34 + 3

And yes, I realize my last post was at 31 weeks--3 weeks ago. Sorry, folks. The truth is, my motivation to blog has simply been MIA. Too much else to think about, I guess!

My latest very fun pregnancy symptom has been a constant need to pee. As in, I feel the desperate urge to run to the bathroom as soon as I sit back down in my office chair from my last trip! The thought of a UTI has crossed my mind, but since the urge goes away when I lay down or stand up and walk around, I'm pretty sure it's just a bad case of baby's-head-on-bladder. At least his head is down (I'm pretty sure, based on where I feel the kicks and bulges).

Otherwise, we're just getting ready and counting down the days and weeks! We have our Newborn Care and Childbirth classes this week, and then we'll be totally done with classes. I have a baby shower in a week and a half, and then I can finally go purchase everything else I need--and hopefully find a place to put it all in our very small baby room.

I've also read a total of 5 baby books at this point. Definitely a bit of overkill! But I wanted to get a wide variety of perspectives. And, to be honest, they've really helped me feel much more excited and less nervous about having a newborn. I feel like I'll actually have an idea of what to do with him now and can picture what it will be like to have a little cutie-pie to take care of 24/7. Pete has read most of the same books, so we've been able to talk through our reactions and opinions on various topics. I know many parents who didn't read a single book or take a single class before they had their babies, and frankly, I'm pretty impressed that they survived! I don't think I could handle that very well with my type-A personality.

This morning, my boss finally made me set an end date for work--April 8, assuming I haven't gone into labor before that. I'll remind you that my due date is April 10. This means I won't be able to work past my due date if I go overdue, but I think I'll survive. He's working on hiring a replacement for me, so he needed to figure out a start date for that person and overlap time for the two of us. I don't expect those last couple of weeks of work to be very fun. Sure, I can train the new person. But my experience with training is that they won't really learn things until I'm gone and they're forced to. And honestly, my job is not so complicated that it will take two solid weeks to train a new person to take over. So there might be a lot of awkward sitting around in the same office with this new person, trying to figure out what else to work on. And hoping to go into labor, of course.

Ms. Bladder is telling me to take another break...and yes, my perineum has definitely been getting its share of exercise in holding it in while writing this post!