37 weeks

I'm only 2 and a half weeks away from my due date!  The last couple months have been so busy, probably because it's summer and because I spend every free minute I can resting.  At this point I have all kinds of aches and pains for most of the day.  My pelvis actually hurts a lot of the time now.  About a week or 2 ago I thought I felt him "drop," and then a couple days ago when I woke up I felt something kind of pop under my diaphragm and then I was sure he dropped.  I've felt a new kind of pressure in my pelvis and I can even feel Elijah kicking my hip bones sometimes.  I've gotten a lot better at figuring out what body parts are where.  During week 33 during an afternoon nap I very distinctly felt him flip over and he's been head down ever since.  That was such a relief because with his head tucked under my ribcage I was so uncomfortable all the time.  Most of the time I'm so ready for him to be born, and then once in a while I kind of panic at the thought of having a baby pretty much anytime now.  The last few weeks have felt remarkably similar to the first trimester.  Many mornings I wake up and I have to talk myself out of bed and just take it one day at a time.  I also haven't had much of an appetite lately, and I'm sleeping and peeing even more than before.  And my emotions are all crazy again.  In the middle of the pregnancy I seemed to mellow out with the mood swings, but now they're back and worse than before.  But everything is easier when you know it will all be over in a few weeks and you can hold your baby.  The best part of the whole pregnancy has been our childbirth class.  I feel a million times more prepared now than I did before.  Each class I leave feeling more confident than before.  Breastfeeding was definitely my biggest concern for the past few months, and once we covered that last week I felt even better.  A couple weeks ago we got to hear the birth story of another couple who took the class before us.  Their little boy was just 4 weeks old and Daniel could not take his eyes off him for the entire class.  It gave me just a tiny glimpse of how crazy in love he is going to be when Elijah is born.   So for now, my strategy is to plan on him being a couple weeks late.  If I tell myself I have another 4 weeks to go, I won't go crazy looking for signs of labor.  But that gets harder as each day passes.  And it doesn't help that everyone says "any day now!"  It seems like everyone else is convinced he'll come very soon.  So far I've been pretty patient, and I'm very grateful for that.  I have friends who were going insane by this point and many of them were electively induced on or before their due date.  I'm determined not to get induced.  I know this baby will come when he's ready, and if we induce we may end up with health problems that could have been avoided by waiting.  The last thing I want is to go home with my baby in the NICU.  That would be absolutely heartbreaking.  We had an appointment this morning and learned that 1) I'm not dilated at all (no surprise there), 2) He's probably going to be on the big side (again, no surprise), 3) He's dropped way down in my pelvis, and 4) we still have no idea if I'll go into labor tonight or 4 weeks from now.  Oh, and he is still healthy and perfect as far as we can tell.  What a relief.  Very often throughout the pregnancy I have thanked God that everything has gone so smoothly.  I read blogs of other women who have so many complications, and it sounds so scary.  Not once have we had one little tiny concern.  We didn't even have to wait to get pregnant in the first place.  So now it's just a waiting game.  I'm planning to keep working until I give birth.  It's exhausting and sometimes painful by the end of the day, but I'm thankful to have something to keep me busy.  I think I might go crazy if I had to sit at home and just wait to go into labor.  But it would be great if he came just a little early, so I don't have to work for another 2 1/2 weeks :-)