35½ Weeks

December 16th, 2007 by: cheyenne

Curvy

Unbelievably, I just keep getting huger. It is all in the belly. And the boobs. (With perhaps an honorable mention going to my ass.)

I had a 35-week check-up appointment and it was delightfully uneventful. That is, aside from the doctor “reassuring” me that now that I’m at 35 weeks, if I were to go into labor they wouldn’t do anything to stop it—I could just have that baby right now and everything would be peachy. Of course I was thinking, “like HELL you wouldn’t stop it; this baby is NOT allowed out until January 1st and that’s final.” (I’m practicing for when the kid is 16 and wants permission to go to a college party or something.)

[Kind of amazing I can still stand upright.]

The Morning Ritual

Around 8ish, I wake up with the most bothersome and jabby hip aches. I lie for a moment, try the usual stretching, slinging my leg over the side of the bed, folding my knee pillow in half for added height, squeezing my eyes shut tighter in hopes of miraculously falling back to sleep because what, it has GOT to be like 5am—look how dark it is outside still. Of course, nothing helps for more than .5 seconds and so I grumble and roll over, the bed creaking and bulging and complaining about the additional 20 pounds it has been forced to deal with these past few weeks, poke at Joshua to get him into a better knee-rest position, and try it on that side for a while. Miraculously, the hip pain goes away. For around 20 seconds. And then it comes back. So, I grudgingly get up out of bed; I have to pee anyway. Joshua, who manages to sleep through all this (I think) mumbles incoherently and rolls over to take up the spot I just vacated and the bed sighs a big relief.

I put on a robe and trudge into the kitchen for first breakfast—usually plain yogurt with muesli and wheat germ (sounds gross doesn’t it? I like the stuff—especially with just a, ahem, tad of maple syrup on it)—and plant myself on the couch with this and a large glass of water and see what is going on in the world. Around this time, the baby wakes up and starts slithering around, pressing her back against one side of my belly and her feet out the side. Poke poke! Good morning Baby!

Her movements have changed considerably in the last few weeks. She is bigger and can’t do flips like she used to. The pokes are less sharp sudden jabs and more like slow stretches that can be felt (and seen) on both sides of my body as she stems across (she’s going to be a great off-width crack climber). Her head is crammed right up into my bladder, a big bouncy pillow that unhappily bears the full weight of the contents of The Belly. Her back lies either on my right or left side and she floats upside-down with her butt hovering up in the air somewhere just south of my ribcage; she shifts from one side or the other depending upon, something. Gravity maybe? It is really easy to feel exactly where she is these days and lately I’ve been able to chase a foot around with my finger when she kicks it against the outside. She gets the hiccups about the same time every day.

The nearest I can come to explaining what a such movement inside your body feels like is this: you know when you tilt the screen of a laptop and press too hard on the back of the LCD panel so that it makes this eerie shadowy distortion on the front of the screen? The shadowy distortion—THAT’S what it feels like.



5 Comments on “35½ Weeks”

  1. CJ says:

    Wow, that’s awesome. Keep that cell division and migration going! Looks like you are doing beautifully so far!

    It’s funny that you mention not falling over. Apparently that has puzzled various scientists as well (not about you in particular, but pregnant women in general). It sounds like it was some kind of biomechanical impossibility that women could carry a 20 lb weight on their abdomen and not break their backs or something or other. In the news last week, it seems they just figured out something about how women’s spines curve differently to support the extra weight, thus “solving” the mystery of how pregnant women can actual stand up.

  2. Peg Bowden says:

    Hey daughter, you give whole new meaning to the curvy female figure. And yes, the NYTimes had a special article about the spinal cord of women evolving over thousands of years to accomodate all the extra poundage and curve. Otherwise, you would tip over. This is going to be one chubby-cheeked little muffin. –Mom

  3. bonnie breeze says:

    Cheyenne, you look absolutely beautiful: smooth, curvy, radiant, huge. She’s gotta be thinking about making her entrance soon. Your description of those full-term internal gyrations are right on! I remember them well, even after all these years.

    Happy birthday to you this month. We Sag women rock!

    What will you name her?? What do you call her now?

    Good Luck and have fun bringing her in!

    Love, Bonnie

  4. Steve says:

    Cheyenne & Josh,

    I’m personally very interested to see whether your perspective on life changes when the baby arrives – I think I should have a bet with Connellan on whether you both turn into swooning cooing parents together or one of you or neither of you :-)

    Either way I’m sure your child will have more interesting experiences than most.

    Good luck and happy holidays.

    Best,

    Steve

  5. cheyenne says:

    I daresay you are not the only person out there wondering exactly this. Perhaps we should negotiate for a cut of all winnings, you know, to go toward our precious bopkin’s college fund or something…

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Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell