What I know Now: 30 weeks

THIRTY WEEKS. I am THIRTY WEEKS pregnant. That seems so crazy.

So what do I know now that I didn't know then? The list begins...

1. I recently was reviewing these blog posts to fill in the beginning pages of The Belly Book. It seems that my insomnia kicked in at Week 7. Thus it has been 23 weeks of insomniac hell. In all of my dealings with insomnia, I have always focused on, "When is this going to get better?". I never ONCE though, "When is this going to get worse?". Ladies, WORSE has arrived. If you can believe it, the whole situation has gotten worse. I am beyond frustrated. I just keep my eyes on the prize.

2. 4 AM is a wonderful time to do prenatal yoga with Shiva Rae. It doesn't quite help me get back to sleep but it does relieve my back pain and tightness that has started to accompany the insomnia. I am pretty proud of the fact that for some parts of the DVD, I'm still with the first trimester woman, and others I'm on the second trimester modifications. Haven't had to make any of the third trimester modifications...yet.

3. I don't know why, but it seems that people feel a need to always comment on your size when you are pregnant. I'm not sure how I feel about it either way. The "you are so tiny" comments make me feel good on one hand, but on the other, I sometimes feel this underlying current of "you must not be eating enough for your baby" in these types of comments. I always feel compelled to justify my apparent "smallness" with "Oh, I'm really tall" or "I have a long torso" or if I'm feeling really bitchy, "The baby's growth is right on track". The "you're getting really big" comments are just kind of painful. No one ever wants to be "big" no matter how excited you are that you have a belly. Most of the time, these don't really bother me because it is all in the squeals, belly rubs, people getting excited. Can we just leave size out of the equation and say, "you look great"?! Those are my favorite comments to get.

4. {Some} Maternity clothes look better the bigger you get. I don't know why this is but I think probably b/c they don't just hang there anymore. I was trying on a dress with HC the other day and I was worried it wouldn't fit or look good as I got bigger so we put the faux belly on top of my real belly to try to simulate a really big belly and HC said, "I actually think it looks BETTER with a big belly". I bought the dress. There may be an upper limit as to HOW much bigger you can get. I'll keep you posted.

5. I have half a linea nigra on my belly.
Actually, I'm not sure what it is called b/c technically linea nigra is from your belly button south. The part above my belly button has one, ever so faint, and from my belly button down, there is nothing. Weird?! No stretch marks yet! As for other "typical" third trimester symptoms, I don't have any swollen feet, vericose veins, hemorroids or puffiness. My wedding ring still fits! (I was worried about this not fitting.) We'll see how things change in the next 10 weeks. In my mind, I have had to deal with insomnia for this whole ordeal, at least I could escape stretch marks and vericose veins as a tradeoff. Am I right?!

6. I'm hoping something called mother's intuition kicks in regarding labor and contractions. Contraction? What's a contraction? People have asked me if I've had any yet and the doctor yesterday also asked. I really don't think I have had any, but I had a bit of a "will I know if I'm having contractions" crisis. My doctor, a male, replied, "well, I can't say that I've ever had one, and I know you're not going to like this answer, but you will know when you are having one. It will feel like your uterus is, well, contracting". I'm also worried that I won't know when I'm suppossed to get to the hospital so I asked him about that one. Again, after some discussion it boils down to "you just know". Not the answer a Type-A neurotic wants to hear, but I'm working on being ok with it. Our childbirth classes start 7/5 so I'm thinking those will help some.

7. After spending the past 30 weeks (well, ok really 26 weeks because I didn't know I was pregnant for the first 4) blabbing to everyone and anyone that I really wanted this baby to come as early as possible after hitting the 37 week mark, I'm making a RETRACTION. I now want that baby to cook as long as possible and be born between September 1 and September 5. That's a pretty good window, right?! So what happened to change my mind??? One Word (acronym): FMLA.

Short story: FMLA is a huge game.

Long story: Coming soon - that deserves it's own post.

8. We're fueling the baby fire with the official Baby S baby pool. So far the majority of guesses are that it will be a boy. My official stance on the gender has been that I will be very surprised if it's a girl. Maybe that's because at this point if we have a girl, she will have 5 names.

9. It's weird being in the later stages of pregnancy and finding out about all the pregnancy newbies. We now have babies forecasted into February 2011. They just keep coming! In some ways I still feel like a pregnancy newbie.