You are considered full-term now and your baby’s final touches are being made. The crown-to-rump length of your baby is now 14 inches and the total length is around 21 inches. Your baby weighs approximately 6.5 pounds. Your uterus may be measuring about the same as it has been and is probably about 6.5 inches from the top of your bellybutton.
This week your baby should engage into your pelvis. If this is not your first pregnancy, it may happen later. When your baby engages, his head drops down into your pelvis and you might feel a slight sensation called `lightening` as the pressure on your ribs eases. As your baby drops into the final position for delivery, you may experience a buzzing feeling and shooting pains in your groin and leg. Normally, you will be able to breathe and eat easier. However, your uterus pushes down harder on your bladder and you will have an increased urge to urinate more frequently. Even if your baby engages now, you still possibly feel his feet in your breastbone around week 40.
Your baby is now fully mature and ready to be born. However, your baby is still growing and developing every day. Fat is still being laid down at a rate of a half ounce a day. If this is your first pregnancy, you can expect to deliver closer to 40 weeks or shortly thereafter. If this is not your first baby, you might go earlier than 40 weeks! Make sure that your bags are packed for the hospital and remember to preregister for admission.
Your doctor may begin doing weekly pelvic exams to evaluate your cervical changes and progression. Your healthcare provider will make sure that you are not leaking amniotic fluid and will also examine your cervix to check for effacement and dilation. Before labor, your cervix is thick and 0% effaced. During labor your cervix thins out and right before delivery it will become very soft and 100% effaced.
Research shows your baby can be affected by stress hormones. Make time to relax, to have fun, and to rest.
Your baby has learned to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing so it can do all three when breastfeeding after birth. Babies practice shallow breathing before birth, using amniotic fluid.
i went for my 37 weeks checkup yesterday. alyssa is estimated to be 2.6 to 3kg now. doc said that she will continue to put on 200-300gms till birth so her estimated birth weight should be around 3.1 to 3.3kg. initially i never expect her to be more than 3kg cos all the while her weight is quite low but these two months she got growth spurts. maybe her mummy had been eating too much ice cream and chocolates liao.. hehehe..
37 weeks is considered full term already, so if bb wanna come out anytime is ok liao. but bb haven’t engaged yet, doc said that bb only at the rim (of my pelvic bone i guess) and will only be engaged in probably another 2-3 weeks. i guess bb very comfy inside that she wants to stay inside all the way till 40 weeks.
my next checkup will be next week. i will be doing another blood prick test to check if my hemoglobin count had dropped cos lately i had been seeing “stars” again. i think i will also have to do VE check during the next checkup too. i got a fright yesterday when the nurse ask the doc if he will be doing VE for me, luckily he said no need. i’m so not looking forward to be “poked” by the doc, especially after reading from the forum how “scary” the VE is. hehehe..
finally i’m almost reaching the finishing point! another 3 weeks plus to EDD! but struggling away with the physical discomfort and tiredness and both my feet swell like nobody’s business. my feet swell so badly yesterday and i can’t sleep well the night before so i’m feeling really tired. furthermore loy not at home the whole day, then suddenly i felt so sorry for myself that i felt like crying. luckily i had my mum who came over to accompany me and helped to massage my legs till it felt better. everyone who had seen my feet will comment that it swell so much. so glad that my manager allow me to work from home if it really get very unbearable to walk.
i had recorded a clip of my tummy moving, well, it’s bb moving. this is the gentle version of her movement. never got the chance to record the more violent movements.
my mum commented yesterday that i should make more effort in my image. she said that i look like obasan now, especially at home with messy hair and in my PJs. i kept taking naps during the day, so i don’t see the purpose of having my hair tied up properly and change out of my comfy PJs.
seeing more and more mummies popping or going to pop from the sept mummies thread in the forum, i’m starting to feel gan jiong already. company’s HR still can’t confirm if they can proceed with 16 weeks maternity leave or not so i can’t apply for my maternity leave yet. my manager already approved me leaving earlier, so now just have to wait for news from HR. hopefully the 16 weeks ML is confirm then i will be starting my leave in another 2 weeks time else it will be 3 weeks later.
alyssa’s drawers is really too small for all her stuffs. hehehe… look at the stuffs i just washed recently.. these are just clothes for probably up to 3 months, those bigger sized clothes were still kept away.. still got a stack of face towels and receiving blankets that i had already washed and kept in the drawers.
bath towels, blankets, fitted sheets and waterproofing pads
cotton nappies and various bb’s clothes
more bb’s clothes, caps, mittens + booties
had asked loy to clear one of his shelf in our wardrobe so i can use it to put the 2 bedding sets for bb’s cot. hehehe!!! now left the washing of windows, taking down of the curtains to send to laundry and some decoration to do, but also have to wait for that busy man to allocate some time to do so.
