Thirty Two Weeks…Or More?

Well, as you can tell by the title of this post, big changes are coming our way! I’ll get to all of it, I promise…and I still need to post pics of our shower this past weekend…my To Do List keeps getting longer, but according to my doctor, my time is getting shorter. How does a girl fit it all in?!?!

From my post yesterday, you know by now that I had a check up yesterday afternoon and my 32-week sonogram to check on little Jax. Although referring to him as “little” anything might be the butt of all jokes! Apparently, our boy is growing ahead of schedule. Like two weeks ahead of schedule right now. Two weeks ago, he was just one week ahead…and now he’s a full two weeks ahead of my timeline. So my question is if that makes me at 32 weeks or at 34 weeks? I don’t know. My doctor was hesitant to officially move my “due date” yesterday – she wants to wait and do another sonogram in two weeks when I come back and make some decisions at that time. So we’ll see…

I’m thinking that this might be a little outdated, but according to babycenter.com my baby weighs 3.75 pounds (my doctor said closer to 5 lbs yesterday) which is the size of a large jicama, and is about 16.7 inches long taking up a lot of space in your uterus. I’m gaining about a pound a week and roughly half of that goes right to Jax. In fact, he’ll gain a third to a half of his birth weight during the next 7 weeks as he fattens up for survival outside the womb.

Like I said, that seems a bit outdated knowing what I know now and what I saw on the ultrasound yesterday. His legs are measuring at 34 weeks, his arms are at 33 weeks and his head is ALREADY 8.5 cm. Brent didn’t understand the implications of that last measurement until I reminded him that women only stretch to 10cm…yeah, he gets it now!

The good news is that both baby and mama are healthy and fine. We could see him opening and closing his mouth yesterday, he was totally playing with his toes and hands and his little ribs were already practicing breathing motions, which was REALLY cool to see on the screen. My fluid levels are wonderful, my blood pressure was completely normal and I was able to add the weight that my doctor is looking for me to add right now, so all is well in our camp.

And really, that’s the most important thing for me to keep in mind right now. We’re both healthy and happy. Maybe I should repeat that – we’re BOTH healthy and happy. So he’s a little big…not that big of a deal. She’s going to address our options after our next visit in two weeks, but she did definitely say with no question about it that I would not be going all the way to my July 30th due date. I reminded her how hot it was getting outside too…just so that she can factor that in her decision-making process! :)

So knowing all of that, let’s see what you think about my belly shots! And I finally remembered to take the frontal shot… Yep, that’s my belly button, a complete outie now! Here’s my stats:

Weight? 3 lb gain – marking a total of 12 pounds
Stretch marks? Still nothing…crossing my fingers that it stays that way!
Belly Button – innie/outie? We’ve already seen the evidence for this one…
Movement? All day long…and into the night now. It used to be that he was really active when I first laid down and then he’d settle down and let me sleep…yeah, not so much anymore!
Swelling? Very Minor. And just on my feet. Still wearing my wedding rings, and only on really long days do I notice that my feet are a bit swollen.
Contractions/Signs of Labor? None.
Other Issues? The panic that’s setting in to know that I have 4-6 weeks instead of the 8 weeks like I was thinking?!?!

Do you want to see the sonogram pics too? She doesn’t give them to me on a disc, so these are snapshots of the print outs that she gave me – forgive the quality! A head shot… A “little” foot… I tried to take a better picture of this one, but it’s an action shot that she caught and just not that clear…but maybe you can still see the foot up in the air (from the knee up) and the hand playing with it… There was one more where he has his fist up my his mouth, but it was worse than the knee/foot one…so I’m not going to attempt to post it. Needless to say, he was VERY active during our sonogram yesterday…which is always a good sign!

Jenna was able to go with us yesterday and “see” baby Jax on screen, and it really tickled her to do that. She just kept going on and on about it…which makes me feel better knowing that she’s getting excited to meet her little brother! She really liked seeing his bones and brain the best…even though she said that his face looked like he was wearing funny glasses since you couldn’t see the eyes.

So keep your fingers crossed for us that Jax really likes my tummy and will stay in a bit longer. The crib isn’t put together, the room isn’t ready, I have one more shower coming up…and we have NO bottles yet at the house. Saying that we’re not ready yet is the understatement of the year! But I plan on doing some shopping this weekend and getting started on those items that we will have to have and haven’t yet received…even though I’ve got one more shower coming. I just want to be prepared…

Oh, and send some positive thoughts my way – the doctor wants me to “start taking it easy” and I’m not really sure that I can do that yet. I mean, she took two weeks of time away from me yesterday, along with the warning that it might even be more than that after our next visit! How am I supposed to take it easy and relax when my “deadline” got moved up and I feel so behind? I’m not sure about that one…