I Guess the 37th Week is the Cupcake Week

Oh, memories. This week I started the official paperwork for my maternity leave. I get no cell service at my desk, so I had to step out of the building for a few minutes to call our HR system to kick off the process, and as I sat down on the bench in the patio I realized that it was almost a year to the day to when this whole mess started. Last October, I was calling HR to work out how many consecutive days off I could take after my surgery to remove the endometriomas on my ovaries, and I had forgotten that when you call the first thing you hear is the automated message: "If you are calling regarding a pregnancy claim, press 1. For all other claims, press 2." It was tough to hear that last year, knowing that I might never get pregnant. This year, even with my unborn child doing his best to tap out messages in Morse code from inside my uterus, it was still bittersweet.

What else is new? Well, my hips have started hurting in a way that simply cannot be ignored (and, like Shakira, my hips don't lie.) It's probably that the ligaments are starting to relax in preparation for, gulp, delivery. I've also switched over from once-daily Lovenox injections to twice-daily injections of unfractionated Heparin. They are incredibly uneventful, especially since I've had so many months to refine my technique (don't pinch the skin too hard as you inject!) and the bruises have been kept to a minimum. It is kind of daunting to inject, look at the clock, and think "well, if I go into labor right now, how many hours before I can get an epidural?" Oh! And last week's ultrasound confirmed that the little one is indeed vertex, or head-down, so there's nothing to worry about there. No transverse presentation here.

Also, this happened:

:-)