Week 37

Week 37 and oh my goodness I am starting to get incredibly uncomfortable.  I hate to sit.  I hate to stand.  I hate to lie down.  All because I am so huge and there is no position on earth that would feel good at this point.  I thought there was no way I could get any bigger than I was at 34 weeks but the numbers on the scale keep going up!  I am stretched to my limit and to make it worse I am swelling like crazy!

The carpal tunnel syndrome has become unbearable!  Andrew now wraps both of my hands and arms in ACE bandages at night.  I sleep on my side but the arm on the opposite side gets tingly and falls asleep.  Then I have to switch sides.  This happens throughout the night every 15 minutes or so.  Sometimes both arms are so numb that I have to just get up and walk around the house for a few minutes until the feeling comes back and I can try to go back to sleep for another 15 minutes.

When I do fall asleep, I have crazy, vivid dreams.  One night I dreamed that I gave birth to African-American twins.  Um.  Not mine.  The funniest dream I had was so typical of my excitement and anticipation of meeting Baby Girl.  I dreamed that my stomach was like a kangaroo pouch and I could open it to "peek" at Baby Girl.  I kept sneaking peeks at her to see what she looked like.  Andrew caught me trying to look at our baby and told me to stop it and that she would come when she was ready.  I responded, "But I just want to see if she's 'done' yet!"

I am still working but I am barely hanging in there.  I talked to Andrew and my office manager and I am going to just work until 1:00 on the days I go in and then go home for a nap.  That will be awesome!  I also asked to only do routine prophys since I can't even feel the scalers that I am holding and the ultrasonic scaler makes my condition even more painful.  It is crazy to attempt to keep working without tactile sensitivity but I feel guilty calling it quits!

I had another NP visit with Yasmeen but I didn't write down anything so it's still a waiting game.  And I still haven't had any Braxton-Hicks.  Grr.  Baby Girl is stubborn!

We had our hospital visit to Virginia Baptist Hospital.  I was definitely the farthest along of the bunch and we got our tour in in the nick of time considering the next tour was a week after my due date.

At the beginning of the visit, we were divided into groups to take the elevator up to the maternity floor.  We had a group of about eight people (four pregnant women and their partners).  We must have exceeded the weight limit because we all got stuck in the elevator!  It just stopped and the doors wouldn't open.  We all were kind of nervously laughing but I am sure that inside all of the Moms were in panic mode.  I know I was.  Andrew hit a few buttons and it finally took us back to the ground floor and the doors opened.  After that, the elevator wouldn't work anymore--not that we would even consider taking it again after that scare!