Frosty is a cabbage this week! Whilst their bones are hardening, I’m embracing the natural anxiety around the labour and delivery time. It’s worthless repressing it, so I use one of my favourite skill to cope with it: planning.

Frosty’s developments

Frosty’s now the size of a cabbage! Their weight should be around 1.3kg – 3.5lbs – although I think it could be a little less: tiny people grow tiny humans! Plus see the oven updates below.

All in all, I’m trying not to be too much concerned about their size or weight, since Frosty has been exceptional lively during the week. And saying lively is an understatement. When a baby is active it’s always good news, and our Frosty definitely is a tiny tornado! Even if sometimes their stretching and rolling hurt, I do enjoy it thoroughly.

This week the bones hardening in Frosty’s skeleton is ramping up: their steroids production have doubled up in the last ten weeks, and is keeping to pump the dope!

Last night I dreamt about Frosty: for the first time in 7 months my mind has generated an out-of-the-womb image of them. I could see Frosty’s face smiling at me for the first time in my dreams: they already had teeth! I guess this is the way my brain is telling me to calm the heck down, as everything is going well.

Oven updates

No changes at all this week in scale’s figures, and again I don’t know what to think: this morning I weighed again 49.3kg – 108.6lbs! The bump looks bigger to me though.

Edit Sunday Aug 18th: stepped on the scale and seeing I dropped weight again: 48.8kg – 107.5lbs! 😱
I’ll keep the 49.3kg record in my diary ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• 

• 

I put together the pictures I took every 10 weeks starting from the day of the FET transfer until today.

The transformation is incredible, although many people – Franz included – say they don’t actually see a big change: to their eyes, I’m still the same Stef, with a grown belly and more breast.

Maybe it’s because I know my body and I can feel what has happened during these 30 weeks, but I do see such a huge change: when I was 10 weeks pregnant I dropped weight even though I have never been sick, and then I gradually grew the super active bump I’m showing now. I lost a lot of muscles which has been replaced by fat tissue – it’s very clear if you look at my arms and most of all at my bum.

And all in all, I have to admit I’m now showing my belly with more proud as the days go by, winning over my body image issues. I haven’t met one single person so far who could believe I’m 7.5 months pregnant – and still heavy lifting at the gym too.

Hospital bags to embrace the labour worries

I must confess I’m having some thoughts and worries about labour, delivery and hospital bags. It’s not proper anxiety, but it bothers me enough to consider it a proper concerning feeling. Would it be too early to set up the hospital bags? Or perhaps is it too late? What if I’m going into labour prematurely? We’re not ready yet to welcome Frosty if they decide to come up so early.

I know having a bit of anxiety is a natural part of the journey at this stage, and I’m embracing it by doing what I’m good at: planning. Franz and I created a Trello board with all the things pregnancy related, sorted by trimesters. There’s a handy checklist for the three hospital bags we need to get ready –mine, Frosty’s and Franz’s–and I’m currently working on this.

We also have a spreadsheet (that’s cross-referenced on Trello) with all the clothes and other textile items we need for Frosty: it’s good to have an inventory to check in order to not go overboard with the shopping.

Since this system is working out quite well, I have reproduced this at work as I’m planning my parental leave, the handover to the interim team leader (who will replace me when I’m off for Frosty’s duties), and also my coming back at work after the 6 months of time off.

Having as many things as possible being planned and set up – or sorted out – way in advance helps me cope with all the worries related with the time to head to the hospital will arrive. Some people prefer not to think about that, or need to talk with someone else, or have an extra snack or meal when such thoughts surface. I do planning.

Next appointments and milestones

Next Thursday my GP will measure again my fundal height to check how my uterus (and therefore Frosty) is doing in terms of growth.

Franz and I MUST find some time to setup the car seat and practice how to take it in and out. We’ve been pushing this back for a while now, since it wasn’t an urgent task to learn, but I know that within a blink of an eye we’ll need to use that skill in a possible stressing (although happy!) situation 🙂