from important parts of my physiology.

He’s started doing this adorable thing right at bedtime though, and I have to document it for posterity.  Right after I lay down with my pillow armada, he starts punching me.  It doesn’t hurt, but I can tell it’s his tiny little baby hands and they make these rapid, tiny little punches to whatever side is lowest.  It’s like he’s using me like a speed bag at a gym, and he does it every night.

My favorite part of our 32 week ultrasound was seeing his tiny little baby hands up close to his face.  Every time I get stressed, I think of those precious little fingers that I can’t wait to kiss and it makes everything better.  The fact that he reminds me of those hands every night before I go to sleep is a definite plus and makes waking up a few times a night totally bearable.

A lot has happened this week.  Wes and I started putting the decorative touches on the nursery (he’s so busy with his job search, he initially told me he didn’t think he would get any painting done. Then he committed the cardinal sin of telling me the nursery didn’t have to be done before the baby arrived. I lovingly assured him this was a lie.) and we bought and installed our carseat.

I started feeling twinges of what may be that crazy nesting hormone surge that enables gigantic pregnant women to accomplish great feats of cleaning despite seeming exhaustion and great difficulty reaching the floor.  I’ve been spending my spare time in the evenings organizing the nursery, which for me is more stressful than blissful.

You see, I love living in a clean house.  A place for everything and everything in its place.  However, organizing and assimilating new things into my pre-existing matrix of order is very difficult.  Once the system is in place I am a happy little camper and can keep that system running with very little effort.  Establishing the system, however, is hard work.

For example, the diaper bag.  How to organize it?  This endeavor feels very similar to packing my backpack for the first day of school.  Trying things in different places until it feels right.  It’s not quite right yet, but it’s close.

As for Wes, he’s shared with me an adorable anxiety of his that I’m 99% sure is a completely common fear that dads-to-be to have.  Namely, that this will happen but in reverse:

I’m fairly certain that this is not because he thinks I’m a floozy, but rather just a subconscious fear of the unknown.  I feel like I know this baby really well.  Squishy’s likes, dislikes, his favorite time of day, and his favorite position of mine to sleep in.  We’re good buddies, partners in the road to running out of room in Erika’s torso.

For Wes, however, Squishy is a bit of a mystery.  He never knows what body part he feels moving around beneath my skin, and by virtue of not being pregnant misses out on most of what makes me feel like I know our child.  Now we’ve got this big, momentous moment in our lives coming up in just five weeks, and the mystery and fear of the unknown manifests itself as anxiety that I’m going to have a baby whose father is clearly not Wes.

It’s silliness, but no more so than the anxiety dreams I have wherein I don’t know how often to change the baby’s diaper or what temperature to make his baths.

The only thing I can do is assure Wes that the baby is very definitely his and wait patiently for the day Wes gets to meet and fall in love with our son.

As for Squishy, he’s perfected this new stretch guaranteed to make me cringe.  He stretches straight up and down, so that I feel it simultaneously in both my ribs and my cervix.  I pay him back for this by gently poking his little bottom every time he sticks it straight out of my stomach.  I can spend a few minutes just chasing him around my belly.  He doesn’t care for this at all and gets very thrashy to show me how he feels about my childish behavior.

He is also getting hiccups several times a day, and these, too, make him very thrashy.  I think he gets annoyed because he doesn’t know how to make them stop, so he just starts flailing until they go away.  In this way, we’re very similar in our approaches to problem solving.

Most of what I’m feeling right now can be chalked up to what Squishy’s doing, which is stretching and dropping.  He’s taken to giving me the most spectacularly expansive stretches.  Back when he was a tiny little person this was endearing, like when a puppy uses your finger as a chew toy.

The game’s different now.  Squishy’s a whole lot bigger than he used to be, and those stretches can be seen from across the room.  Wes was getting into bed last night and he remarked that the sheer distance Squishy is able to push out of my stomach is very nearly grotesque.  It’s an odd sight indeed to see your abdomen protruding a good five inches straight out, only to subside back to its normal shape a few moments later.

Adding to this is Squishy’s newfound interest in dropping lower into my pelvis.  I won’t say too much more about this, because I know a lot of guys who read this blog, but I will say that it’s, um, well, difficult to be unaware that there’s a giant head pressing directly on my bladder.

