Realities of Late Pregnancy

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything – partly because I’ve been completely snowed under at work and exhausted when I get home, and partly because I can’t think of anything to tell. But now I know that baby Peach could be born at any moment so I started thinking about things again.

I realized last night that there are several things I’ve never talked about that are becoming more and more part of daily life. We’re definitely into the late stages of pregnancy, end of week 38 I believe.

The first thing is that Mom-to-Be continues to get bigger and bigger! Not weight-wise, which is the strange part. She’s more or less stabilized around 203 lbs, which seems right for her and Baby-to-Be. But her belly shape keeps filling out and changing.

Little Peach has rotated and engaged now, so the little critter is facing the right direction – with head-down, back to Mom-to-Be’s belly, facing her spine. So Mom’s belly is now much more pointy in front than before. It used to look big and round at the sides, but kind of flat on the front – when Peach was lying sideways and not engaged. Now that Peach has shifted, Peach’s back and bum are pressing against the front of Mom-to-Be’s belly and causing it to look like she’s got one of those cylindrical cushions vertically in her belly.

The other thing that’s changed is Mom-to-Be isn’t sleeping well at all. Her breathing has relaxed so she’s not making those hard wheezing noises in her sleep, but she takes longer to fall asleep and wakes often during the night. This is a stark change from before her pregnancy when she’d fall asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow, and stay sleeping like a log for the full night.

And since she’s now both heavier and physically larger, when she turns over in bed it’s not longer like a small earthquake. Now it’s definitely a Magnitude 9 on the Richter Scale! Even though she doesn’t always wake up fully when she rolls over, she causes lots of quakes and waves as she slowly and carefully turns her body and then re-adjusts to find a comfortable position. She freaked me out a couple nights in a row by starting to groan loudly as she turns – the first time she did this I woke up thinking she was having labour pains! And of course she’s taking up more space in the bed.

Up until about 2 or 3 weeks ago she would always be hot – kicking off the blankets and having very nice warm hands. Now I’ve noticed that’s changing. Her hands aren’t so warm, and at night she’s beginning to do the blanket croc thing again – only to push them off a short while later.

All this is affecting my sleep patterns too – all the things that are causing her to have less sleep are also causing me to have less sleep… plus I get a bit of the wake up freezing thing when she pulls all the blankets off me! But I can’t complain too much as she’s the one doing the bulk of the work.

Other things I’ve noticed are that she’s slowing down energy-wise. Less energy to run around and go out to do things. And taking a nap in the afternoon now, probably to catch up on the sleep she’s missing from the nighttime. On the other hand she’s still driven to complete her special projects she wants done before Peach is born – hand-making birth announcement and thank-you cards and making up a bunch of little things like baby bum-wipes from some organic cotton fabric etc. But mostly now she sits in the rocking chair or lies down quietly reading.

Oh yeah – the one thing I haven’t mentioned that kind of concerns me is driving with her in the car. Now that her belly is so big, the lap part of the seat belt runs right over the low belly around the belly-button area. The shoulder strap is in the usual place, but the lap belt seems to go right over where Peach is tucked inside. I am now getting a bit paranoid with her in the car as I wonder what would happen if we got hit or in an accident where the belt would be pushing on her belly. She tries to adjust the lap belt lower but it just rides up. I guess the best thing to do is to avoid having any accidents – but I have to say it does cause me concern.