Bumpdate: Week 36

My heart is heavy as I type this.
If you follow me at all on Facebook, you know it's been a rough week for a couple of my friends. On December 6th, a high school friend lost her month-old baby son to SIDS. And this morning, another friend's sweet baby son passed in his sleep after being diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer just over 6 months ago.
And I just ache and ache for them.
Every time I feel this precious boy move inside me, my heart breaks a little more for my friends. There is nothing so different from me and them. Those little boys are just as pure and perfect as this one. And for some reason, they have to bear this burden.
It's not paranoia that this will happen to me. That mindset can lead down a million different roads. It's more a connection to the precious gifts of life and forever families. And a reminder to be thankful for every small moment - every snotty nose and bedtime struggle and lost shoe and frustrating mealtime. And it's a lot of the reason why I just can't seem to kick Annie out of our bed when she sneaks in and hogs our blankets every night. Because I can't even imagine life without the possibility of those middle-of-the-night snuggles.
So that's kind of where I am right now. Heartbroken and humble and so so eternally grateful for these two precious spirits that have been entrusted to me, especially this sweet, growing boy.

Week: 36
Cravings: Nothing in particular. Basically just all the food. 
Weight gain: 40ish pounds. Ugh. I know. Still healthy, especially for a 2nd pregnancy. But also annoying to lug around.
Nicknames: Blueb. Little Boy. Baby Brother.
Maternity clothes: I've officially reached the stage of pregnancy where I cannot stand real bras or pants for more than a few hours. So I spend a lot of time in pajama pants and sports bras. #sorrynotsorry
Aches and pains: All sorts. Plus contractions are getting nice and crampy so that's fun. The other night, I was hobbling into Walmart for a few things, and an old man was returning his motorized wheelchair cart to the entrance. He looked up and saw me and immediately asked, "Would you like to use this?" I hardly even hesitated before answering "Yes, please!" Thanks, kind old man.

Dr. Appointments: We're now having weekly appointments, and everything still looks good. We got an ultrasound last time to check position and size, and Baby Boy is head down (pretty low, too) and guesstimated to be about 6lbs 4oz at this point (Annie was born at 6lbs 13oz). I'm already dilated to a 3 and 50% effaced so Dr. says any time now. Obviously, it could still be a few weeks, but we're hoping for sooner than later.
Names: Um. We MAYBE have one. MAYBE. But I'm not going to talk about it because I don't want to jinx it.
Looking forward to: Seeing if I've made any more progress by my next appointment. I was up a lot last night with painful, regulated contractions so I'm thinking my body is getting ready, but we'll see. I'm actually really interested to see how labor is going to go this time and if it's at all similar to the whirlwind we experienced with Annie. And I hear the hospital food is good so that's a plus.

To-Do List: Yikes, this part stresses me out. So we do have the bassinet up next to our bed. And we finally got the carseat out this evening. And I also started packing a hospital bag tonight. But I still have to finish redoing a tall dresser because the one we currently have is small and only holds Annie's clothes. And I still have to go through all the boxes of clothes for this boy and sort them into sizes and see what we need more of. I've got a Target trip planned for tomorrow for some stuff (like diapers - kinda important) so hopefully that alleviates some stress.

Basically, we're just all really excited to meet this new little human!