34 Weeks - She's a Thompson

Well, this was the week where I feel like I accomplished a lot. First off, before we left for Paris, I (finally) received notification that my Swiss residency permit was available for collection. Then, I received a call that my new US passport was available. So, now I am officially a Thompson. I am not sure what I will do at work in terms of changing my name, but at least I have all the needed documentation. Now I have to go about changing all my other stuff - drivers license, credit cards, bank accounts. And, Matt and I's birth certificates have arrived!

We also had another check-up with the doctor this week. I think she is a little surprised that I am still working full-time and even more surprised that I'm intending to do so right up until the due to date. She told us this last visit that she thinks I should keep working for about three more weeks, then call it quits. I had to laugh at that because I know I will definitely go crazy if I take off work three weeks before the baby is due. Don't get me wrong, if I start to feel tired or can't handle the full working days, I will be getting that doctor's note and cutting back. But I think just waiting around for the baby will drive me crazy.

She did another quick scan and measure of the baby and everything is absolutely normal. Baby is weighing in at 5.2lbs and all the measurements for it are still coming up right on average. Nice to know that she doesn't think I'll be delivering a big-headed, heavy baby! We also found out that the baby has moved over to the left side with it's head down (but not engaged yet), which means an even greater chance of delivering with the baby's back towards my stomach. Even so, I feel like the baby moves around a ton -it's probably changing positions every day! Matt and I have also enjoyed feeling the baby's hiccups. We noticed it last weekend in Paris for the first time and now feel them happening more often.

Doctor also took some more 3D scans of the baby. You can really see how our little one has fattened up!

Matt's brother, John is in town visiting for the weekend. Matt's had the poor guy mowing our lawn, putting up ceiling lights and lots of fun things like that. It's a great help, but I'm not sure he'll be jumping at the chance to come back and visit again soon! Tonight we're going to dinner in Zurich with Christian and Philippa.

33 Weeks - Oui, Oui mon cheri!

Matt and I just returned home from having a weekend trip in Paris. It was our anniversary trip and also Matt's birthday. I just realized that Matt turned 33 on the same day that I was 33 weeks pregnant.

Paris is actually a great city to visit when you are nearly 8 months pregnant. We got a little bit of special treatment at some of the major sites. At the Eiffel Tower we were able to jump the cue to get down; at the Arc de Triomphe instead of taking the 284 stairs up to the top, we got to take a 10 second elevator. It was actually quite nice to have people notice and go out of their way to make it a little more comfortable for me.

We did have a good time playing tourist. Besides the Arc and the Eiffel, we also went to the Louvre - where we saw the Mona Lisa and the Venice de Milo among other well known pieces - the Notre Dame, Invalides (where Napoleon is buried) and lots of other neat stuff. The food was also pretty good, even if Matt ended up with a mild case of food poisoning. He tried escargot so maybe that was it. Nevertheless, he won't be trying them again. Baby seemed to enjoy Paris too. It wasn't the easiest walking around the city all day, but Matt was a very good husband and gave me lots of foot massages. Baby was full of lots of kicks and squirms - in fact - baby might have even flipped to the right side. At about four pounds now, I'm starting to really feel every movement.

We'll know for certain this week the position as we've got another appointment on Thursday. Matt's brother is also coming into town that day to visit for a few days. Just seven weeks to go!

What a difference 25 weeks makes...

Well, tomorrow marks 31 weeks. Just 9 weeks to go until I officially hit "done" status. Just 6 weeks until I'm medically considered "full term". Thought you might get a kick of seeing the side by side of my 5w6d photo with the 30w6d photo.

I gotta say, I think I think I might be growing a baby in my bum too, cause it appears to have grown a bit since Jan-8th. I guess my excuse would be that I have a highly adaptive body which is desperately trying to counter-balance the increase in weight on the front with some increase in weight on the back? ;-)


Baby is turning into quite the kung-fu fighter and it's using my belly as it's dojo. I definitely don't mind it though - it's actually really reassuring. Matt has taken to resting his head on my belly and talking or humming to our little one. What is neat is that the baby reacts when it can hear Matt's voice - kung-fu fighting against Matt's head. :-)

We met this week with the agency that will be helping us locate a nanny. The good news is that they seem to have a pretty good qualified pool of candidates, so we should hopefully have no trouble finding someone for mid-January start. The Milz's were here too. We are really fortunate to have such close friends having a baby so close in time to us. Not only will baby have a playmate, we'll get a nanny a only a portion of the cost! I don't think we'd be able to afford one otherwise.

I also booked an appointment with the US Consulate in Zurich next week to start the process of changing my name. I've given up on waiting for my Swiss residency permit to come through first. We received the hospital entrance forms last week and need to fill them out and return them. I'm completing everything in "Thompson", so hopefully that doesn't cause problems and hopefully I get my passport in 20 days like it says on the State Depts website!

It's amazing the amount of paperwork we need to do to have a baby here. I am certainly not helping the situation by not having changed my name until now. But, because Matt and I are foreigners, we have to submit all sorts of stuff to the civil authorities in order to get a Swiss birth certificate issued. Then, to get passports for the baby (both British and US) we have to complete more paperwork! The only thing I can say is thank goodness for the Internet, because otherwise it'd be ten times the hassle.