35 Weeks Baked

The Last Piece!

Well today we picked up the final piece needed before Little Lady arrives - her buggy! We even had a test run in the living room with one of her teddy bears :)

It's certainly feeling much more real that she'll be here with us soon!!

Speaking of which... she may be here sooner than expected! At my midwife appointment last week we found that she is no longer lying head down & back-to-back with me, the little monkey has completely shifted and is now transverse :( She should ideally be in the vertex position by now, ready to enter the world...

But she probably takes after her Daddy with being stubborn and has flipped on her side into transverse...

Needless to say it will not be easy to deliver a baby this way!! So I have to return to the midwife at 36 weeks for her to check the baby's position and if she hasn't turned then I will be sent for a scan to verify her position and determine the reason for her lying this way. According to the midwife babies only lie this way when the placenta is low-lying and covering the cervix (baby's exit route). As noted in all my other scans I don't have this problem and my placenta is lying nicely near the top of my womb.

If it turns out that Little Lady is definately lyng transverse then we have two options:

1) The midwife/doctor tries to turn her manually and point her head down, or
2) We head for a C-Section

I have spoken to nurses about the turning process and the chances of her staying head down after being turned are only 40%, which doesn't inspire me very much. So it looks as though a C-section may well be on the cards.

If this is the case then the midwife has said she would not let me reach full term (40 weeks) in this pregnancy and the C-section will probably take place around 37 or 38 weeks...!! That's a maximum of 3 weeks away! The reason for the early delivery is because they don't want to risk me going into labour before a full-term C-Section. This could be quite disastrous as the umbilical cord or placenta could come out before the baby does, therefore Little Lady would be starved of oxygen and put into unnecessary distress.

I'm not happy with the fact I may have to go for a section, my dream was to have as much of a natural, un-aided birth as possible. I've had my heart set on this since the beginning and now it looks as though I'll be getting the complete opposite.

On the other side of that thought I know that at least Little Lady would be born safe and healthy via a section and there wouldn't be any complications with her birth. That means more to me than my own wishes for a natural birth so I would be happy to go along with the section if that's what is required. We'll just have to wait another week before we find out what's happening...

34 Week Update

Well today makes me 34 weeks pregnant! That means there's only 6 weeks to go until our due date but in reality it's only 3 weeks until Little Lady is considered "Full Term" and she would be healthy enough and fully developed if she arrived early.

This week saw the arrival of the dreaded cankles :( My feet have swollen to giant proportions and I've actually went up two (yes, 2!) whole shoe sizes whilst being pregnant! Argh! I now have man-sized feet :( And it's impossible to find shoes that fit, even open flip flops have my feet hanging over the edges. So for the rest of this pregnancy I may well be house-bound so that I can happily walk around barefoot...

So today we also start preparations for Little Lady's eviction - hey, if you don't pay rent, you can't stay! I have started drinking raspberry leaf tea to help tone up my uterus and hopefully help shorten the second stage of labour. All my fiends swear by the stuff and it helps your uterus return to pre-baby tone quicker than if I wasn't to use it. So it's tea to start off with and once I reach 36 weeks I can start on the tablet form which has a higher potency.

Also on the eviction process "to-do" list is get on the birthing ball! Little Lady is currently in the head down position, which is great, but unfortunately she is also lying with her back to my back. This will make labour harder and a lot more painful if she stays that way so the midwife has suggested I get on my birthing ball and have a bounce for 30mins every day to try and get her to shift around. I've also been told to try and sit forward as much as possible to let gravity take its course and help her body "swing" forward. So no more lying on the sofa for me! I've put the laptop at the dining table to encourage me to sit on a chair instead so I can lean forward more.

If none of this works by my 37 weeks appointment with the midwife then it looks as though they will have to turn her manually, which looks VERY painful! So we're trying to aoid that at all costs!

Please Little Lady, turn around for Mummy!

The Nursery Is Finally Complete!

Well it's finally finished! We got the last bits and pieces yesterday for the bed (waterproof sheets, etc.) so I've spent the morning putting the final touches on the room. I absolutely LOVE it! Scott and I aren't entirely fond of the colour pink so we've tried to keep it mostly neutral, apart from the bedding set which was adorable and I couldn't leave the shop without it!

Everything else we have for Little Lady is neutral/unisex with bright bold colours, there's nothing worse than seeing kids with pink everything or blue everything! Plus we'd like our kid(s) to be as creative as we are and we feel bright colours will help stimulate them better :)