Here's Looking at the End, Kid
At the close of this weekend I'll be 34 weeks along. I'm banking on 5-6 more weeks of pregnancy, putting a lot of stock in the fact that Madalyn was a week early. We leave for the beach next weekend and will come home the following... from that point on, I'm good to go, and will actually be nearly full-term.
On the last two weeks of pregnancy-
My 33 week Babycenter.com email update:
This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds and measures 17.2 inches from the top of his head to his heels. His skin is becoming less red and wrinkled, and while most of his bones are hardening, his skull is quite pliable and not completely joined. This will help him ease out of your relatively narrow birth canal.
My 34 week Babycenter.com email update:
Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds and is probably almost 18 inches long. His fat layers — which he'll need to regulate his body temperature once he's born — are filling him out, making him rounder. His central nervous system is still maturing and his lungs are well developed by now. If you've been nervous about going into preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that 99 percent of babies this age can survive outside the womb — and most have no major long-term problems related to prematurity.
Once again, gotta love how they always address one of the "worst case scenarios" like "in the event that you were wondering whether you might have the baby TODAY! it would survive and most likely have no long-term problems... and if you hadn't thought of this possibility, THINK ON IT."
A recent conversation with Evan:
"And then after the beach is baby Jack gonna come?"
"Yes, sometime after that."
"That will be so exciting! Then our home will be so excited!"
"Yes, it will!"
"Who's the baby's mommy?"
"You're looking at her."
"I'm looking at her?"
"Me- I'm the baby's mommy."
"Nooo, you're my mommy."
(I laughed and he mimicked my laugh- which is always humbling...)
"Yes, I'm your mommy and Madalyn's mommy and I'm Jack's mommy, too."
At the dinner table the other day Evan asked if the baby "pee-pees in the bath inside there?" (Meaning into the warm water he lives in in my stomach.)
I wonder if he was majorly or only slightly horrified to hear that the answer was yes.
All along we've said Madalyn's in denial about giving up her baby spot in the birth order, pretending to have no idea what we're talking about when we pat my belly and talk about it, or developing a timely fixation on my belly button to redirect the subject of conversation. But this morning she proved otherwise.
This morning, as Shaun was sucking a roach out of my car air-vent outside (it crawled down my windshield on the inside of the car while I was driving home from coffee with a friend last night and you all know how I hate roaches- I swear it was like seeing the dark shadow of the spawn of Satan appear and I just knew I would feel it on my ankles before I got home, leading me to drive with them twisted and as far away from the last sight of his location as possible, audibly talking myself down and leaping like grease off a skillet the second I got in our driveway and threw the gear into park)... I'm telling you I wouldn't last 5 seconds on Fear Factor and a video tape of that drive home would've won first prize on some reality tv show any episode, hands down... but ANYWAY... back to this morning, when my HERO of a husband went to exterminate the thing and found it dead on the dash, when meanwhile the kids both ran into our bedroom and climbed in bed with me...
Madalyn showered me with hugs and kisses and Evan crawled around to my other side to not miss out. I rubbed Madalyn's back and with a domino effect, she began to rub Evan's... and then his hair, so tenderly, gently, sweetly. He smiled and blushed until it tickled too much to stand... and I think that was the moment then when Evan asked something about the baby, the moment when Madalyn put her hand on my stomach and said plain as day; "Jack."
To my ears that was the equivalent to the sounding of a shotgun at the start of a race. We are officially ready for this baby's arrival, and my uterus has authorized permission to start its engines.
