36 Week Update

Paul and I toured the birthing center at St. Mary's Hospital yesterday night. There were tons of people on the tour and the nurses were very surprised. Let's hope we don't all show up on the same day. The birthing center was on the top floor of the hospital and the rooms actually had beautiful views despite the hospital's location in a shadier area of Grand Rapids. We were told where to park and register. We saw the triage rooms where they decide if you should actually be admitted to the hospital. These are not very private and so I am happy to be educated enough to hopefully know when I am definitely in labor. The birthing rooms are private and feature a whirlpool tub, birthing ball, chair for dad, and everything else you could imagine. The rooms were very nice and so were all of the nurses.

The only problem I foresee is the brutal walk from the parking lot. It was about a five minute speed walk, which I think would translate into a much longer in-labor walk. They do have wheelchairs at all of the entrances, but since we are planning to labor at home for a while until the contractions are fairly close together and consistent, I can see how the trip to the nurse's station will be a long one.

After the tour we headed down to the first floor to see if we could squeeze our way into the infant CPR class. The class is only held once per month and I tried to register earlier this week. The scheduler told me the class was full for the next few months. When we showed up to the class the nurse said she was surprised someone would tell us that because she only had three couples signed up. So we were lucky enough to learn infant/child CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver last night. The process is actually very easy, and I feel so much better now that I know how to do it; however, we pray that we never need to use our new skill.

I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions for about a week. Some women say these are painful, but mine are not painful at all. Actually, it is hard to distinguish whether she is kicking me and leaving her legs extended or if I am having a contraction. It is obvious if I feel my belly because it goes from having the give of a volleyball to the give of a rock. I get them mostly when I am stressed at work and occasionally when baby is kicking around too hard. My belly has not dropped and I do not feel like her head is deeply engaged in my pelvis, so I am fairly certain that labor will not be occurring "any day now." Besides, I need the rest of this month at least to finish some projects at work and get the nursery finished!

I haven't had much swelling. I did take off my wedding ring and instead put on an old ring Paul bought for me. Nothing like being eight months pregnant without a wedding band! I didn't really NEED to take the ring off yet, but I started to get very paranoid that I would wake up one morning with sausage fingers and it would be stuck.

My belly, on the other hand, continues to SWELL! I have been getting so angry lately because I spill everything on my belly. Just yesterday I was at work and I was eating a piece of chocolate. Somehow I ended up getting chocolate all down the front of my shirt. Great. As if I don't feel like a hippopotamus already! Speaking of that, we were in the grocery store last weekend when I noticed some delicious donuts in the bakery section. Paul's friends were coming over and were planning to stay the night so I yelled to Paul, "Hey, do you want some donuts?" Well, unfortunately about five people stopped, looked at my belly, and smirked. Damn! How cliche! Then about ten minutes later the lady at the deli asks me "Well, did you get your donuts? He can't exactly tell you 'no' right?" I'm glad my big pregnant belly is so amusing to so many people.