A good report

We had a doctor's appointment this morning - this time with one of the midwives. They are sooo much better than the doctors, judging from this time. I hope we're lucky enough to draw this midwife when the baby comes - she's a Vietnam vet and has been delivering babies for 30 years. We told her we were taking Bradley classes and she said if she was with us during labor, and no risk factors had come up, she would just tell the doctors "Hey, this is a Bradley couple, leave them alone". That's just the kind of advocacy we need.

She was also a lot more helpful in talking with me about good nutrition than the doctors have been. The doctors mainly try to shame you into not gaining "too much" weight, without telling you why or giving you strategies for how to do that. This midwife suggested eating more protein earlier in the day to keep my energy more even. It's consistent with Bradley, where they want you to eat between 80-100 grams of protein a day (a lot!). Now that I've found the Bradley diet excel sheet that calculates protein grams for you, I have begun obsessively documenting everything I eat, like I did on Weight Watchers. At least it tells you what you're missing. I need to do a better job on the green leafy vegetables.

During the exam, she was able to tell that the baby has turned to a head down position (which explains why I'm not being kicked in the bladder anymore, but in the side). He may still turn around a lot between now and the end, though. The baby weighs about 2.2 pounds and is about 15 inches long. That blows my mind. Can he really be that big?

Tonight I'm getting my hair done - you can tell how pregnant I am right now by the length of the roots of my highlights. Looking forward to an uninterrupted weekend at home beginning tomorrow. We're going out to eat red meat tomorrow night - I've been imagining it all week, alternating between wanting lamb and wanting steak. Mmm. I'll never be the same after this - I've become a carnivore.