He doesn’t stay that far down all the time, but he’s definitely getting ready for the big drop.  My midwife was encouraged by this at my last visit, and said she likes to see those kinds of signs right around now in pregnancy.  Maybe Squishy will do us all a favor and come more or less on time instead of late like most first babies.

Then again, given my recent anxiety dreams wherein I have no idea how to care for a newborn and end up doing it all wrong, maybe if he came late it wouldn’t be such a bad thing?

This is the week I went back to work after a luscious two weeks off.  Two weeks wherein I could nap whenever I deemed it necessary.  I felt rested, and relaxed, and like I was totally on top of this whole being-pregnant-and-fabulous thing.

Now, I’m back at work and life is kicking me in the shins.  No naps for me, and I have to be up and coherent at 6:30 every morning.  Even if I drag my tired little self to bed early, I’ve developed some fantastic insomnia (which I’ve never, ever had my whole life) so it takes me ages to drift off.

The insomnia is always there, too, so when I wake up at night to use the restroom I can count on losing about half an hour of sleep for the privilege.  Sigh.  I mean really, I have very little to complain about.  I’m healthy.  Squishy is healthy.  Life is peachy.  I’m just really fracking tired.

Supposedly this week Squishy’s amniotic fluid has maxed out, so his kicks and jabs will start feeling sharper thanks to the decreased amount of cushioning fluid.  I’m really looking forward to that, and I’m not even being sarcastic.  I love seeing my little guy bouncing around in there, like he is right this very second.

We’re getting more and more instances of “What body part is poking out right there?” and I swear this morning I felt his knobby little knees jutting out my belly.  He continues to find the following sounds very exciting: the sound of me typing, Wes’ voice, the worship music at church, and the sound of his grandfather preaching (Wes’ dad is our pastor).

Things Squishy finds soothing: the shower, me reading to him (if Wes reads to him, he gets all riled up.  If I read to him it’s snoozeville), and me salsa dancing.

Aside from the exhaustion, I’m still feeling pretty decent.  A nice mellow vibe has descended on my brain (endorphins, maybe?), which I think Wes finds pleasant.  I’m perfectly content to sit and relax, and unless it’s really important I just can’t be bothered.  I’m hungry pretty constantly, but haven’t had any true cravings since my Philly cheesesteak sandwich craving.

I’m really excited about my baby shower, which is tomorrow, and can’t wait to really get cracking on the nursery.  After the shower we’ll start working on putting those final touches and decorations up.

I can still cry on command, and it doesn’t take much to make me emotional.  Wes was telling me this week about how excited he is to meet this little guy and I told him he had to stop because he was making me tear up.  We keep saying to each other, “We’re having a baby next month” but it hasn’t sunk in yet.

I suspect it’ll really sink in for me right about the time he’s crowning.

And now here we are!

This was a really good week for me.  I slept well (now, bear in mind that sleeping well at this stage of pregnancy still entails waking up a few times a night to change my pillows’ positions or use the restroom), I felt pretty good, and Squishy was busy as can be.

I continue to be a huge fan of my pregnancy fitness DVD, Leisa Hart’s Fit Mama: Prenatal Workout.  The salsa dancing section is a terrific amount of fun, and all the movement has effectively eradicated my back problems.

I do still have to pay close attention to what my body is telling me, however, because my capacity to exercise fluctuates daily.  Some days I’m game for the whole workout, other days find me with just enough energy to do one section.  Either way, it feels good to move around and that’s what counts.

Squishy was remarkably busy this week.  I’ve noticed a huge increase in the frequency of his hiccups, which amuses me because he always reacts to them the same way.  He’ll tolerate them for about a minute before he gets annoyed and starts thrashing around.

What’s weird is when I can tell which direction his back is facing by where I feel the hiccups on my body.  There’s nothing quite like feeling hiccups in your cervix to remind you that there’s a whole ‘nother person hanging out with you.

We’ve gotten into the habit of reading to him at night before we go to bed.  Squishy always loves getting really active right after my shower when I’m relaxing in bed with a book, so one night I started reading out loud to him to see if he’d like it.

He does.  He loves it.  He’ll be the busiest little baby until I or Wes starts reading, and then he’s enraptured.  It’s almost like I can feel him concentrating on our voices, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing.  When we finish he goes right back to his busy little baby activities, but for a few minutes every night we can captivate him.

