Chestnut Week 33

*bleeaaaaaaah!*

Technically, this is what's going on this week:

• Chestnut is the heft of a pineapple - ~17.20 inches and 4.23 pounds.
• The early baby fuzz, lanugo, is disappearing now and being replaced by actual hair. The nails of baby are now long enough to reach to the tip of the fingers or beyond and may need trimming as soon as he are born. He may scratch his face even before birth.
• The baby is using his lungs to practice breathing by inhaling amniotic fluid. Baby is drinking about a pint of amniotic fluid a day now and urinating the same amount.
• Do not stop eating or start skipping meals as your weight increases. Both you and baby need the calories and nutrition you receive from a healthy diet.
• Healthy babies born at this stage usually do fine, though they need some care in the neonatal intensive care unit. 

Physical:

• Weight: 147 lb (+34)
• Belly circumference: 41.5 in (+13)
• Thankfully no more sleepless nights this week! I've been averaging about 4.5 hours each night and I'm pretty tired, though.
• Starting a couple of weeks back, I've started developing some lower back pain.  It's normally not very bad.  But I notice that it hurts a lot for me to hover over a cutting board while chopping things or stand over the sink to wash dishes for any more than 10 minutes. :(
• More charlie horses.
• Shout-outs to my friend Che for giving me a ton of very pretty maternity clothes!  I feel great wearing them.
• I fell off one of those swively stools in the clinic on Monday while leaning over to look at a patient's feet. It wasn't too hard of a fall but I did have a pretty strong contraction and Marcus was a little freaked out. :P
• We got a new mattress this week!  We slept on it for the first time last night and my hips definitely hurt less. Yay!

Spiritual & emotional:

• I finished my clinical rotation for this quarter and it feels great!  I've had a wonderful learning experience at this site and I am so thankful for my preceptor.  I'm glad it's over, though.  Those long days were so rewarding...but also draining.
• I am starting to really relate to those who overeat in stressful situations.
• Counseling update: I went to see the counselor on Tuesday.  I had Camille with me.  She had missed her nap that day but she was very pleasant.  Just played with toys.  Anyway, I can't say I had an automatic connection with the therapist, but she did have some helpful advice for me.  She basically said that things aren't ideal right now, so I just need to make certain adjustments to ensure that I don't get into a situation where I want to harm myself.  This means I need to make expectations very clear to Chin about the things that are absolutely on my plate and things that I can delegate to him.
• Chin & I had a very hard talk last night.  It started with me laying out all my responsibilities, tasks I could delegate, and things that have been frustrating me.  Starting this conversation at 1:30am was not a good choice.  Thankfully, we are on good terms now and we will continue to make progress toward a healthier way of relating.  Hopefully.

Click here to see the comparison to my pregnancy with Camille (MacNut) at the same gestational age.