37 weeks tomorrow

Tomorrow, I hit the 37 week mark with Baby Boy. Praise the Lord! To say this has felt like a super long pregnancy is an understatement. I'm not sure what's so incredibly different about it. Honestly, it's been much easier than Lucy's and even Will's, although most of my pain from Will was after delivery, so that remains to be seen.

The overarching thing with this pregnancy has been how extremely gigantic he is! From early on, he has measured big. All 3 of my babies measured big for the bulk of the pregnancy, but this little guy, well, he's almost off the charts big! And maybe it's because I'm in a different country where they don't usually have gigantic babies and so my doctor has made a very big deal out of just how big he is that it's been on the forefront of our minds. Will was 9 lb 15 oz (4.5 kg) when he was born and the first thing out of my doctor's mouth was "Wow! If I'd have known how big he was I would never have let you push him out!" Thanks, doc. Encouraging words. Every time I tell anyone over here how big Will was, the response I get is a resounding and drawn out "Ma-sha-allah!" (Which means "what God wills/ordains." They use it basically like people use "What the heck!" or "omg")

Back to Baby Boy. He has measured...get ready for it...3-4 weeks ahead for over 2 months now! And because he's so big, my doctor here has run all kinds of tests to try to figure out just exactly why. She also does an ultrasound every single visit. (Which I like!) What she found out is that I have gestational diabetes.

**Now, I wanna throw in a disclaimer here, I did the glucose test at the normal 22 week mark and it was perfectly normal. When she had my blood tested again, it was on Dec 28. I'd like you to find any normal person whose blood sugar isn't through the roof the week after Christmas! So, she started me on the diabetic diet. And I haven't gained any weight since I started it, in fact, I've lost about 6 lb since the end of December! Talking with my nurse friends (I'm surrounded by nurses!) here and talking through my blood sugar levels, they seem to be pretty darn good to me. We bought a meter and I check it about once daily now and the only 3 things that send it sky-rocketing high are:

1. juice (it was very low one morning when I woke up and it told me to treat and retest in 15 min. I drank a tiny, kid-sized cup of OJ and it sent it WAY up and way over my suggested level within 30 min!)
2. cornbread (I made taco soup and we made whole wheat corn bread. We like sugar in our cornbread, but still, Brad didn't even use as much as we usually do and both times I've eaten the cornbread, it has gone way up!)
3. coconut beans (This is a Swahili dish that is super duper yummy and is usually eaten with rice. I only ate a tiny, minuscule amount of rice that day, but had lots of beans, thinking beans are protein, they shouldn't bother me. But low and behold, it sky-rocketed. Had to be the coconut in the beans.)

All in all, I've felt better, lost weight, and haven't had the intense swelling in my feet and hands since I drastically cut back on my sugar intake.**

Doctor still isn't happy with my numbers, which are all but directly in the range she gave me, and so Thursday she put me on meds (glucophage) and she set my induction date for this Thursday, February 4! WOOHOO! I think she's nervous about how big he already is...did I mention that he's big? Get these measurements...

At 36 weeks and some days, his head is already as big as a 41 week old baby! He is in 97% + percentile for every.single.measurement.

So there you have it. It's Sunday night and in 4 days, I should be the mother of  3 kids!

We're still praying through what Baby Boy's verse is gonna be... that will be revealed when HE is revealed! Praise God for my BIGGUN!