I am starting to feel quite large these days... and at 34 weeks I am starting to both become acutely aware of just how much bigger I am going to get and how little time there really is until this baby will be born. Matt says that I've developed a couple new stretch marks on the underside of my belly already, so there's that to look forward to seeing! *grin* (Boy was I surprised by those after Emma was born!) There's already been one birth from our childbirth class -- one of the moms went into labor at about 35.5 weeks. She's fine and the baby's fine and they are home already, so all is well at least... but you could tell that the news definitely shook up the rest of the class a bit! I was interesting that during our class on Tuesday the woman who had her baby early was talking about how it was really hitting home that she was going to be having this baby soon, and that she was really feeling on the cusp of the birth, even though she wasn't due for another 4 weeks. You could tell she was really feeling this quite deeply and emotionally, and it was a little amazing to find out that she ended up having the baby the following evening!

This baby seems to have found a new favorite position which makes my belly look odd and lopsided. As near as I can tell (and sometimes I really wish I had a little window so I could see what he is doing in there!) the baby is somehow wedging his bottom up under the right half of my ribcage and I think sticking his legs out straight and down to the lower left. This makes the upper left portion of my abdomen feel strangely empty and makes the right part feel very full and cramped. I really don't remember Emma being quite so active as this one. I think this one is going to be a fair amount longer than she was, which is probably part of it. Emma was only 17.5" long at birth (5th percentile!) and I think this one is going to be more average in that regard. I've been reading my week by week pregnancy book and supposedly the baby is almost 20" long and weighs almost 5 lbs - which really makes me wonder what Emma was at this point in the pregnancy, considering that at 38 weeks she was only 17.5" long and 6 lbs, 6 oz! I guess that's the thing with averages or medians or whatever it is that they're using in the book - you're going to have examples that are a lot less (and a lot more!).

I can also tell that I am getting pretty far along in this pregnancy by the change in what I am reading. I've been on a big non fiction kick for ages now, and I seem to finally be moving out of it. Now all I'm reading is sci-fi (can you say escapism?) I've recently read Eon by Greg Bear and now I'm working my way through Time Enough for Love by Heinlein. I've listened to this one before, but I haven't actually read it, which is an interesting experience. I can still hear echoes of the narrator's voice and I hear the narrator's pronunciations for all the names and such as I read, but it feels somewhat odd because the book progresses so much faster since I read faster than I could listen to the book. By this point when I was pregnant with Emma my reading had deteriorated (sorry, Matt!) such that I was pretty much only reading Shadowrun books for the last 6-8 weeks of the pregnancy so I feel like this time I'm doing a fair amount better. I know several other women who are reasonably big readers who have had their readings patterns change as get towards their due date and I wonder how common that is. Anyone else out there experience this?

Emma has been very patiently waiting for me to finish this so that I can make a felt king for her. Yesterday we spent quite awhile in the morning making a felt princess and two complete felt dress outfits (dress, crown, gloves, shoes, dress decorations) and Emma is eagerly awaiting the next installment of this activity. I feel so talented and creative these days, even though I've always considered myself somewhat of a dunce in the creativity department. But Emma is pleased with what we're doing, and I'm trying to make sure I'm not too (outwardly, at least) critical of my efforts.