I CAN BREATHE!

**** UPDATE!! ****

5:25 pm...definitely continuing the "practice contractions" but they've moved lower and to the sides and are VERY tight. Feeling energized but a little nauseated.

5:56...still a lot of tightness all over and some radiating downward. Will keep my eye on them tonight.

ORIGINAL POST:

While I feel like I'm on "high alert" for signs of impending labor, this one almost escaped unnoticed...DRRRR!!

It's almost 2:30 and I JUST realized that, while I've been having plenty of the up-high contractions (BHs, no doubt...in fact, I'm having one right now!), they have NOT been accompanied by the "can't breathe deeply/lung tightening" sensation I've had for weeks now, where I have to lean over or stretch out to find relief.

AND, I've been going potty an awful lot today. Hmmmmm. Sitting on my bladder more, perhaps?? Has he "DROPPED??"

My doc asked me yesterday, when I asked HER if he'd dropped at all--"Can you breathe more easily??" cuz she knows I'd been complaining about that for a while. Yeah, ah..."NO." Hardly. But TODAY...yeah, none of the feelings of my lungs being squeezed and like I wanted to be on one of those torture devices that stretches you limb from limb, like I need more room in my diaphragm. I can breathe!!!!

Has he settled a little lower, perhaps?? Dropped somewhat??

Also, I found Andrew's birth story on-line, so I'd have a point of reference with this birth...and my BHCs were at their worst on Thanksgiving, a mere two days before Andrew was born. Mmmm-hmmm. Two days! Looking back, I'd had them off and on for a month or so, but nothing very noticeable--but the last few days, they've definitely been noticable!!

All good signs...but I'm still allowing for the possibility of this going on for another two weeks or more.

In fact, when I calculate my due date from conception, almost every source puts me due closer to May 11-13. The 13th was my first prediction, too. So if I were to still go a week past that, I'd be looking at May 20 (if my doc and I "let me go" that long). Wow. That's almost three weeks! Then again, that's only three weeks.

Either way, we're in the true "final stretch!" Could be any day now!

In honor of this new development, enjoy this song I heard on a different blog. It's beautiful! Here's a YouTube link.

Mat Kearney's "Breathe In, Breathe Out"