Week 34

Here are mom and Baby Stock posing in front of our Christmas-card-collaged door. As she grows you can see she is blocking out a significant part of the cards! Baby Stock is weighing in at around 5 pounds now and measuring head to toe 19 inches!

She is still 6 weeks away from her due date but mom's body is apparently doing several labor test runs. Over Christmas Mandy experienced a few minutes of "false labor", which is a lovely combination of painful contractions and the baby seemingly trying to escape into mom's rib cage. No worries, say the pregnancy books and doctors...this is normal. Of course, I certainly wonder what anyone would consider abnormal for pregnancy. It seems this is a time of anything goes...swelling, skin changes, discomfort, more energy, less energy, sleeplessness, cravings, aversions, etc. Basically, I think the medical community concedes that anything weird that can happen to a woman's body may (or may not) happen during these 40 weeks.

Tomorrow we have our last every-other-week check-up and then we are in the home stretch of seeing the doctor each week! I know this doesn't sound fun to most people, but I suppose it seems like a milestone of sorts for me. Plus, you really can't have too many people telling you "yes, Mrs. Stock, that's completely normal". :)