33 weeks - 231 days

I never realized that a pineapple weighed 4 lbs.

Time Left:  5-7 weeks                  

                   35-49 days

Size of Baby:  weight = 4 lbs.

                        length = 17 inches

Food comparison -------------}

Harper:  I suppose Harper is pretty much done morphing into a tiny human in there.  With every week that goes by it seems like there's less and less information on development.  All I know is that she's definitely getting bigger because what was once little pokes and jabs are now rolls and tumbles in my belly.  If you look at the right time you can see waves rolling across my stomach.  Other than that, her bones are continuing to harden and about 10 lbs. of my weight gain is from Harper, the placenta, and the amniotic fluid, which means that I should instantly lose 10 lbs. after giving birth.  Swwwweeeeeeetttt!!

Weight Gain:  Starting weight = 140 lbs.

                         Current weight = 168 lbs.

                         Total weight gain = 28 lbs.

I'm looking like a pink marshmallow on a stick

My Body:  I don't have AS much to say about my body this week as I did last week, but I do want to take a quick second to answer the questions that are constantly asked of me:

1. How are you feeling?
   -I'm sorry to disappoint, but I feel like a human.  I feel like I always do besides the fact that I wear maternity clothes, have a belly, and my hands are swollen a bit.  What do you want or expect me to say?  What if I was having chronic diarrhea, fainting spells, and frequently peed myself when sneezing or laughing?  Would you really want to know that?!  Shall I start telling people how often I get up to pee in the middle of the night or that I have to slide to the end of the couch and grunt as I'm getting up?  A few times I've even rolled off of the couch/bed and onto the floor to get up just because it's easier.  I wonder how people at work would feel if I unleashed that beast upon them.  They probably wouldn't ask how I am feeling anymore.  Experiment?
2. Do you know what you're having?
   -This questions doesn't bother me unless you've already asked me before.  This happens a lot at work (notice a theme?).  This morning I had a woman ask me, again, what I'm having and what her name is.  Problem there is that she's asked me FOUR times now.  I see this woman EVERY day so it's not like she's meeting me for the first time. 

Alright.  Enough of that, back to me.  So it has happened.  I have been slathering myself in cocoa butter lotions and oils since I found out that I was pregnant to avoid this very thing, but alas I have fallen victim to stretch marks.  I found the first one last Friday.  Luckily my stretch marks are the same color as my skin so they aren't noticeable unless I point them out, which naturally I have been doing. I thought that the one above my belly button was the only one, but was sadly mistaken again when my friend Analiese let me in on the fact that sometimes stretch marks hide underneath your belly where you can't easily see.  Sure enough... there they were.  Dammit.  It just doesn't seem fair after the bottles of cocoa butter lotions, pastes, and oils I've gone through.  Not to mention that I HATE the smell of cocoa butter.  It reminds me of old, decayed, turning white, Easter chocolate.  Vomit.  I have 5-7 weeks to go and can only expect my stomach to grow out even more, which yields the chance for the stretch marks that I have to lengthen or for them to spawn siblings.

On the up side:

• I have only gotten positive comments on my appearance.  Most people who find out that I'm in my 8th month can't believe it.  I like that I am fortunate enough to be a thinner looking pregnant lady.  And I'm definitely not pregorexic or whatever they have started calling pregnant women that starve themselves so they don't gain weight.  Trust me, I eat.  I have gained almost 30 lbs. and most people can't believe that either.  To them I say, "Thank you!"
• I LOVE maternity clothes.  I do not love having to buy them, but wearing them is fantastic.  I do have on a button up shirt today that makes me feel slightly 80's pregnant or Kristy Allen pregnant in Look Who's Talking, but other than that I love them!  I'm even rocking a poncho as it gets cooler out, which is something that I never would have done because I would have thought that it made me look fat and/or pregnant.  Well, problem solved! 

The Nursery:  We got the glider and ottoman today!  The nursery is almost complete!!

I'm sure we're going to be spending a lot of
time here.  Thank you Grandma Ginny!!

From Uncle Zach the Cavalier -- he says that it's never too
early to start thinking about college :)

Childbirth Class #5 (final class!): Thank God!  I am so glad that this class is finally over.  Now I'm not saying that the class wasn't beneficial, but I will say that I wish we had just signed up for the one-day Saturday class instead of the 5 week Tuesday night class.  Everything just seemed to long and drawn out. 

In our last class we watched a vaginal birth which, if you've been reading, I have been VERY against and was planning on avoiding at all costs.  Well, once it was on it was like rubbernecking a traffic accident; you just couldn't look away.  The good thing was that they never really showed the baby emerging from Ladytown.  They did show the baby's head poking out for a few seconds, but it was just like the labor scene in Knocked Up so I wasn't as horrified as I expected to be.  The rest of the birth was from the view point of the dad watching from over mom's tummy.

We also had a special visit from one of the couples that had twin girls two weeks ago at 33 weeks.  They were both in class the first day and then it was only the dad for class 2-3 because she was admitted to the hospital because one of her baby's sacs ruptured so she had to be admitted.  Anyway, they both came to celebrate our last class and to tell us all about their labor and how the babies are doing.  It was a nice change of pace hearing about an actual birth experience instead of learning technical and medical terms relating to it.

We ended class by having goodies and talking a little about the post-pardom period and how to soothe our new babies.  Bryan and I celebrated by stopping by Dairy Queen for blizzards!!  I had to have the new pumpkin pie blizzard and oh my lord it was worth it!

My take on HOV:  I was naughty last week.  I got into the HOV lane when it was HOV2 only.  I couldn't help it, I had to.  There was heinous traffic from the Naval base AND from some idiots that couldn't drive and caused an accident (thank you traffic app).  I risked it because I was planning on playing the pregnancy card IF I got pulled over.  I didn't.  Technically don't I count as two people?  I mean, if she's born today she'd most likely survive and therefore should count as a person.  Since I didn't get pulled over I decided to look up the HOV rules when I got to work.  I was surprised to find that I must not have been the only one to try to play the pregnancy card because there was a "I'm pregnant, can I drive in the HOV lane?" in the FAQs.  Sadly, HOV does not recognize pregnant woman as two people.  You CAN however, go into the HOV lane with a baby of any age.  Makes me think twice about putting Harper into a daycare that's near my work instead of one near home.  Is that wrong?  Putting her in daycare in my work city so that I can get in the HOV lane in the morning?  Hehe.  Very tempting.