37 Week Pregnancy Update (Baby #2) + Maternity Leave Plans

Wow, 37 weeks!! We are really getting down to the wire now all of a sudden!

Could be any day now, or could be another month… we’ll see. 🙂

In case you missed them, here are my other baby #2 pregnancy-related posts:

• My pregnancy announcement/first trimester recap post at 15 weeks
• 23 week pregnancy update with baby #2
• 28 week pregnancy update with baby #2
• Outer Banks Babymoon Weekend
• 34 week pregnancy update with baby #2

Pretty much everything from my last update at 34 weeks (cravings, exercise, symptoms, etc.) is still accurate, so this time we’re going to mix it up with some bigger updates, like baby’s position (we finally know!), my maternity leave plans, and a baby’s room update!

Please note there are affiliate links in this post.

37 Week Pregnancy Update (Baby #2)

First up: 

Baby Position!

Big news: we found out at our 36 week ultrasound that unlike his big sister who was breech, requiring a scheduled C section, this little man is head down!

My doctor says I’m a good candidate for a VBAC, so we’re going to give it a shot!

They won’t induce me (rupture risk due to my previous C section, although apparently not all doctors agree on this) so I’ll just have to hope I go into labor naturally before our backup C section, which is scheduled for 40 weeks + 6 days (the latest I could convince them to let me go). 

I’m excited and also nervous because potentially going through actual labor and delivery is all new to us. 🙂

I’ve been interviewing last minute doulas (I didn’t want to hire one before I knew he was head down, because last time we had one and then it was too late to cancel once we learned Riese was breech) and I’m feeling good about having that support during the process. 

Eek! 

Time to start eating dates and drinking raspberry leaf tea, I guess (both are apparently supposed to help with labor?)! Any other ideas, send them my way. 🙂 

The baby is measuring average (they said Riese was measuring small the whole time last time), and they think he’s already bigger than Riese was at birth (she was 6 pounds 5 ounces when born), so we’ll see if they are right! Maybe he’ll come early?

I definitely feel like my belly is already now as big if not bigger than it was at the end with Riese (here’s my 40 week update blog post when I was pregnant with Riese for comparison photos) – this picture below is from 36 weeks!

Maternity Leave Plans

I learned a lot last time about what I don’t want to do this time in the immediate postpartum days. 

We are planning for this to be our last child, and I want to make sure I don’t feel I’m missing the newborn cuddles this time because I’m busy and distracted by work and trying to keep too many balls in the air.

I also know firsthand just how intense the early days are emotionally and I want to be a lot more gentle with myself and my expectations of what I can get done (especially with a toddler underfoot as well this time, eek) than I was last time, when I basically rushed right back into work. 

Over a year ago I hired a team member, Taylor, to work for me behind the scenes 20 hours a week, and as a result I’ve been running my business very differently, focusing on working smarter and more strategically vs. just endlessly churning out content.

We’ve spent a lot of time the past year working on updating and optimizing my old blog content (primarily the recipes) for Google search, so that my blog gets more steady traffic vs. large peaks and valleys on days I post vs. don’t post.

Taylor has also been instrumental in helping me plan ahead for maternity leave this time so I can take a real step back while still keeping the blog going with fresh, new content (and she’ll still be working behind the scenes while I’m out, too). 

Together we’ve planned out and pre-written 1 new blog post per week scheduled to be shared starting next week (May 12) through Labor Day.

The blog posts are all ready to go, and will be published every week on Wednesdays. They are all recipes or recipe-related posts, and I won’t be publishing any new lifestyle blog content this summer.

I’ll be back in mid September, and we will take things from there! 

I will miss sharing real-time life updates with you all over the summer, and there’s a chance I may pop in with a birth story while that’s still fresh, but we’ll see how I feel.

I’m planning on taking a step back from social media as well (except for pre-written and pre-scheduled posts sharing the links to my Wednesday recipes), but I’m sure I’ll share some occasional updates on Instagram if you want to follow me there and see how things are going with the new little one. <3

I have a lifestyle blog post coming to you this Friday and am also planning a weekend recap on Monday, but the current plan is that that will be my last lifestyle update for awhile, and on Wednesday, May 12 will begin the pre-scheduled “evergreen” (meaning relevant anytime) content that will just be once a week on Wednesdays moving forward. 

I appreciate you all sticking with me and hope you love the recipes we have coming at you this summer – there are some really delicious ones you won’t want to miss!

And a huge thank you to Taylor for being awesome because I wouldn’t have been able to plan ahead and take an actual maternity leave without her. 

I’ll be taking a break from my AnneTheRD nutrition coaching this summer, too – I only have a few active clients right now because I didn’t take any new clients on for basically all of 2020 thanks to the pandemic and having no childcare, and then this year I knew I’d be going out on leave so I didn’t want to start to ramp things back up.

The clients I do have right now are long term/maintenance mode clients, so we’re just going to check in occasionally via email over the summer and pick back up with calls in the fall. 

Baby’s Room

We’re just about done with the baby’s room now! It feels good to have it pretty much finished and ready to go. 

The painting hanging on the wall by the window in the picture below is actually one that my aunt painted for me when I was a baby – fun to get to re-use it! It’s a little circus type theme and we thought it went well with the room colors.

On the blank wall to the right, behind the crib, we’re waiting on a cool mountain-themed decal Matt ordered for us from Etsy that I’m sure is going to be a huge pain to put up but we think it will look really cool. We hope, at least – we’ll see what it actually looks like in person!

We’re re-using Riese’s crib, her old sheets (baby boys like flowers, too!), her baby toys and books, and a few other things I’ll mention in a minute.

The rocking recliner we got is this one – quite cozy.  

Matt put up the white blackout curtains for us last weekend (plus these white curtain holdbacks and a white metal rod and clear glass ball finials), which help make the room look a lot more cozy and finished vs. before when we didn’t have curtains in there.

The table lamp also helps – isn’t it cute? It’s this moon-themed lamp and the bottom lights up as well as the top part, or you can have one lit or the other. The bottom light is more like a nightlight – soft and cozy and textured to look like the moon.

The little white circular table is Riese’s old one (hence all the stickers on it) – it’s smaller and it looked better in this room vs. the new bigger rectangular one we originally bought (which is now in her room and holds her 239408230948230948 books she wants to look at before bed). 

The wall color was already like that when we moved in, and we like it – a pretty medium blue color.

I’m obsessed with the rug we got – it’s from Novogratz – so cheerful and bright and it’s the same company that made Riese’s rug, so they look nice together when looking into both rooms (which are side-by-side) from the hallway. 

I got a new dresser for the baby that came awhile ago (this one – I like that it has two open areas to put baskets of toys/books/supplies, multi-purpose!).

The wicker diaper caddy we got is this one, and the changing table topper is the old one we got for Riese and just moved over.

I made sure the new dresser was the same brand as Riese’s dresser – and the same depth – so we wouldn’t have to get a new changing table topper. 

Unfortunately Matt put up the shelves (old ones that the previous owners left here and we thought would work well in baby’s room!) before we remembered we were moving over the changing table topper, so they are a bit lower than we’d like. 

We may have to move them but are going to play it by ear for now because it will be a pain and require some dry wall repair – and we don’t have any matching paint for touch ups… oh well! 

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And that’s all I have for you today! It feels like we are getting so close now and we are really excited to finally meet baby boy and welcome him into the family. <3

I’m planning for this to be my last dedicated pregnancy update. Thank you for sharing in this special time with us, I appreciate you being here!