i spend the whole weekend at home, didn’t even step out of the house once, not even going downstairs to get food. loy had photoshoot the whole day for both days, so i took the chance to start doing stuffs that i had been procrastinating for long.
almost finished packing my hospital bag, except putting in alyssa and loy’s stuffs. initially i thought i’ll have alot of things to bring, but seemed like not much. i had also finished washing all alyssa’s stuffs. but the weather was bad during the weekend as it rained on both days. i also managed to finish watching a set of taiwan serial while doing all my stuffs. hehehe..
ordered some stuffs from babymallonline again, together with theresa and joanna. i was only planning to get a few items but ended up getting more than what i planned.
i bought my breastpump from amazon. it’s a very good buy, even with shipping rate added in, i still can save about half the retail price in SG. this avent isis duo pump is dual voltage, so i don’t even need to buy the voltage convertor, just need to get the US to SG plug adaptor. the only thing is that it doesn’t have a local warranty. but i’m clueless about how to go about using it, need to try figure it out. hehe..
oh.. and i think i’m so in love with combi products, eversince i visited their showroom. i brought home one of their product catalog for year 07-08 and was drooling over their stuffs. hehehe.. i like their 4-way baby sling and choinori baby sling. all their toys look so pretty!! i think their play gym is much nicer than the fisher price one. even their baby bathing range, tableware range and other accessories look good! if i’m rich, i will get the whole range of combi stuffs. hehehe!!
i went for my routine checkup yesterday. alyssa is already estimated to be 2.4-2.7kg. i think she will be quite big by the time she’s due to be out. i was only a 2.6kg bb when i was born and i think alyssa will confirmed be more than 3kg. now i’m afraid i will have a hard time during the delivery. yesterday was also my gynae’s labour talk, he gives talk to all his patients who are giving birth soon. during the talk, he made it sounds so easy to deliver the baby. all the signs and symptoms of labour makes me panicky too. bleah..
freebies from doc’s talk. my 2nd free tin of friso newborn milk.
good news frm the gov after their initial bad news. hehehe.. the new M&P package was initially only for babies born on 1 jan 09 onwards but they backdated it to 18 aug 08. so we’re now entitled to the benefits! means the petition from the forum that i joined in does work in a way. hehe.. actually i’m more concerned about the monetary bonuses rather than the maternity leave. now the job seemed so unstable, i’m also afraid of starting my maternity leave early or extending it longer. maybe i might go jobless after i’m back from maternity leave. sigh..
my sis bought some stuffs for alyssa yesterday. we went to the combi distributor and got these..
combi coccoro car seat. initially we couldn’t decide between the pink or the brown one. hehe.. but ended up decided to get the brown one instead. but the pink one so pretty right?
combi rashule baby chair, to be placed at my parents place. but we’ll be getting one more for putting at our own home.
combi toilet training set. a free gift from them.
i’m quite impressed by their strollers, very light and very easy to handle. but i think cos it’s too light, it seemed to be abit flimsy. it closes and opens too easily that i’m scared if bb sitting inside and the whole stroller might collapse suddenly. hehehe…
actually they are not newly taken but only got to process and scanned them lately. the roll of LC-A+ film is taken in london and the roll of holga is taken in chinatown during last chinese new year period. i still have a roll which is half taken in london still in the LC-A+ and i haven’t finish taking yet.
i always had my tummy pics taken without my face so now we had a mini shoot taken over the weekend at our “home studio”. hehehe..
initially there will be a part 2 shot but guess we were too lazy and no inspiration so we’ll shoot again another time. i feel so fat in the pics, but anyway here are the “artistic” shots… quite a number of pics, so i put them under the cut.
national day fall on a saturday, so the company had declared that today will be office closure. actually i prefer what was being done previously when public holiday fall on a saturday, being given off-in-lieu to be clear at any time within the next 3 months. anyway it’s still good to have a longer weekend, 3 days is still not enough for me.
my hosting space for this domain already exceeded. don’t want to pay extra to increase the space so i need to move my photos in my gallery to somewhere else. so troublesome! and now my gallery is not working.
i managed to talk loy into not turning on his PC for 1 whole day yesterday, initially was supposed to be 2 days lor. hahaha.. i think it’s good, cos he can get to do other stuffs instead of wasting time surfing net and chatting in front of the PC. but anyway, it’s like killing him for not allowing him to turn on his PC. today after making breakfast for me, he started his usual routine of using the PC. bleah..
other than going out everyday, i got to pack part of my hospital bag and started placing bb’s stuffs into the drawers. i’m going to start washing bb’s clothes soon, cos i got a box of stuffs to wash and afraid that i won’t have enough time to dry all the stuffs if i wash them too late.
we haven’t start decorating the bb’s corner. procrastinating for too long already!
