Jackson Eugene Segall, originally uploaded by punquin.

Our baby boy was born at 8:18 am today. He was 6 lbs 13 oz & 20" long. Full story to come…

Goodmorning, Belly, originally uploaded by punquin.

9 months.. Can you believe it? On Wednesday, I will be 37 weeks and baby will be considered full-term. I am so ready to meet him and not be pregnant anymore, that he is more than welcome to come out after Wednesday! Danny is sure I’ll go early – around the full moon at the end of the month. I tend to prepare for the “worst” and am expecting, like most first-time moms, that I’ll go overdue. I honestly can’t wrap my brain around getting even bigger over the next 3 weeks. i mean, look at that belly!!

While I have a lot of pregnancy ailments, I am doing really well. I’m still able to go walking (when I can find a warm, dry place to do it) with just some ligament and hip pain. I get a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions that can slow my pace down, but they aren’t painful. I can still go to yoga, it is just getting harder and harder each week. It’s like yoga with a bowling ball attached to my belly. I don’t sleep much… it is painful to roll over and I have to pee ever couple of hours. But, I’m grateful whenever the sleep I do get adds up to over 4 hours.

I have my hospital bag packed enough that we are good to go. I have a few things to add, but I could survive without them. I don’t have bag packed for Danny yet. He has items that can’t be packed up because he uses them every day. I’ll have to figure that one out, because he’s not allowed to leave me alone at the hospital during labor. I’ll need him too much! We went to our childbirth class last weekend. There was plenty I knew and plenty I learned. I think the most beneficial thing was that is was given by our hospital and we learned so much about their beliefs and procedures. I was really glad to find out they are very pro-breastfeeding and have lactation consultants available. I wish we could have toured their facilities, but they have stopped them due to H1N1 season.

This past week was my last week of driving an hour to Maryland to work in the corporate office. It was nice to work closely with everyone for a couple months, but I was starting to have problems with the long drive and fears of going into labor on the beltway. On my last drive home, I came close to passing out at one point because I hadn’t eaten enough that day. And, my bladder was not happy whenever I hit bad traffic.

We have enough items purchased for baby that we are ready for him. We did have to buy the majority of the major things off our registry ourselves. The rest we’ll have to pick away at over time.

Starting sending a lot of happy labor vibes my way so this little one doesn’t make his appearance late!

31 weeks!, originally uploaded by punquin.

So I’ve somehow made it to 8 months/32 weeks! Wow!

I’ve been feeling good. Gaining a good amount of weight for my small size, blood pressure on the low side of average, doing yoga as often as work and weather allow.

I had my appointment today. Baby’s heart beat sounded great, but I talked to the doctor about the fact that he has been laying transverse (sideways instead of head down) for about 4 months. He really, really likes it in that position. She told me that while he has time to move on his own, sometimes they don’t. She would be willing to try to turn him at 37 weeks, but Danny and I didn’t like the sound of it. I would have to have an epidural, then they would manually try to turn him. If he doesn’t tolerate it (i.e. – his heart rate starts dropping) they would do an emergency c-section right then and there. I am really hoping to have the opportunity to have a natural labor. Having such a scary-sounding procedure that may lead to a c-section and may lead to him turning back to transverse anyway just didn’t sound good to us. We agreed that we would just let nature take it’s course and mentally prepare for the possibility of a c-section when the time comes if he hasn’t turned.

The doctor told us we could try icing baby’s head to get him to turn. She did a quick ultrasound scan to confirm which side his head is on (my left). So I will have to start trying that. He won’t be happy about it, I bet! He even hates my cold hands…

Beyond that, everything looks great and I’ll be back in 2 weeks. It was really hard to get an appointment scheduled, so I had to do it on one of my office days. I’ll have to switch things around with work.

Baby is currently beating the heck our of my ribs. I think he is trying to climb them. Time for dinner!