According to the sure baby website, this week of pregnancy, you are about 20 - 20 1/2 inches long and weigh about 6 pounds. During this finishing period of your development, fat is being laid down under the surface of your skin, which will help you maintain an even body temperature and which can be burned as energy. Your growth has slowed, perhaps to conserve energy for the birth process. Your arms and legs are beginning to dimple at the elbows and knees, and creases are forming around the wrists and neck as fat deposit continues. You kick all the time and it’s wonderful. Our doctor has instructed us to do “kick counts.” That’s the exercise of counting to make sure I feel you move in some way at least 4 times an hour. You move that much in about 4 minutes. Your toes rarely penetrate my ribs anymore, which I simultaneously appreciate and miss. Weird.

I've lost my appetite, which I’m glad for because I had gotten pretty nervous about weight gain. I weighed myself at Katie and Scott’s the other day and I weighed 160.8lbs, which is exactly a pound a week. That’s what the doctors like to see, so I’m pleased with it. I continue to have strange painful sensations that might be Braxton Hicks contractions, might be ligament pain, or might be just the weirdness of pregnancy. Again, I’m sometimes grateful for them because I think of them as my body’s preparatory process, but sometimes they make me nervous because I don’t know what they are. I have become chronically short of breath, and found myself really wanting to sit down during the Christmas Eve service at Bethel UMC the other night, but still, that’s totally normal and it doesn’t bother me much. Mostly, I still feel good.

In case you’re wondering why I’m not calling you Jonah these last couple of posts, your dad and I are back on the naming search. As of last night, we think Joshua may win the spot as your first name. I still don’t know. I really like Jeremiah, too. Still, nothing feels “right.” It’s very strange to name a person you’ve never met. We’re pretty sure we’re not going to be able to settle on anything until we meet you.

I think I’ve moved through the super-moody stage. I was feeling moody during the Thanksgiving through exams period, but nothing feels all that important now. This morning your dad realized that we left the light on in the Volvo while we were out of town for the last week, and when he came into the bedroom to tell me, I didn’t even open an eye to tell him “I don’t really need to go anywhere today; just take the Saturn.” I do have little button issues, though. Like this morning I realized that Dinah (the cat) has been trying to make the co-sleeper her home. No way am I letting that happen! The thing is, since nothing feels that important, it’s hard for me to motivate myself to finish the important work that lies before me.

I’m struggling with this paper and I want it DONE. It’s getting better, which is nice, but it’s getting shorter, which is not nice. I have a lot of theoretical work to do and it’s tough to plow through all the work that has been done already in my quest to do something original. Other things that need to get done include the folding and putting away of laundry that your dad did before we left for the holidays, and doing more laundry. I also would REALLY love to get this salmon color off the walls. Now that we have new furniture, I think a nice light to medium brown would be much better. Calmer, too. I’m still trying to get good curtains up – curtains that will keep the cold out – which seems impossible. It’s also time for D the gifted apartment cleaner to come and make the path straight around here – literally. He’s really good at dealing with clutter. And your bedroom – jeez, I won’t even start that discussion. I try to take it one thing (the paper, for now) at a time, but I look around me and it doesn’t seem like I’ll ever finish. That’s the fatigue part. I understand that this is normal – in these, the last 35 days of pregnancy. According to the “sure baby” website, it’s normal to experience more fluctuations in energy this month. Fatigue is experienced by most pregnant women, but this month, fatigue alternates with periods of extra energy. I wonder what the biological purpose is for the extra energy. Am I supposed to use it on laundry? I’ve been using it on holiday travel.
There’s too much traveling going on and there has been little time to reflect these days. Soon we’ll be in Nevada with my parents; we’ve just returned from Bishopville, SC visiting Big G and Lolly. On our way there, we visited John, a family therapist who your dad used to do a good bit of work with. We came because your father continues to question whether it’s our path to move back to SC and to try to make a difference here. I’m of little help to him because I have promised that I’ll give it a try if he feels the need to do that. I would need to finish my JD first, and might even do the coursework for a Ph.D. in Chapel Hill, but after that, I could dissertate from there (in theory).