Beauty of 3rd Trimester - Part2, Month 8

 

Believe me, though meant to be humorous, the feeling depicted in the pics are practical truth. I started being more emotional, weepy and irritable than I had ever been in my life. All said and done I was having the best experience too.

• This month started the amazing phase where I could literally feel my daughter's feet in ribs. Most often it was painful, cos she turned out to be so active that I could feel my right ribs and left kidney bruising but it was most wonderful feeling. "Eighth month is the month folks when u start to feel an increased fetal movement" my pregnancy app told me and believe me I did not need any reminder from it. I remember this particular weekend (it was one immediately after Baby shower (which was in the first week of August)) when my girl was exceptionally active. So active that for those 2 days I had a permanent bump against my lower portion of my ribs and my husband got his long held dream of feeling the baby's feet fulfilled...,well end result when we went for next check up, I found that my daughter has moved from side-wise position to happy inverted position ready for delivery. And I moved from looking like a cantaloupe to a watermelon plus pumpkin.
•  Month 8 also marked the beginning of struggle to turn in bed or getting in to position or even sleeping for good stretch of time. An hour and half of undisturbed sleep was rare to come by and I found myself growing tired everyday. One hour of sleeping on my left side, found me walking up with sore shoulders and numb legs. And god forbid I make the mistake of rolling over on  my back in sleep, within ten mins I will be waking my husband due to severe leg cramps (which will last me whole day). I started building fortress of pillow around me in an effort to keep myself from rolling over and my poor husband found himself delegated to the edge of king size bed.
• In terms of doctor visits, it is one of the boring months. The only measurements take were my BP, weight , belly size and the only exciting part of the check up hearing baby's heartbeat through Doppler. My doctor after the first visit got concerned as I was showing excess weight gain (due absolute lack of exercise the previous month) and I was strictly instructed to make sure my weight gain was only 1 pound per week, which I almost managed. At the end of eighth month, the doctor take vaginal swabs for Group B Strep Infection. Which turned out to be negative for me (not that I was bothered, I was pretty confident that I did not having any infection). 
• One of the reassuring phenomenon that started during this month was breast leakage. It took me a week of finding hardened flakes to understand what was going on. From then on I started paying particular attention to which food the discharge seemed to increase (ofcourse accompanied by painful breast, but by now I am so used to various aches in my body that I hardly notice it). And it also put my mind on ease that I will be able to feed post delivery. Vegetable I seem to be responding to are onion, lots of milk and water, spinach smoothie. Fenugreek doesn't seem to be having much effect while onion seems to be most effective. I haven't tried melons yet. Will be trying them out next to see how it goes.

On a side note:: I am trying to trace the position my Blinky turned to from side wise. Initially she was in lying down position with her legs towards my right side and her head on left. Once she turned to the inverted position, I believe her feet were right under my diaphragm (I know this from number times she has kicked me right in my heart or the way I could feel flexing her fingers/feet against my right lung) and her head sitting right on my bladder with either her hands or i dont know what portion rhythmically hitting left side of my bladder. For the nth time in pregnancy I was running to loo every half an hour. Her butt lying on the left, every time I woke up from sleep my stomach looked like a misshapen watermelon skewed to left side.

Things accomplished during this month::

• Had the most wonderful baby shower 
• Finished final purchases for Baby and started with arranging the baby room
• Washed all baby clothes and got baby's diaper bag from hospital ready.
• Started the pediatrician search
• Found out from hospital what our co-payment commitment etc were (which turned out to be nothing)
• Registered myself for hospital tour.