The birthing game

Getting closer! Now that there is only 7 weeks left on the countdown, I suppose I should start thinking about the super bad nasty part of being pregnant - the actual giving birth part. When it's your first kid, you don't know what to expect going in. You can listen to your friends' horror stories, read all of the books to prepare yourself, and it doesn't matter. You will have a different experience than all of them. Even when it's not your first time, every birth is unique. Things will not happen the same way as before.

This is where my head is at...Harlowe's birth was easy. I went in with no real expectations. I wanted to see how far I could go naturally, and it turned out I could go all the way. My body seemed to know all about this birthing business and did its thing like a champ! Water broke, labored without me doing much work (walking around or standing was more painful, so I stayed in bed like a lazy ass and my cervix kept going anyway), pushed for a while and out she came a short 10 hours later!

Now I know how painful it is to do without meds. Do I want to put myself through that again? I also know how nice it was to get up shortly after (could have been 15 minutes or 2 hours, I couldn't tell you, I don't remember anything!) and pee by myself. I also know that feeling the urge to push was super helpful. But Harlowe's pregnancy was easy compared to Avery's, is that an indication of how her birth will be?! In conclusion, I still have no real expectations for Avery's birth and will adjust my needs on the fly in the delivery room...

So I'm definitely bigger than 2 weeks ago. I looked at the side by side, just trust me. She's starting to move up into my stomach space, because I'm getting more heartburn these days. At the same time it feels like she's riding low and that she might tear out of my body like someone sliced off the beach ball. Whoa, that was a gruesome image, apologies.

The underside of my belly has become the dark side of the moon. I have no idea what's going on down there. I barely have any nerve endings in my super stretched out skin and sometimes don't even realize that it's hanging out the bottom of my shirts, which are shrinking. I swear they are!!

Braxton Hicks contractions continue to drive me bonkers, so I'm trying to take it easy when I can.





Room progress! She has a door! It needs to be painted, but at least it exists in our house. The mobile I got on Etsy arrived and it's crazy adorbs and I'm starting to get really anxious to get everything in there and hung up and organized because tick tock...I also need to freeze some meals, wash clothes, get the car seat out of the attic and probably wash that too, because ew, baby voms from Harlowe, etc etc etc!