31 weeks

I laugh envisioning how posts for the next 7-9 weeks will go... Yup, got bigger this past week...

Seriously though, Tyler and I joke that when he comes home from work, I'm bigger than when he left in the morning.  I bump into things with my stomach so often and so regularly that this is no longer newsworthy (the biggest is still constantly bumping up against the sink when I do dishes... every day, I have to stand farther and farther back!  What is new, however, is now I'm dropping things all the time, especially doing dishes -- it's apparently all the relaxin hormones loosening my muscles in preparation for delivery).

Reading "this week in your pregnancy"-type articles was always so amazing during the first trimester -- it's just remarkable how early things like heart and spinal cord develop (fifth week of pregnancy; or only three weeks after conception!).  And somehow by the third trimester, a little baby is there, nearly all in tact -- with the third trimester focused almost entirely on growth (one of my mentors is a pediatrician, and she said she would always breathe a sigh of relief after a baby progressed beyond 27 weeks -- after that, it's all about growing and thriving).

So, if you're wondering, at 31 weeks, our baby is now the size of a pineapple and almost 4 pounds (well, The Bump says 2.5 - 3.8 pounds, but ever since they started measuring weight, this little guy has been above the range... I'm always petrified my care team will tell me I need to stop eating so much, but thankfully that hasn't yet happened).

With all the nesting we've been doing over the last few weeks, we've now settled into a bedtime routine at home with the little guy (who we've been calling Gracie since the first trimester... long story, perhaps a blog post at some point).  Each night, we read Gracie two books: I read On the Night You Were Born (which brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it, remembering I bought it for a friend a couple years ago when we first started trying ourselves), and Tyler reads -- or rather, raps, Little Blue Truck.  I sing back-up to Tyler's raps, sometimes giving a beat, but more often playing the sound of the little truck honking ("beep beep beep").  I'm not quite sure any of this is doing anything to stimulate the neural development of little Gracie, but certainly a way that we feel connected to him.

What does provoke a response is when Tyler then sings "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to him (something Tyler started since reading "The Birth Partner" book on the plane back from NYC to Seoul in late September).  Since I started feeling Gracie move in August, music seems to always elicit a response: top of the little guy's list appear to be Ave Maria (from my cousin's wedding), anything by the Viennese Boys Choir (my osteopath says that babies like hearing the voices of children), Bob Dylan (this is recent), and Tyler's nightly rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."  If Gracie were asleep before, this never fails to wake him up.  Of course, we joke that we don't actually know whether there's a correlation between movement and happiness -- he's either kicking around, dancing with joy, or putting his hands to his ears and kicking at us to stop (as I learned this morning: all his senses are now developed!)  We'll need to test this after he's born.

Until then, we're still memorizing all the verses...

Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot, 
Coming for to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?
Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home.

Chorus.

If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I'm coming, too,
Coming for to carry me home.

Chorus.

I'm sometimes up and sometimes down,
Coming for to carry me home,
But still my soul feels heavenly bound,
Coming for to carry me home.

Chorus.

The brightest day that I can say,
Coming for to carry me home,
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.

Chorus.