Twenty Nine Weeks

What Baby is Doing:

Temperature control
"How does it stay so warm in here?" This week marks an important milestone in your baby's brain development: The brain has matured to the point where it can help regulate body temperature. Of course, your little one isn't ready to do it all on her own yet; she still needs the warmth of your body to keep her toasty until birth. She also continues to develop nerve cells in her brain. By the time she's born, she'll have hundreds of billions of them. That seems like a lot, but she needs to stock up, since she won't produce any more after birth.

Puttin' on padding
Your baby is looking more like a full-term baby, too. She's plumping up nicely; the surface of her skin is smoother and paler because of the fat she's starting to gain. This fat will be an important factor in her ability to keep warm. Your baby also has eyelashes; she may be batting them at you right now!

Measuring up
Despite the increase in fat, your little one is still pretty thin—only about 2 to 3 percent of her 2.7 pounds is made up of fat. Crown to rump, she measures 10.4 inches, but if you stretched her out, she'd be more than 16 inches long.

Going for the Glow
The baby will move toward a soft light shown through the mom’s abdominal wall. He’ll startle when he hears loud sounds but turn toward soft ones.

What Mom is Doing:

Weighty matters
You're in the home stretch now—11 more weeks to go! Your baby will be putting on most of his weight over the next three months, and so will you. You can probably expect to add about 11 pounds in the last trimester, about a pound a week.

Third-trimester complaint
Are you waking up suddenly with cramps in your calves? Leg cramps are a common complaint during pregnancy, though not every woman gets them. Experts aren't sure exactly what causes them; some say it's the added weight on your legs, while others think the pain may signal a calcium or potassium shortage. They may also be the result of the pressure of your uterus on the nerves running to the legs.

Dawn’s Notes:

Time is flying by so fast!

Slow down, baby!

Cloud Nine

We found a daycare center that we love!

Chris and I toured a couple daycare centers yesterday, and the first visit was the best.

Naturally, I was a little depressed when I was hit with the realization that someday we will take our baby to a daycare center and LEAVE. It was an agonizing revelation, but I am comforted in knowing that our baby will be comfortable and safe.

The center we have chosen is everything that I could have asked for. It is close to home via the freeway. The center is on the campus of a catholic seminary and is next door to a catholic elementary school. The campus is easily accessible from a main road, but still feels secluded and peaceful. There is plenty of open space for playing outdoors, and the daycare center uses a courtyard as a playground. There are no fences because the courtyard is surrounded by buildings on all sides. No dangerous parking lots and no strangers wandering in.

The center is opening a new, larger infant room on the second floor in January. Every baby has their own crib and eating space and the play area has new equipment. The room is filled with windows to let in the sunlight and provides a beautiful, peaceful view of the campus and the courtyard.

Chris and I are making plans to go back and meet the director and the morning infant teacher sometime soon. Gotta get Squirt on the waiting list!

We also visited another center last night, but that place was so depressing that I wanted to cry! I won’t even share the details here, because it’s too upsetting to me to even imagine leaving our little Squirt there.

Anyway, I’m relieved to know that we have a safe place for Squirt to go.

We’re almost ready for baby!

Question of the Day

What are you going to miss most about pregnancy?

*Never being alone

*Talking to myself without looking like an idiot

*Having someone kick me everytime I get worked up over something that is not important in the grand scheme of life. I'm sure the baby has no clue that he/she is reminding me of my priorities, but I like the subtle reminders throughout the day.

*Being able to eat and drink where ever I want, regardless of what the signs on the door say.

*Skipping to the front of the line in the restroom and at the grocery store.

*Having an excuse to sit down and relax.

*Being appreciated for everything that I can accomplish, regardless of my condition.

*Having an excuse for being forgetful.

*Looking great and being fat at the same time!

*Chris rubbing my tummy in the middle of the night.

*Always knowing where my baby is.

*Sleeping while my baby is awake.

There are so many more...I just love being pregnant!

Mommy's Baby Belly at 29 Weeks

It's been too long since I've taken baby belly photos, so this is an update.

