34 Weeks

Thursday has come around once more, as Thursdays seem to do, but I'm not feeling too bad today. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that the sun is out, which I always find encouraging, or whether because the last few days have felt so bad that this one can only feel better in comparison.

Today I would have been 34 weeks pregnant. I didn't really read any pregnancy books whilst I was in fact pregnant, but my friend did give me Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff, which is supposed to be the definitive guide to gestating for modern mums, even though I found it poorly written and the weekly 'diary' sections more than faintly nauseating. Her main character is called Hermoine for god's sake. Whatever I feel about its style, though, it has just the same information as any other pregnancy manual I've seen/heard of, which is this if you are 34 weeks:

"From now on your baby will hog all available space and squash up anything silly enough to get in the way, like your lungs. If you do get breathless, sitting or standing up straight will help. So will taking it easy."

[...]

"Your body is starting to put the finishing touches to the baby: it's the finishing-school stage. From now on your bub is pretty busy practicing sucking, breathing, blinking, turning the head, grabbing things (such as its other hand) and stretching out the legs - but there's not quite enough room to actually do that. Hence the jarring kicks you may feel. The baby's skin is becoming smoother and less translucent - more like the final skin colour. Weight: about 2.3 kilos."

I was interested to read about the change in skin colour. One of the things I did not expect when Max was born, and which initially frightened me, was that he was really red/dark skinned. I actually thought at the time that this discolouration was bruising because of how fragile he was, but I only found out later that a baby's skin actually always looks like that before their bodies have had time to develop the vernix, which protects and nourishes their skin. Apparently most pre-term infants will not have any. There's another fact that I thought I would never have to know.

It's not until 34 weeks in Kaz Cooke's bible that she talks about the signs of early labour, so even if I had been doing the suggested reading absolutely none of it would have been helpful in the least anyway. Under the section called 'when to go to hospital' it does not say 'when you are 23 weeks'. I can't help but feel that the early labour symptoms should have been mentioned earlier, if, as people keep saying, babies are born extremely premature more often than you'd think. Perhaps I will write to Ms. Cooke and tell her why I think she should shift that chapter for all those first time pregnant women like me who had no fucking idea they were in labour when in fact they had been for quite some time.

By the way, here are some photos of other lucky bitches who are 34 weeks pregnant.

Anyway, as Thursdays are probably going to keep being horrible for quite some time, I've decided to also implement a new weekly theme on this blog which is 'Things-I-Love-Thursday'. Each Thursday I will post something that I love, just to remind me that there are some simple things left to take small amounts of pleasure in, even if they are superficial and don't really mean all that much in the greater scheme of life. If you would like to share a 'Things-I-Love-Thursday' guest post, get in touch as I would enjoy seeing some of the things that you love.

Here is the inaugural 'Things-I-Love-Thursday' post.