A milestone

At 39 weeks even, today I'm officially the most pregnant I've ever been. At this point with Claire I was in the middle of a 25-hour stretch of labor; she was born six days before her due date. I have no signs whatsoever of labor, but I didn't with her, either, so I suppose he could come anytime.

At my 38-week appointment last Thursday I was 1 cm. dilated. At Amanda's 38-week appointment she was 5 cm. dilated and was holding her baby four hours later. I wonder who's living right?

When I made my 39-week appointment (for this Thursday morning) the secretary gave me the doctors' on-call schedule. I would strongly prefer that Evan be delivered by one of two doctors at the practice, and they happen to be on call for a combined five days this week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but not getting my hopes up.

When Matt gets home I'll try to remember to get him to take a belly picture, since (hopefully) the baby bump will be gone soon. I have actually lost two pounds in the past couple of weeks -- due, I'm sure, to my muscles wasting away from not running in a week -- but my stomach is huge. Friends and strangers alike enjoy exclaiming over it. The bigger issue is that this baby is just crazy low -- I really don't think he could drop any lower. I only own two shirts that fully cover my stomach. It's so low that even underwear doesn't fit right anymore, never mind my jeans. I cannot wait to be back in my regular clothes.

I haven't had an ultrasound since the gender-reveal one and none of the doctors have estimated Evan's weight, but I have a feeling this is going to be a big baby. Come soon, little man!

Officially full-term

Last Friday was my 37-week appointment and as usual it was uneventful. For the first time I saw the new doctor who replaced the doctor who delivered Claire. Apparently his practice is to check everyone for dilation from 36 weeks on, so I got a surprise check (no progress, though). The other doctors at the practice don't check until 38 or 39 weeks unless you've had contractions or other signs of labor.

I turned in my last article this morning so am officially on break from work (except for editing, which, compared to writing, is much easier to do on short notice and little sleep). Now I'm going to focus on getting rested before this baby comes. I have been waking up every couple of hours during the night lately, not just to use the bathroom -- although I always do that too, why not? -- but because apparently it takes so much effort to roll over at this point that my unconscious mind and body can't handle it.

I am very sorry to report that I think I actually might be done with running for this pregnancy. I'm not writing it off for sure, but my last few runs have really left me in rough shape. My last hard run was Friday and it took me until Monday to recover. It's not a specific issue like the SI joint problem I had with Claire, it's just more general achiness -- basically it feels like my pelvis is splitting in two. It hurts.

As much as I want to run all the way through the pregnancy, it's hard to think the benefits outweight the cost right now. And I am at 38 weeks and 2 days today so hopefully Evan's arrival is right around the corner anyway.