34 Weeks

How your baby's growing:

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

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Update on me:

• I've been feeling very energetic and "nesty" in the mornings, and by the evenings completely exhausted and in need of laying down.
• I've been getting a lot of cleaning/organization type household stuff done, but am still having little to no motivation to finish up the few business tasks I have left to check off my list (taxes, burning photos to dvds, new terabyte storage drives to format, clearing memory cards, invoicing my last client, getting settled into gigbooks)
• We have Chloe's playpen set up in the dining room, makes it all seem very real!
• I am still having upper abdominal tension, stretching and rib pain, but I think I'm just learning to cope with it
• I've been sitting on the exercise ball a lot. Good for the body, giving baby enough room to be in the head down position, and good for my core to prepare for birth. I roll off it sometimes though :-)
• We are enjoying our childbirth class with Carol Peterson. I've learned SO much about childbirth that I never knew. I'm so excited that I have a midwife who will subscribe much more to the philosophies I'm learning at my delivery. Carol is also a doula, and it would be really nice to have her or another doula at my delivery, but unfortunately it is a bit costly for us and we are pinching every penny at this point so it's not in the cards.
• I'm starting to wonder how the cats are going to do with the new addition to our family... all we can do is try to prepare them a little. I think in general they will be ok. They are very curious kitties and they think the whole house belongs to them so that will be a shift, but I'm going to trust it's going to be ok.
• I noticed my first stretch mark on my tummy yesterday and it's getting bigger. eek.
• I am getting so excited to hold my baby!!!
• We had an awesome photo shoot with Danielle. I posted my favorite pictures on facebook, and I will post some here soon, too.