Week 33 : She’s a Pineapple!

According to Babycentre this week my squishy weighs about the same as a 4 pound (1,8kg) pineapple. Actually this is not true. We went for our 33 week check-up yesterday and squishy already weighs 2,4kg! The doctor said that his guestimate is at full term she should clock in at more or less 4kg. *gulp* This is a big baby.

I’m not sure if I have the hips to go natural on a 4kg baby, but my doctor said we’ll have a look either at 35 or 37 weeks to see. I am starting to strongly suspect she’s coming by sunroof if she’s over 3,5kg.

Anyhoo, my daughter didn’t feel like looking at the camera yesterday – which really frustrated my doctor but entertained me. He said that she’s looking healthy and that she’s got a very strong heart beat and he even showed me how she was practicing breathing! It was so cute. Also, he said that he could tell already she had a lot of hair.

This week more than any other has brought home to me how close we are to B-day already. I spoke to my friend’s wife, who recently had a little girl herself, and she wanted to know how far along we were. When I told her 33 weeks she said that I’d already made it further than she did – cause she had her baby at 32 weeks! It literally could happen any day now.

Here are some of the pics my doctor did manage to get of squishy this week.

I think the poor man believes that I have been sent to test his patience somehow. I am a very difficult customer patient. It’s not that I phone him every 5 minutes with some sort of panic attack or question, it’s just that every time I see him I tell him about another thing I don’t want him to do. I think it’s slowly dawning on him that unless I need to have a C-section he’s probably going to be a spectator at the event with little to no involvement. At the first visit I told him: NO induction. The next time I saw him: NO epidural and NO forceps or plungers. And yesterday: NO episiotomy. This is the first time he’s objected though – I haven’t even begun to be fully difficult yet.

I had to hand in my volumes of paperwork at the maternity ward yesterday. I did get a raised eyebrow from the nurses station for the BOLD scribbling over any form that asked about problems with anaesthetics: Makes me VERY aggressive, strap me down before I wake up if you value your life. Also since I didn’t see them put my stuff in a file of some sorts I told them that if they lost it I’d make them fill it out themselves next time because it really was a lot of paperwork. She seemed surprised by my “suggestion”. Either they never lose paperwork, or they’re not used to patients being full of shit more than a month before they actually check in already?

Now for a short unrelated rant:

It’s been my M.O. from day one of this pregnancy to focus on the positive instead of the potentially negative. partly because I am an eternal optimist and I am really enjoying the adventure and partly because I found that whenever I allowed myself to get negative I got really really sick. My baby as well as myself needs me to be positive – and that’s what I’m doing.

However, there have been certain aspects which from time to time has managed to derail my happy train of thoughts – even if only for a day or so at a time. Some relating to money and medical aid, some relating to TGC and his attitude through all of this, and some relating to my quest for a doctor who I could rely on. If I had to summarise the common denominator it would have to be uncertainty.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m about to rant about.

I am the very first unwed mother in my family (that I know of). As you can imagine, it doesn’t come with a badge or a certificate. Even so, these are not the days where being a single parent brings eternal shame on your entire bloodline and for the most part my whole extended family, and particularly my close family are excited and supportive. My parents for instance have been absolute angels and I couldn’t have come so far through this without their help and support.

Isolated members of my extended family however are not dealing with this very well. One member in particular is not only disappointed in me but genuinely seems angry about it, and another disapproves to the extent where she hasn’t spoken to me in months and whose only attempt at getting involved so far has been to try and sell a R200 baby item to my mom for R1000. Both these women have come up with some pretty fluffy excuses to not attend my baby shower.

I’m okay with that. If they’ don’t want to be there they should stay away. I don’t even mind that they are obviously upset about me being pregnant. It doesn’t keep me up at night (or even interrupt my afternoon naps for that matter) that they judge me because of this.

BUT…(And this is an important but) they really should know that I will not stand for them being anything but charming, friendly and welcoming to my daughter when she arrives. If they even so much as frown at her they will be burning a bridge with me that there will be no repairing of later. If they shun my baby in any way, they will become as good as dead to me.

And when I close a door, believe me, it stays shut.

End of rant. Thanks, I feel much better now.