Thirty-three weeks five days

My good friend Tracy in Utah has informed me that she has officialy begun dilating and that her doctor says she could go into labor any time now. I believe she is due the first week in February (so sometime in the next week and a half). It's very exciting, as we've been emailing back and forth about our experiences--this is the first baby for both of us, and we're due within a month of each other. She's also expecting a boy, and plans to name him Logan. I've made her promise to email me as soon as she can after she's had him, to tell me about her birth experience.

I also asked another friend in the US with children to describe her birth experiences, and from what she said, it sounded like they were stereotypical American births: gowns, masks, stirrups, forceps, etc. Tracy swears her baby's birth is not going to go that way--and I know mine sure isn't. Two things that really got me were that, for all her children's births, the baby was whisked away almost immediately to the nursery ward, and for one child, the doctor decided to induce her early because the doctor was planning on being out of town for the due date. In fact, this made me furious when I read about it: a doctor's first priority should be the patient's welfare, and inducing labor shouldn't be done for the convenience of the doctor's vacation schedule!

These past few weeks I haven't been sleeping well at all. As I can only sleep on my side, I get painful pressure points on my hips and legs and have to turn over often: which wakes me up. Sometimes it'll only be half an hour before I need to turn. And then my bladder is limited capacity, so it takes less time to fill, waking me up more often. The baby does sometimes wake me up with his kicking, too. I guess that's one good reason for me not working; if I can't sleep at night, I can always catch up during the day. Now, I can be in bed at 10, and get up the next day at 10, but still only get eight or nine hours of sleep. This morning I woke up at 4.45AM and lay in bed for nearly an hour before deciding sleep just wasn't returning.

I weighed myself the other day and decided I've gained 25 pounds during the last eight months. Apparently it's normal to gain about a pound a week from here to delivery, so I can expect another 4-5 pounds. Also, breastfeeding is meant to help lose that weight, so hopefully it'll take me no longer to get it off that it took to put it on. I have a hard time picturing myself as overweight, actually. I know a lot of women struggle, especially after children, to lose weight, and I've never actively tried to. Hopefully it won't be too much of a problem.

I don't know if I've already written about it, but I've noticed that when I get annoyed or angry, it's hard for me to calm down about it. Usually sleeping on it makes it seem less important, but recently I've gotten quite angry and woken up the next day still as angry. I'm sure it's related to the hormones, but it's unpleasant--not just for Partner, but for me too. I've only had one crying fit which was quite early in the pregnancy (I think I mentioned it; I was frustrated and bruised all over from the daily injections I was having and ended up bursting out crying and refusing the injection), but I now have a very short fuse and hold long grudges.