I’m at 35 weeks and now will have weekly OB appointments.  Apparently, I’m at the point where they wouldn’t try to ‘stop’ my labor if it started.  Wow, this makes Genghis’s arrival seem even more real.  The type A part of me wants to know exactly when he’s arriving, so I can make sure I’ve completed my ToDo list before the big day.  But I also know that this is not a realistic expectation, so I’ll just have to chill out and wait. 

I still seem bigger every day.  I can’t see my feet and have clothing issues.  I got one last wearing of my pregnancy business suit this week but I don’t think I’ll be fitting into it again.  I can’t see my feet and had to get some assistance for footcare (toenail clipping and painting) as it’s hard to get to them consistently without getting really out of breath.  I’ve never been flexible, but now that I have jumbo-baby in between my hands and feet, I can manage to get them clean in the shower but that’s pretty much it.  My Braxton-Hicks ‘practice’ contractions are getting more noticeable.  Still nothing to stop my day, but my uterus is definitely more powerful than before. 

TinyD is also getting beefier – when he wiggles, he can get in some pretty strong shots to my liver, bladder, and other organs.  He also changes positions, which makes me look like I have a square abdomen on one side.  I assume this is from his tiny butt, but who knows.  He’s clearly been headbutting my bladder for weeks now.  As big as he seems to be getting, when Travis held up a baby sock to my belly for a size comparison, we realized he’s still a little dude. 

This weekend, Travis and my plans include figuring out what baby stuff we’re missing.  We have a lot of clothes and baby towels, thanks to generous family and friends.  We meet a pediatrician later this week and Travis has made a nice spreadsheet outlining our health insurance options for TinyD. (i.e. add to my policy? Add to Travis’s? Get a family plan through my work?).  My cheapo employer only pays for individual health coverage, so the question becomes quite legit when it may cost of $400 a month out of pocket for health coverage for Travis and Genghis. 

I have pica. 

For anyone who doesn’t know what this is (and doesn’t feel like googling it), pica is the eating of non-food objects caused by iron-deficiency anemia.  All pregnant women get anemia eventually, mainly because the liquid part of the blood increases at a much faster rate than the number of red blood cells in the blood. 

There are a few different non-food things that are typically eaten in pica: 

1. ice, which I’ve been eating a lot of, chomping away a few times a day. 2. laundry starch, which I have no desire to eat

3. dirt or clay, which I also haven’t sampled and am not tempted by in the least (the extreme handwashing and paranoia about contaminated food doesn’t really jive with eating a fistful of dirt from the garden) 

No one knows why these are the things anemic people with pica want to eat. It’s not like there’s a bunch of iron in dirt or laundry starch.  Guess I better keep taking my prenatal vitamins.

I haven’t done so well with writing lately.  Things got a little busy at work. I’ve been in
Washington DC at a conference called Digestive Disease Week, where gastroenterologists from around the world converge for a week  of science, sight-seeing, and free coffee-drinking.  Last year, 16,000 gastroenterologists and surgeons attended.  I was really glad it was in DC, since I can’t travel any farther, even if it did necessitate the pre-conference scientific poster-making and other general frenzy.  I also got to drive back and forth from DC to
Baltimore as I still had to work Monday and Tuesday.  The scientific stuff at the conference was really good and people asked questions about my scientific posters and not just my belly . So….. I resolve to write more often.