how we survived: weeks 28 - 40

As you probably saw, we have baby!

But, before I get into life as a family of three (!) I thought I'd backtrack a bit and go through our third trimester.

Weeks 28 -31

When you're pregnant, you'll probably hear a lot of people talking about how second trimester is simply heaven and how the third just sucks balls. While in some ways this is true, it's not as if you wake up the morning of week 28 and suddenly have no ankles, horrible shooting pains and a bad attitude. For me, the major physical change I noticed around the start of the third trimester is what everyone affectionately refers to as "lightning crotch." Sorry, boys. The good news: it would only hit while I was walking and while painful, only lasted a second.

The start of your third trimester is also when your doctor's visits increase to every two weeks. For me, I thought this was great because I got to hear her heartbeat and ask my doctor any questions that had built up over the past two weeks. Which were always a lot, natch.

Week 28 was also when we took our babymoon to London, which you can read more about here.

Weeks 29 and 30 were my New York and Maryland baby showers, respectively. And I'm just realizing I never put up any pictures from these! Thank you again to everyone who helped planned and execute a pair of wonderful parties. Hopefully I can get around to posting some pics.

Week 30 was also when we took our hospital tour, which I wrote about here.

Lastly, we completed our CPR training in week 31, which you can also read about here.

Weeks 32 - 35

Around week 32 was when I really started to notice how cumbersome a belly can be. Tying shoes, rolling over in bed, even getting up from a low couch all started to be a bit of a production. And more vexing for someone like me, eating a normal size meal started to make me very uncomfortable; there just wasn't enough room in my belly food a ton of food and the baby. I'd feel out of breath for hours afterwards, sometimes.

Also during this week was when we booked our doula, which you can read a little about here.

Lastly (but not least!), we had our maternity shoot at the end of this week. Check out all our photos here.

Week 33 and beyond was when we really kicked the nursery decorating/renovating into high gear. Once the curtains are up, I promise I will share pictures. But until then, you can satisfy yourself with the Pinterest page I made.

At week 34 (officially the start of no more traveling!), we took our childbirth class, which a) I cannot recommend highly enough and b) you can read about here.

Around this time I also started making my list of restaurants that I wanted to hit before baby arrived. This was awesome for two reasons: one, I could eat whatever I wanted (obviously within pregnancy guidelines) and two, I love to eat, so ... that's awesome. Lots of photos of where we ate are on my Instagram.

Weeks 36 - 40

The homestretch! Or so I thought, ha. There were a lot of pre-baby milestones during this time: last Christmas, last New Year's. In retrospect, I had zero labor signs, even up until my due date, so maybe I should have known she wasn't going to be punctual. But hindsight is always 20/20, no?

At an ultrasound around week 36, we found out that baby was measuring below the 10th percentile, which, this late in a pregnancy means pretty automatic close monitoring. While this is a scary thing to hear, the doctors at Beth Israel did an excellent job of making sure I didn't panic. The bonus was that I was told to nap every day, stop doing cardio exercise and eat ice cream. Seriously. And while doing twice-weekly ultrasounds wasn't ideal, it was always comforting to get to hear and see her on the monitor.

At our very last ultrasound where they weighed her (I continued to have them up until a few days before my induction, but they didn't do weight estimates), she had shot up to the 26th percentile, so that also made us feel a lot better going into post-40 weeks.

As we got closer to the due date, we ramped up some natural induction techniques, including three sessions of acupuncture (read about that here), evening primrose oil, red raspberry leaf tea and some other ... physical methods. You can read more about that here.

Other than a few VERY mild braxton hicks, I still wasn't feeling like she was getting here any time soon. And, as you can see, that did turn out to be the case.

Next up: weeks 41 and 41 ... and beyond!