This post is a couple weeks late (and we completely missed Weeks 30 and 32), but I'll soon add a photo from this week to show the difference. The main thing to notice here is how much my belly has started dropping. Week 31 was the start of the downward slide, and by now (Week 33), I feel like Baby Mo is playing somewhere between my hip bones. My body has started getting ready for labor, and I'm moving a lot slower, as a result. I'm also starting to waddle a little when I'm tired, and I feel like my belly is stretching downward every time I stand up after sitting for awhile. So, the physical factors of the third trimester are kicking in. Of course, I still have at least 5 weeks to go (hopefully), so it will be interesting to track how much my body changes over that time.
I have been doing kick counts every night for over a month, and Baby Mo is an active one! I wait until after I eat dinner every night and then sit quietly and count how long it takes her to move ten times. The standard time increments are 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 1 1/2 hours, and 2 hours. She has made it in 10 minutes or less just about every time....and she often makes it in less than 2 minutes....all good signs that she's growing and developing as a healthy baby should.
We're also at the stage where we see the baby doc every two weeks now. That will change to every week in the last month before the due date. As fast as my body is changing, I can understand why! I've already had a single, solitary contraction, as if to let me know what I have to look forward to. That was an interesting experience because it took me a minute to realize what was happening, but it was also good to practice breathing and feeling my way through it so I know what to do when the real ones come. Since it was just a single occurrence, my doctor told me there's nothing to worry about - this will happen - and they're not real until they're consistent.
We've been blessed with a healthy pregnancy so far, so I'm hoping that will translate into a healthy delivery and baby, and Braxton-Hicks contractions are actually a part of the healthy preparation for labor. Because I will be over the age of 35 when I deliver, I will have all the pre-delivery tests, like the non-stress test every week, where Baby Mo's activity is monitored at the hospital. I'm very fortunate to have a doctor who is not too caught up in a "high risk" attitude, which could at the extreme end have me scheduling a c-section before even trying to deliver naturally. Because I've been healthy throughout the pregnancy, my doctor isn't overly conservative in her approach, which I greatly appreciate.
Now here's a good sidenote regarding my doctor...Her name when I started seeing her was Dr. Jody White. Apparently she got married a year ago and is just now getting around to changing her name, so the sign at the doctor's office is in a kind of transitional state to help clients know that she's changing her name. It reads, "Dr. Jody White Lai"....pronounced lie.
