32 Weeks

I'm officially in my 8th month of pregnancy!!

It's hard to believe! I have only imagined being 8 months pregnant...and now I get to be here.

And it's just about everything I thought it would be!

I feel big.

I eat frequently.

I am emptying my bladder very frequently. 

I can't reach things as well or fit through narrow spaces. And "sucking it in" is no longer cutting it.

I have back aches.

I have noticed tiny bit of swelling in my feet.

I waddle. Just a little.

My wedding ring doesn't fit. 

Well, it does, it is just really hard to get on and off. So I leave it off. My hands are really stiff in the morning and feel very swollen. It goes away after getting up for awhile. My husband is pretending to have "fat pregnancy fingers" too because he forgets to put his ring on a lot. When we are in public together without our rings on, we joke that I am his girlfriend and that someday we should get married. 

And of course, we are in love with our baby!

We have been talking a lot lately about how we can't wait until she gets here (but really, stay in there, Ava!) and we wonder what she'll be like and how much hair she will have. Call me crazy...but we think we are just about ready!! The anticipation is already starting to drive us a little nutty, even though we have 8 weeks to go! We talk about her everyday. 

Miss Ava makes very fluid movements now; it really feels like there's an actual baby in there, squirming around, and less like some sort of foreign object. She still occasionally jabs me. One of her favorite things is to slowly press her knee or foot up towards my ribs (thankfully not INTO my ribs...that may come later) and let it hang out for awhile, and then it disappears. I can always feel this little knob sticking out of my upper belly when she does this.

I really don't do a whole lot. I mean, I do, I just can't do it all at once. I make this really ambitious to-do list at the beginning of the week, and I'm lucky if I can get through all of it. It took me about 5 hours to clean the downstairs floors. Move all the stuff out of the way, then vacuum, swiffer, steam. I had to take breaks between each step - my back screams at me rather quickly! But that's what I get for ignoring all the dog and cat hair and dirt and stuff that tracks in the house from Army boots for so long. It was getting bad - Zorro was chasing the dust bunnies in the living room!

We had a garage sale this past weekend that was part of a post-wide one. We were very successful! We probably sold about half of what we put out, and got a nice chunk of change to put towards another expensive item for Ava! I was definitely surprised at how well we did. There were times we had crowds in our driveway!

I have an ultrasound and my 32 week appointment scheduled for this week. I am anxious to hear back about her kidney, to see what position she is in (I'm hoping its something different than her usual one), and to hear about how big she is! I also have scheduled childbirth and breastfeeding classes for us to go to coming up soon.

And my Nashville episode aired!

I never saw myself in the crowd, though.

But this is where I was standing the day I went:

I had to look twice during the scenes looking out on the crowd - I know there were not that many people there they day they filmed this scene. I'm positive they digitally inserted more people! And you can barely tell, but I drew in a red line where the crowd stopped when I was there. Can you tell a difference?! There is more warmth in the crowd up front, and the digitally added crowd in the back is more white and gray. It looks pretty convincing, though!

You would never guess from the episode that it felt like it was 2 degrees outside!

And here are some silly ways that Ava moves.

First, here she is making a large lump on my right side.

And next, is a great image of her in her standard transverse position - head on the left, and her body on the far right. She does this one a lot, and it's always more obvious when I am having a Braxton Hicks contraction, which is what is happening in the picture. My belly tightens and it makes me look very lumpy!

And then a little bit later, my belly looks more round again.

She did all of this in about an hour or two. 

When I woke up in the middle of the night last night (to empty my bladder, of course) she was right up against my rib cage, in the middle, in a ball. That's a new one - I've never felt so much of her body all the way up there! Usually its just a foot. All this movement, to me, is very encouraging, because it tells me that she does have enough room in there to move around, and is not as restricted as I was fearing. I am dying for this next ultrasound and appointment to hear more about what to expect for these final two months!

I need to fix that "L".