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!