I had a visit with my midwife this week and everything continues to look really good.  No swelling, my blood pressure is nice and low, and my uterus is measuring right where it should be.  I love being a boring patient!

This week was a perfect confluence of sleeping troubles.  First off, Wes caught himself a head cold that resulted in much snoring and really icky throat sounds during the night.  As I lay awake listening to my husband snore himself into a coma and make horrid swallowing sounds that made me dry heave, it took every ounce of love I have for the man not to kick him in the shins.

Also vying for the Most Problematic Nighttime Annoyance Award was acid reflux.  This is the holiday season, which means tasty food is every-freaking-where.  This is a great problem to have normally, and when I’m in tip-top overeating form I can pack away the pot roast like no one’s business.

This year, however, my stomach is squished by Squishy and I can’t handle my beef.  I keep eating what I think of as reasonable portions and then wake up at night with the overwhelming urge to throw up thanks to my stomach’s refusal to accommodate that much food.

When everything goes smoothly, I can sleep like a champ.  The baby’s active at night (his favorite time to party is between 2 am and 4 am, I’ve learned) but I’m normally a sound enough sleeper that I sleep through it (the only reason I know he’s so active then is because of the above mentioned issues keeping me up).

Luckily, Wes is on the mend and there aren’t too many other overeating opportunities on the horizon.  This doesn’t, however, inure me to the effects of sleep deprivation right now.  I told Wes that it’s cool for me to be up all night while I don’t have to work, but if he’s still snoring when I’m working, one of us is sleeping on the couch.

In Squishy-related news, he had a growth spurt this week.  I woke up one morning and my belly was noticeably bigger.  I’m 99% sure he’s head-down (though the ultrasound tomorrow will either confirm or deny this) because all the wiggles I feel down low are little and delicate, like baby hands, and the up-top movement are all huge and sweeping, like knees and feet.

We played with him with a flashlight the other day and we’re not sure whether Squishy was into it or not.  The pregnancy books say that he can see the light now so we thought we’d give him something pretty to look at.  He was wiggling around, and continued wiggling after we introduced the pretty flashlight, so who knows what he thought of it.

I’ve also started reading to him at night.  That I know he likes, and it’s a good thing too because I’ve been reading The Dresden Files to him and if he didn’t like those I’m not sure what we’d do.

The nice thing about reading to a fetus is I don’t have to worry about subject matter, so if I’m reading to him about ghouls I don’t have to censor the scary stuff to prevent nightmares.  We may have to find different books to read at bedtime when he’s a little older.

You know what else is nonsense?  The maneuvers this little guy can execute while confined by my physiology.  He did this one move today (twice in a row!) where he jettisoned off my hip bone and up into my ribs.

How is this even possible, you ask?  I don’t know, ask my fetus.

There’s really only one word for this week: Tired.  Oh my gosh, am I exhausted.  Only part of this can be blamed on the baby.  Yeah, he wakes me up quite a bit at night with his adorableness, and my back makes things uncomfy as well.  Really, though, sleep deprivation isn’t the cause.

If I had to guess, I’d say the reason I’m so tired is hormones.  The hormones have shifted to a very mellow place, making me sleepy regardless of how well I slept or how busy I’ve been.

It’s gotten so bad that I pretty much need a nap every night after dinner, which means Wes watches a lot of movies with me passed out on his shoulder.  He claims not to mind, and he pretends not to see when I occasionally drool on him.

Such a good man, I totally won’t even give him a hard time when we’re in the nursing home together and he saunters up to me wearing a fresh pair of Depends.

As for the baby, he’s over three pounds at this point and I, for one, believe the books on this account.  Schlepping this little punkin around is a lot of work.  Have I ever told you how fabulous sitting is?  Sitting is great.  Yay sitting!

I don’t sit all the time.  I’ve been very good about doing my workout DVD and the yoga portion does wonders for my back.  I was considering seeing a chiropractor, but the yoga has cleared up the issue nicely.

I also love the salsa dancing portion.  It’s really loosened up my gait and I feel a lot more fluid when I walk.  Exercise!  Who knew it could make a person feel so great?!  Ok, besides all the exercise evangelists I mean.