35 Weeks!

Sigh. . .

Everything "they" say about the final weeks of pregnancy is true.  I'm kinda over it.  At this point the baby is just over five pounds.  She gets the hiccups a lot these days, which is such a strange feeling.  She also reacts more to sounds - we went to the movies over the weekend and a certain loud gun shoot 'em out scene had her all kinds of worked up.  Or maybe it was the popcorn.  In any case, she was pretty excited by the film and gave it two feet poking out of my belly.

As for me, I have a rather short fuse these days.  Let this be a blanket apology from me to the world.  It's just that I'm so damn uncomfortable.  Allow me to whine about it:

I have carpal tunnel, and am now sleeping with a brace at night, which has been a miracle because at least the brace keeps my arm from throbbing so that I CAN sleep.  Or could, if I didn't have to get up and pee every two hours or wasn't tossing and turning to try to find some sort of comfortable position.  So, I'm tiiirredd.  So tired.  It's like the return of the first trimester tired.  It's so hard to get up off the couch.  So. hard.  But I have to pee again, so...sigh...

My back hurts.  Because I am large and in charge as a friend recently said.  My pregnancy waddle is pretty much a constant, I have no balance, and don't even think about making me bend to pick something up.  Not gonna happen.  I haven't seen my feet in weeks, which is good, because they're probably super swollen considering I can only cram them into two pairs of shoes (not counting flip flops, which aren't so helpful in Colorado in October.)

And yes, I do realize that I am big.  Thanks.  Comments like, "Wow, you're enormous!" or "Can you still fit behind the steering wheel in your car?" (no lie, heard both recently) really aren't great boosters, thanks.  But you should hear the things I say about you when you leave the room.  Tee hee.

But probably the biggest challenge right now is preparing to leave my job for maternity leave.  So much paperwork.  So much bureaucracy.  A ton of running around from one department to another because it seems like no one has really done this before, and it must be really fun to make a pregnant woman run a gauntlet.  Meanwhile, back in the office there are a lot of little (and big) things to accomplish without really knowing exactly how much time I have to get it done.  So, for me, with my specific personality traits, I'm in a bit of overdrive trying to get it all done NOW.  Which is exhausting.  And frustrating.  Because not everyone shares my urgency.  I mean, hello, doesn't the world revolve around my due date?  No?  Harumph.

4 weeks, 4 days and counting...