Pregnancy Update: 37 weeks {Maternity/Family Photos}

So, we’ve reached the stage where Baby #3 is con­sid­ered full-term and can come any time he’d like. It’s gone by so fast! And, thank­fully, the whole crazi­ness that was the stom­ach bug & its after­math around the 35/36 week mark seems to finally be all resolved. Since the last update, time has been filled with lots of appoint­ments and try­ing to get things ready for his arrival.

First up, I’ve started with my twice weekly NSTs (non-stress tests). Basi­cally every 3–4 days, I’m going into the hos­pi­tal where hook me up to a fetal heart rate mon­i­tor and a con­trac­tion monitor.

As I’ve been told, they want to see some reaction/change on the heart rate mon­i­tor, with his heart rate show­ing at least 2 good peri­ods of accel­er­a­tion over the course of 20 min­utes. In addi­tion to that, I’m hav­ing my nor­mal weekly checks at the Dr.‘s office & a fluid check ultra­sound done then too. Thank­fully, he’s passed every­thing with fly­ing col­ors so far.

Now that every­one is feel­ing bet­ter, nest­ing has been in full swing too. We’ve done some shop­ping (in fact, I’ve got a great review & give­away to share on one of my favorite stores, Healthy Baby Happy Earth), offi­cially moved the boys into a room together, started clean­ing rooms, have the bassinet set up, started the hos­pi­tal bag (I really should prob­a­bly fin­ish that, huh?!), and been doing lots of laundry.

One of the most fun things we’ve man­aged to make time for though is get­ting some pic­tures done! Before Lit­tle Brother arrived, we did a set of mater­nity & fam­ily pho­tos and I really wanted to do that again. This is my favorite shot from that photo shoot 2.5 years ago:

With two of them this time, the chair shot didn’t turn out quite as great as before, but we still man­aged some good pho­tos. I think the ones of us kneel­ing turned out espe­cially cute!

We also did a few fam­ily shots, which sur­pris­ingly turned out really well! And, the pho­tog­ra­pher just hap­pened to snap a quick cou­ples shot, which actu­ally hap­pens to be one of the best pho­tos of Mr. Mom Endeav­ors & I in a long time! So, I am so incred­i­bly thank­ful that we not only made time to do this, but that Baby coop­er­ated & stayed put! I think it’s fun to have doc­u­men­ta­tion of our fam­ily at dif­fer­ent stages and this will be the last time we’ll be a fam­ily of 4! (Eeek.…crazy!)

So, now we’re just in that wait­ing game phase. I think these last few weeks are some of the hard­est and not just because of com­fort. It’s the excitement/anticipation/nervousness about how & when things are going to hap­pen. I find it SO hard being patient & try­ing not to think about it — know­ing your water could break at any moment & you could have a baby tonight…or you could still be preg­nant in 3 weeks and your Dr. is talk­ing to you about induc­ing. ACK! But, I know that no mat­ter what hap­pens, in 3 weeks or less this lit­tle guy will be here! Excit­ing!

What’s your best “last cou­ple of weeks before baby comes” advice?!