An update at 31 weeks.

We’re now into our 31^st week of this pregnancy journey, and the apps and websites tell us that our son is now the size of a head of cabbage. Given the presence of pregnancy wind in our household, I don’t feel the need to argue with their analogy either! The clock is really ticking down now and it feels like there isn’t a chance that we’ll be ready by the time he arrives – but I don’t suppose we’ll ever be ready. Not fully.

(The size of our baby & another creator of wind!)

The baby has grown almost to his full length for birthing now, and just needs to fatten up. This means that he is taking up a lot of room and thus his kicks are less powerful. There is still plenty of movement from the little rascal I am told, but the movements are very different to what they were a few weeks back. For me, the male partner in the relationship, this has been very frustrating. I was enjoying my weeks of bonding – always getting a kick as his half of our interaction. Now it’s much more difficult to feel him moving and at times I’ve felt a little useless.

As far as my wife is concerned, we’ve basically revisited the dreaded first trimester but with much more force. Any negative symptoms that pregnancy can throw at you are likely to come in this home stretch, and plenty of them have already made an appearance. For me? I’m still suffering from couvades syndrome I’m sure. Anxiety, increased appetite and crazy dreams. I dreamt this week that my wife gave birth a month early. I know from my own research that a baby coming a month early isn’t all that uncommon or unsafe and that he would have been pretty much fully formed. Not in my dream though; for our son entered the world as a smiley faced caterpillar!

(Pretty much what our son looked like in my dream)

The weight and self esteem issues are still there for myself, but that’s something I’m working on. I’m already 6lbs lighter than when I started the new regime; weighing in at 174lbs this morning. I’ve been using an iPhone app called MyFitnessPal that had helped me track my calories. I’ve become obsessed with logging every item of food or drink that I consume and it is really helping. I’m using this blog, right now, to recommend it to anybody that wants to at the very least assess their diet!

You can find the app and/or its website here... www.myfitnesspal.com