THE PARIS LETTER: Baby Supplies, False Labor, and a little 9/11 Reflection

Belleville

Hello everyone -
Well, I know you've heard me say it before, but I am really pregnant at this point - 31 weeks, and I just realized that bending over to tie my shoes is becoming increasingly difficult. Time to bust out the slip ons I guess. Sheesh.

I had some false labor this week - first time in this pregnancy I've ever had to call my midwife after-hours, so thank goodness for that I guess, but because everything with the baby has been so normal these actually-very-normal Braxton Hicks contractions freaked me out. I had also been having some pelvic pain (sorry to get graphic on you so early in this letter...) so I had this fear that I was dialating or the baby was descending early and they'd have to put me on bedrest for the next 6 to 8 weeks. That was really my fear, the bedrest. I already feel so much less mobile that I think I might go crazy if I had to stay in bed - But, I've known so many women that this has happened to that I have had it in the back of my mind since I hit the second trimester.

THE PARIS LETTER: It's A Girl

Hi Everyone -

Yes, the Paris Letter is back, apologies for the hiatus - I was traveling in the US for the last five weeks or so, and ended up being too busy to really get it together for this letter. But now that I'm back in very quiet, vacation-emptied-out Paris, I have lots to catch you up on.

One dramatic thing that happened during my time in the US is my belly really popped out and I began to look pregnant. This seemed to me like it happened in the course of a week - one week I was in London and having to tell people in meetings that I was pregnant, and the next week I was in LA and when I would explain that I was pregnant people would all look at me like "Yes, we KNOW". It may have been that I was more covered up in London because it was cooler, but it still felt like I went from "possibly pregnant or just chubby" to "definitively looks pregnant" in a very short time. It was definitely a shock for Matt, who said "wow, your belly is ENORMOUS" when I got back to France.