Pre-Term Labor | My 37 Week Pregnancy Update!

Hi guys, my name is Megan with the blog Wilson Homestead.com and today I'm doing my 37 about 37 week pregnancy update. It has been so crazy lately that I didn't do my 36 week update and I'm almost 38 weeks so I'm just kind of do I'm just gonna say this is my 37 week update and just talk about what's been going on lately. So a lot has happened since my last update and if you guys if any of you follow me over on Instagram you'll probably know some of what's been going on and I've been so bad about doing YouTube videos but life's just been absolutely crazy hectic so hopefully can get back on the bandwagon and stick with it a little bit better but let's get right into this video. My baby center app says the baby's the size of a leek which seems a little random. I guess they're talking about how long a leek normally is. Some of the things they compare the size your baby to don't quite seem to make a lot of sense but it's supposed to be 19 and a half inches long and six and three quarters pounds so that's getting pretty big. Baby is just super super active and I absolutely love this point in pregnancy because they have the biggest like sweeping rolling motions across your stomach. My babies always end up in the same position with their head down their back along my left side over here on my left side and their feet kick my right side but I can just see like their their feet sweeping across my stomach like all day and it's like the best feeling ever. That has to be like one of my absolute favorite parts of pregnancy is feeling the baby move and especially when it gets to this really big movements point of pregnancy. Especially at night I can feel like somehow kicking on both sides. The baby must be like kicking against one side and then that is making its butt like bump against the other side because I can feel it on both sides and it's like a very strange feeling but normally during the day where I feel the baby the most is over here on the right side or like right above my belly button right here. Just lots of kicks and punches and rolling motions and big enough obviously now that I notice it even when I'm like working on things. I don't have to like sit and like try to focus. I just feel them all the time which is really nice. It's just really nice that all three of my pregnancies the baby seemed to be very very active and I've never had to worry about doing kick counts or anything like that because I just I do just literally feel them all the time so that's never been something that I worry about. Baby's getting big enough that I start having my ribs go numb if I sit long enough especially in church. Something about sitting during a whole church service my ribs start to go numb a little bit. It's just a lot of pressure being pushed up from where the baby is so our Oily House has a really great essential oil blend roller bottle recipe for your ribs being sore or numb in pregnancy. It kind of helps circulation and all that so I've started using my roller ball that I actually made during Demi's pregnancy because I never finished it so I've started using that roller bottle again. I will link her recipe down below because it is really helpful. Last update I'm pretty sure I talked about having my pelvis and hips pretty sore and my pubic bone just going out a lot so for a while that was actually pretty manageable. It wasn't getting any worse just kind of trying to keep my knees more together in bed and like when I have to roll over like just really focus on keeping my legs like together in parallel and not like moving one and then the other and just different things like that was seeming to really help at least it not get worse. I was actually noticing it maybe improving a little bit just not being quite as painful as much and then I kind of injured my pelvis a little bit. It was probably a couple weeks ago now. A hawk swooped down in our pasture and I saw it and it was fighting with one of our chickens and it was going to take it away and without even thinking about it it was actually I was supposed to be resting like this was an absolute no-no for me to do this but I didn't even think about it. I just my let's see my maternal instincts kicked in and I booked it out in the pasture. I ran out there. I remember being very annoyed while I was running that I couldn't run as fast as I remember being able to run. The rest that day I never noticed anything but that night it got really sore and then like for the whole next several weeks it's been really really painful so I did something really bad to it when I ran so no more running for me. The other day there was another hawk and I was like I'm not even gonna look because it's hard for me to not want to do things so thankfully yesterday finally I got a chiropractor appointment and my husband was able to help me watch the kids while I went up there and it feels a lot better. It's still pretty painful and I'm pretty sure it's just going to be like that for the rest of the pregnancy because everything's just really loose. It'll fall back out of alignment but that adjustment really did help and she also said really try to focus on sitting with your pelvis tilted up not all slouched down with like your pelvis tilted forward because she said your pelvis was basically stuck in like a slouched forward sitting position and my pubic bone was out. That's why it was so painful so I'm really trying to it's hard to remember to sit like that. I'm trying to do that no more running and I'm just trying to be more careful with it and hopefully it stays in a little bit longer. Now we can get into the really juicy stuff so it's been quite an exciting like last like three weeks I guess two or three weeks. It was before I was even 36 weeks that I started having a lot of prodromal labor contractions so my midwife told me to just take it really easy try to have more people help try to just cut it down to only essential activities so that I don't aggravate it anymore. So I was doing that I had even a couple people were bringing some meals all I was really doing was watching the kids because my husband still had to work and then somewhere right around 30 it's kind of all getting blurry because I should have filmed this sooner but somewhere around 36 weeks I went into early labor and I was having really strong contractions like and I've been in labor twice now so I know what labor contractions feel like versus prodromal labor versus Braxton Hicks. I kind of know what it's supposed to feel like at this point. They were real labor contractions and it was like super achy down in my lower stomach and lower back and like I could feel my cervix like kind of aching a little bit like and having that I don't know if any of you who have gone through labor before know what I'm talking about but that just kind of sore achy like you feel your cervix opening a bit. This probably doesn't make very much sense it's just kind of a weird achy feeling plus really intense contractions and I was having contractions every five minutes and they were 60 seconds long consistently. So my midwife