Weekly check-up: 8 is great

Move that body: 15 minutes upper body circuit and 1.5-mile walk with Denali

I discovered something new today. OK, not brand new but new to me.

The wall push-up.

Yep, after a good 16 weeks of not doing anything resembling a push-up or exercise to work my chest muscles, I did a wall push-up. Twenty-five of them, actually. I could have done more – they weren’t really difficult – but I had cake balls to dip and it was the last exercise of the morning.

The rest of my upper body workout consisted of doing an exercise for 1 minute straight before moving onto the next muscle group. The biceps got worked out three times, triceps two, shoulders three and back two. I think. I did this at 7 a.m. – you can’t expect me to remember something that long ago.

***

Warning: Snarkiness looms ahead.

I am 32 weeks pregnant today. THIRTY-TWO. Eight months, if you want to count it that way. And if you want to count it another way, I have 8 weeks left. EIGHT.

Holy crap, I’m going to have a baby.

It would feel a bit more surreal if I didn’t feel like a cow today. Then again, that’s probably because I decided to cinch my “waist” (aka the narrow space that’s left between the boobs and a belly) with a snakeskin belt in an effort to feel a bit more fashionable. The effort might have been worth my heifer feelings if my flat iron had decided to work this morning. And, no, I didn’t drop it in the bathtub. It just decided not to get hot. So now my hair is pulled back in a nub with about a billion pins. And no, you aren’t getting a picture.

Of course, I shouldn’t being calling myself a cow or a heifer. The Pampers Month 8 pregnancy e-mail I just got said I should view my changing body as “a soft, protective home for your baby.”

Easy for them to say.

Other Month 8 happenings:

• Your baby's brain is developing more folds and connections. Bones are hardening and the skin is getting thicker. If you're expecting a boy, his testes are moving into the scrotum now, although some boys' testes don't get there until their first birthday. Not what I wanted to know …
• Your little one is also putting on fat and getting chubby cheeks (both kinds). He's gaining about half a pound each week, bringing him to between four and six pounds. The fat stores energy for his trip through the birth canal. He may be preparing for the journey by pointing his head down. Yeah, he might be … if his head wasn’t stuck underneath my ribcage.
• Your baby sees a good amount of light now, so he's tuned in to the passing of day and night. He has clear, complex, and sustained sleep and activity cycles, often coordinated with Mom's rest and waking times. Some research suggests that dream sleep, called active sleep in the fetus and infant, begins at this stage.
• With more baby than amniotic fluid, there's not a lot of wiggle room in the womb. You feel those stretches and kicks. And you can see the movement too, since your uterus is thinner. How active your baby is now and how he responds to light, sound, and movement is somewhat a part of his personality. Great. He likes to stay up late and beat up his mom.