Chris wasn't home last night and I'm notorious for my impatience, so I took these pictures myself. I had lots of great poses, but most of them were blurry and I was too tired to try it again.

These are better than nothing!

Getting Ready

Being the anal, uber-organized individual that I am, I have been in a panic recently about the items on our baby to-do list that remain unaddressed, and here we are just eleven short weeks until our due date.

I am feeling a sense of relief today as Chris and I move a little bit closer toward being ready for this baby.

We learned last night that our childbirth instructor will most likely be available to attend our birth as a doula. Hurray!

I called a couple of daycare centers today and learned that our top two picks do still have openings for an infant in early spring, which is a huge relief. I called a couple of months ago, but I was worried that someone else might have beaten us onto the waiting list. Chris and I plan to visit the centers today and tomorrow after work, and I’m really hoping that we will find a place near home that we love. It’s hard to imagine any place that I really want to leave our baby, so this might be more of a challenge than it needs to be.

I’m also on the brink of scheduling the last of the baby preparation classes. We still need to attend Breastfeeding Basics, Infant CPR, and Baby Care Basics. I’m waiting on one hospital to mail us a schedule of classes because their website is useless.

Lastly, my body is still doing what it needs to do to get ready, too. Imagine my shock and surprise yesterday morning when I realized that my breasts were leaking for the first time. OH MY GOD! I know I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve read that it is completely normal, but I couldn’t help but panic. They’ve never done that before!

Even if I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s comforting to know that my body does!

Surrender

I’ve met my match.

Baby Gear triumphs.

I had some spare time last night, which is a luxury in my world, so I thought I would be productive and spend a few moments preparing for the imminent arrival of Squirt.

I’ve been told that this child will need space to sit, lie, swing, and be transported. Hence, we have a plethora of bouncy seats, infant swings, strollers, and car seats. Being the thrifty mama that I am, I have been collecting these items over the past couple years in the anticipation that we would one day have a tiny baby butt that would need all of this gear. I also get a thrill out of buying a $200 travel system for $15 at a garage sale.

Although the bargain is out of this world, I now realize that I need to clean all of this infant gear before it can touch our precious angel. After all, it has been sitting in storage collecting dust for ages. It must be sanitized!

So, my plan was to gather all the baby gear in the basement. I would remove the covers, launder them, wipe down all the plastic pieces, and reassemble the gear like new.

There were a few obstacles that I didn’t anticipate:

*The baby gear was in storage. I had to move all of our luggage, seasonal clothing, baby gates, toddler car seats, income tax files, and Halloween decorations to unbury the baby gear. Then, I had to move all of that stuff back.

*The baby gear was in storage on the second floor. Our basement is under the house. Down one flight of stairs, over one tortoise gate, around the tight corner by the kitchen stove and side door, past the landing where the entire family stores their shoes, and down one more flight of stairs.

*My belly is the size of a watermelon and the travel system weighs more than me.
Hauling myself up and down the stairs alone is an Olympic event. Adding baby equipment to that equation is a recipe for disaster.

That was only the beginning. Once I hauled all that crap down to the basement, I encountered even more obstacles:

*The cover on the car seat slips off easily…except for the harness straps that are threaded through it. How do you get the harness straps off? I didn’t realize that I would need a screwdriver…

*The cover on the bouncy seat should slip right off…but it doesn’t. The bouncy seat evidently folds, but I didn’t know it because the hinges were hidden by the seat cover.

*The baby swing was a piece of cake. This piece of equipment is by far my favorite. The seat cover was easily removed. This is a sign that Squirt will either have no interest in the swing or will never, ever puke or poop while using it. The clean-up would just be too easy.

*The travel system. I saved this item for last. The entire contraption is such a maze of snaps and screws and screws and screws that I have no clue how I got all of the pieces off or how they fit back together. It took me no less than an hour to remove all of the covers and pouches and baskets and canopies. Now I understand why my neighbor sold it for $15 at her garage sale rather than just taking a few moments to clean it.

The seat covers are now in the dryer, sparkling clean and fresh.

All I need to do now is put them back on…