actually she actually told me I should go the hospital because she couldn't even legally attend a home birth for another it was before I was 36 weeks even so it was some point between 36 and 37 weeks that she could legally attend a home birth. She was like you really should go in the hospital and get those checked out they can give you some stuff to slow down the contractions. I was like I really do not want to go in the hospital if I can help it like if there's anything I can do at home to like try to stop this early labor tell me what to do because I've had two amazing home births I've never been in the hospital for anything like this. If it's an emergency I will go because obviously the health of me and the baby is most important but if there's any chance that I can stop this labor here at home I'm not going to go to the hospital. My midwife said go take a nice warm bath drink a lot of water she said you need to be like mega hydrated take some magnesium supplement and then when you're done with your bath go lay down in bed with a pillow under your hips so that your cervix is like higher than the baby so the baby's not putting pressure on your cervix and so I went and did all that and I was able to slow them down a bit and at that point she put me on like basically full bed rest so I was like I had Luke take off the next week of work there was one day that he did need to work so I had my mom come pick up the kids and take them to her house all day and I just either sat or laid down for like an entire week and then every time the contractions would start to pick up because even just me walking around like taking care of the kids would like ramp up those contractions really fast if they ever got ramped up I would go take a bath go lay down with a pillow under my hips and then like calm down so clearly I wasn't in active labor but my midwife said that that was early labor if you had let it get into active labor you wouldn't have been able to stop it so that whole week was really interesting and me being someone who just likes to do things and be involved in stuff it was so so hard for me to sit still and like we got you chickens during that week and I was like I made my husband take a launcher out there into the chin coop and I'm like I don't want to be left out of stuff I want to still watch so the August 4th was our bare minimum goal we had to at least make it to August 4th and then at that point my midwife can legally attend a home birth and then obviously I mean that's that was a few days shy of 37 weeks 37 weeks is obviously more ideal just baby's lungs being more developed so I was on absolute total bed rest until the fourth I was able to do a few more things until but not not really much more until 37 weeks and then after that my midwife kind of gave me the go-ahead to very very slowly add activities back in so our community has been so amazing during this kind of trying season we had so many people bring us meals like I didn't have to worry about a single meal during that whole several week period my mom my friend Liz my mother-in-law people came cleaned my house people took our kids my husband was able to take off an entire week of work and watch the kids so I just feel really grateful that we have such a great community around us that we're able to manage that so well and not have to go in the hospital and I'm I'm just so thankful that we made it to that point because that was really stressful and knowing what labor feels like feeling those contractions knowing how fast my son's birth went I was really worried that once it got like if I had let that get started I may not have even been able to make it to the hospital so it was kind of like a stressful week I think probably what we would have done if I did end up going into active labor was I probably would have just driven to the hospital in our area it's over 30 minutes away but I would have had my husband drive me to our local hospital and have the baby in the parking lot so that we were right there if baby needed any help but then if the baby was fine we could have just gone back home and not have to worry about getting discharged and everything but just being in a situation like that it's it was an interesting thing because I've never had to worry about anything like that like it's just been my last two babies it was just very straightforward I make it all the way till my due date I mean with Jimmy I did have a lot of pedromal labor but it was never so early that I had to worry about preterm birth so it was it's just been kind of a whole new different experience that I'm just really grateful that we made it I'm having a contraction right now just a second I'm just really grateful that we made it and that now we can go ahead with our plans to have my new wife come when I go into labor and have our new house and it's just going to be really nice so now I'm I think I'm almost I may be actually 30 babies today so that's feeling really good to see that for a long I've got two weeks left until my due date after that whole scare now I'm like feeling a little more impatient I'm like excited maybe to get here perhaps a bit more sore this pregnancy I'm like okay we made it past our goals but so you can come out now but I'm trying to be patient and just be grateful for every day that because that's just better for them in the long run and anytime in the next like several weeks and because we found out the last two pregnancies I can't wait to meet this baby first of all and just being able to start the process of healing my body I mean this for a rough pregnancy so I'm just excited that it was supposed to end it's just kind of like it's balancing she said baby has dropped but she said but also because it was dropped that urine test for a bunch of different things she normally does every time all that looked perfect baby's heartbeat sounded perfect my blood pressure and the blood pressure so everything's looking healthy still which is good and she was just so excited that I had made it 10 37 weeks late for knowing it was shooting it gets too difficult so I was really excited that at least passed to that point so if I go into labor and have a fast birth so anyway that was probably a very long rambly video and hopefully I remembered everything and told everything in the right order but it's been kind of just a hectic few weeks and so it's kind of all like running together and getting mixed up in my head so I'm glad I filmed this when I did and I didn't wait any longer and just everyone who's been praying for us everyone who's following on instagram and kind of keeping up with what's going on thank you so much for all of your kind words it's just I really really appreciate it it just makes me feel so loved and like we have so many people looking out for us even online so let's show you guys the bump so you can see my shirt is not long enough because this is not a maturity shirt so I only wear this when I'm going to be around the house but baby's getting pretty big feels really low so anyway I think that's it for this 37 38 week pregnancy update and I will see you in my next video bye