Week 35: 34 weeks, and all is well (still!)

34 weeks, 1 day.

So this morning’s midwife appointment was uneventful – baby is still very big as far as they can tell from the outside. The fact that he’s consistently measuring big, and by about the same amount every time, makes me significantly less skeptical of the diagnosis, but we won’t be really worried about making decisions about it until the 36-week ultrasound. If he comes then or before then, the decisions won’t be related to size, and once we’ve had the ultrasound, well, then we go with our best guesses, and with the doctor’s input, I hope we can at least be in a place where we have a few sets of scenarios to work with. If the only option left on the table is a scheduled C-section, so be it – I can’t say I like the idea, but I’m prepared for the possibility.

It’s kind of funny – I was talking to a friend of mine (a former co-worker) yesterday, and he wondered why it is that I wouldn’t really want a C-section. He’s very Southern California (and awesome, so don’t get the idea that I’m knocking him!), and I’m still not sure if he was just trying to reassure me or if there is some SoCal idea that getting cut is no bigger deal than, um, getting stretched. I’m not a fan of major abdominal surgery if it can be avoided, but your personal mileage may vary. Obviously, I prefer doing it the way women have been doing it for thousands of years, but given that I’m not too keen on what also happened for most of those thousands of years before modern medicine (lots of women and babies dying/being injured in childbirth), I’m not going to say no or freak if it happens to be the best option, so I’m not going to go all zealous on my doctors or anything. I just want to be sure it doesn’t get done without a good reason – and I consider Small Monster’s health a good reason, if it’s a clear and significant risk.

In other news, I now have a good idea of how Not-So-Small Monster is positioned. He moves a lot, but I don’t think he’s actually changed position much in the past few days, probably as a result of him being so big and not having too much room in there. I’m actually wondering if his head is engaged, because I have a lot of strange, low pressure in my pelvis and hips as if something is pushing my hips apart (and there is another sign, but not one I want to share on the Internet, thank you ), but in any event, Kiddo’s back appears to be on my right side, and his little feet kick me on the upper left.

In what may be good news, my midwife was glad that I have an ultrasound scheduled for 2 weeks from now because she wants to confirm that the baby is head-down (I’m nearly positive that he is – he’d turned at my last ultrasound, and I’m pretty sure those are his feet popping out occasionally at the top of my uterus). The reason this is good news is that needing to know if the baby is head-down or not suggests to me that labor is still possibly on the table, where I’d like to keep it.

Anyhow, that’s all there is to report – little guy has started moving even when I’m busy and walking around, which may or may not be a bad sign for future attempts to soothe him (if he can stay awake through being rocked back and forth all over town, what hope do we have for hanging on to any future threads of our collective sanity? )! And me, I’m doing fine. Tired of being so huge, but, hey, I’ll get to go through the most rapid weight loss ever in a few weeks (even if I won’t lose nearly enough )…