now THAT'S a growth spurt!

So much for having a smaller baby! In the last two weeks my baby boy has grown...and grown...and grown. I could tell he was getting big by how uncomfortable I've been, but I couldn't believe the difference in his size until I took my 2-week photo today. Holy moly.

This is me two weeks ago...
This is me tonight...

It's only a matter of days (or hours?) before I meet my little guy and I can't wait. My doctor and I have tentatively scheduled a "water break" for this Thursday, December 31st, unless he comes sooner, so the end is in very near sight. I'm feeling very pregnant these days - like I could go at any given moment - but my body's ability to hold off full-blown labor never ceases to amaze me.

Life has been crazy lately. We sold our house last week, hosted Christmas at our house for my husbands whole family, and then to top it off, my husband is terribly sick with strep throat right now. He feels so miserable that I don't even think he's physically capable of coming to the hospital if I were go into labor tonight. Fortunately, me and the girls are healthy and I'm praying it stays that way!

I'm sure you'll be hearing from me soon - I'll post something on my blog as soon as baby BOY makes his arrival! YIKES!

any day now!

Two weeks ago, at 35 weeks:

Tonight at 37 weeks:
It's like I have nothing else to blog about these days except my growing belly. There is a lot of important and memorable things going on in our household, but it takes brain power to write a good blog post and that's something I'm lacking these days. I could make a laundry list of things I've forgotten in the past few weeks, and some of them being major and quite embarrassing. But I guess people are willing to cut me a little slack, given my pretty full plate.

Aside from pretty severe insomnia, leading to my lack of brain power, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm definitely starting to get uncomfortable and I can tell my body is preparing for labor. Lots of lovely things going on, but I'll spare the nitty-gritty details.

In case you have or haven't noticed from my belly pictures, it doesn't seem that baby has any major growth spurts in the last 4-6 weeks. He's definitely getting bigger, that I can personally attest to, but there was some cause for concern at my doctor appointment last week because baby was measuring on the smaller side. I've never measured small with my girls, in fact, if anything, I was always on the bigger side, so hearing I was measuring small was a little shocking, and as you can imagine, a little nerve-wracking. My doctor ordered an ultrasound for the same afternoon, just to put my mind at ease.

Fortunately, everything crucial checked out fine - fluids, umbilical cord, etc - but he is a little small. Last week he was measuring around 5 1/2 lbs, which put him in the 30th percentile for 36 weeks. I understand from what I've read and in talking to others that the ultrasound can be off by a pound (or more sometimes) because they can't determine the amount of fat on the baby, so he might be a bit bigger than that. Needless to say, I'm hoping baby stays INSIDE as long as he needs to because I want him chunked out for the Minnesota cold. Considering his size, we probably won't go through with the induction, and I'm totally okay with that. I want him to come at HIS own pace, because that is ultimately what is best for him. For now, I'm choosing not to worry because my doctor has assured me that everything is fine.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has experienced this before and what the outcome was???