We've prepared some documents to take to the hospital with us... two are signs, one is our birthplan, and one is a contraction tracking worksheet. They are all in PDF format. Hopefully people may find them useful.
Birth Plan
Contraction Tracking sheet
Do Not Disturb
Learning to Breastfeed

We've been asked more and more what the Pickle's name will be. And the answer is, we simply don't know at this point. We have a pretty good idea... sort of... but we aren't going to make a final decision until we've met him. Some names just don't match some people and we don't want to give him a name that we will feel like it's the wrong name once he's here. So he will be the pickle until he arrives.

My blood pressure: 130/78
Baby's Heart Rate: 138-143
Fundal Height: 33.5 cm

So far, so good. My blood pressure is staying right where it should be. The babies heartrate is where it should be and goes up when the midwife is poking at him to check it (this is what should happen). The fundal height is supposed to be 1 cm for each week of pregnancy so 33.5 cm at 34 weeks is right on track. I have gained 5 lbs from my last appointment. Five pounds in two weeks is a lot, but I was wearing jeans and tennis shoes this week and not lightweight shoes and a sleeveless knee length dress. Two weeks ago I had lost three pounds from the previous appointment so net gain in the last month is 2 pounds. Since I should average half a pound a week, I am right on track. I have gained 8 lbs. total, and have about 6 weeks to go. As of the last estimate, the baby will be about 7.5 to 8 lbs, so I am right on track.

I have had a bit more back pain, but the hip pain has disappeared. The physical therapy, especially time in the pool, seems to be helping. I have had some swelling in my ankles on and off, but no cankles. My hands a really swollen every morning, but once I am up and move them a bit the swelling goes away. This was not uncommon in the past with my arthritis anyway, so it is no great concern.

My midwife has said that I should start doing kick counts. For those of you unfamiliar with this, I will explain. Basically this is a technique that is now being used to monitor fetal activity levels and well being. You pick a time of day when the baby is normally active (All babies have times of day when they sleep and when they are active. Trying to do kick counts when a baby would normally be sleeping is just setting yourself up for undo panic.). The first time you feel a kick, you record the time and then count kicks until you have felt 10. If there are 10 kicks in 2 hours, the baby is moving appropriately. If there are less than 10 kicks in 2 hours, you should drink some juice, eat some food, or walk around and try again. If this does not improve the movement, you should contact your doctor/midwife. I have done these occasionally on my own and usually it take only about 15-20 minutes (sometimes less) to get 10 kicks. Also it is not necessarily a kick, but any movement which is good, because I have no idea how you would determine a kick versus a punch. So I will start doing these once or twice a day, probably after lunch and before bed. That is when he is most active.

We have a baby shower on Thursday and our lamaze class on Saturday and Sunday. I will try to post something about both of those events next week.

Nicole and I have both frequented PregnancyLounge.com, it had a very active user-base and was generally close knit and friendly, as well as having good information. They did have some policies that were a little annoying, such as forbidding any posting of URL's at all because it might compeat with their advertising. But these sorts of things are understandable, as running something of this sort is hard work, and a popular site costs quite a bit of money to keep up. However, a few weeks ago, a post from the admins appeared saying anyone with a signature file with a url in it would be banned for 30 days if the signature was not removed within 24 hours. This seemed questionable to me, both for the length of the ban, and the short notice. Granted, the terms of use clearly express the ban on posting URLs but, many people who used that site, used tickers, and some of those tickers were very subtle in their inclusion of the URL.
Two days ago however, the site suddenly went to a subscription format, in which you had to pay $15 for a membership in order to post at all. This was done with no notice whatsoever. It seems as if even the moderators were not notified. The site admins claimed this was due to a problem with spammers (a problem we can all identify with), but the suddenness of it strikes me as odd. On a board like that, people develop mini-communities and form friendships. By making this change with no notice, it seems that people who communicated regularly through that board, would be forced to pay the subscription fee, or else not be able to communicate with people they'd grown close to. Nicole is starting to look at other pregnancy forums, but we are both dissapointed in the way things seem to have been handled over at Pregnancy Lounge.
Keep in mind, that these opinions are based on limited information, as the site is "unavailable at the moment while we are testing some functionality." So I haven't been able to find out more.

See all the pics in the photo album