bean sprout '09: 31 Weeks

31 weeks 3 days

I have a million things in my head that I have been wanting to write about, yet nothing that I can settle on. I think I had mentioned before that this is how my little brain functions, at high volumes with low efficiency.

31 weeks brought a new emotion to this adventure. We now only have nine weeks left, that's a single digit! Things are starting to take on a new reality, a good yet somewhat overwhelming reality. My belly has clearly been inhabited by my own personal alien. However I've stopped belly watching, because he either is really shy or already a bit defiant. Anytime he's moving up a storm and I lift my shirt then look down to watch, he stops completely. Every single time. The other day I felt that he was doing one major baby dance in there, so I called Dave over to attempt to beat him at his own game. I slowly lifted my shirt and I didn't look down, I just had Dave watch to tell me what it looked like. Griffin carried on with his little dance and Dave relayed to me that he looks enormous. This wasn't the description that I thought he'd use. He put his hand to my belly and I think Griffin tried to poke his leg straight through, and Dave shivered with bewilderment. At least one of us got to see his moves.

This past weekend we attended a Baby Basics class. It was mostly common sense stuff, but I suppose you can't assume what should be common sense anymore. We saw a normal newborn should look like and not, what to be alarmed about and not. We were told that we needed to bathe the baby, and feed the baby, and stick our tongues out at the baby. Some things I hadn't realized:

It is better for a baby to be a little cold than hot. SIDS is more closely related to overheating babies. When Dave (the tightwad) heard this he looked at me and I read his mind, "We don't have to use the heat this winter either!"
It is not condoned (at least by this class's standards) to use baby powder, cornstarch, or Chinese herbal powder ;) on babies because of some sort of inhalation risk. What am I going to do with all the Chinese herbal powder that I have stashed in Griffin's closet now?
The only thermometers that were recommended were regular $12 (she was quite specific about the price) digital ones, not the in-ear ones and especially not the rectal ones. And they should be used under the arm. Good to know.
When a baby is in "hard sleep" you can "fiddle" with the baby and not wake him up. You know, like pinch his nose, yank on his legs, shoot him with water guns….and he remains sound asleep. This is sounding like so much fun! However, under no circumstances whatsoever, you should EVER EVER SHAKE A BABY! (Back to the common sense thing, right?)
I had no idea that the walkers of yesteryear are no longer recommended. Supposedly they tip over and fall down stairs. (My thought here is: most children don't need any help falling down stairs as it is. Danger lies all around us.) That's why the new excersaucers are gargantuan and tend not to be mobile devices. When I had been looking at baby toys and the like, I really didn't like the looks of these excersaucers. Our house is only around 1600 square feet; one of those things would literally take up an entire bathroom. Hmmm…..what to do? At least we have no stairs.
[Dave's recommendation to this list] On the poster that was displayed for normal newborn appearances was a baby boy with swollen testicles. Now what was (extra) disturbing about this is that the lady running this class chose to skip over explaining this picture. There were like four posters each with 9 pictures, and each of the pictures were explained, exept this one. We now have no clue what to do if we find this, although I'm pretty sure that mommy instinct isn't going to allow me to think that this is normal. I'm not sure if ignorance is so blissful in this possible situation.
I didn't know that a baby was a newborn for only 28 days, and then he morphs into an infant. Kind of like at eight weeks your once embryo transforms into a fetus, when most of his little organs begin to function. I think we may throw a party for the 28 day milestone.

I've been reading that starting next week (32 weeks), we may start experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, or practice contractions. WWOOOOAAAAHHHH! I'm not sure how excited I am about fake contractions, should be interesting. Oh, on Sunday we are doing something rather exciting to celebrate hitting the eight month mark and to celebrate this pregnancy in general. I can't wait to share what it is!