37 Week Update

Yesterday (Thursday) was 37 weeks, which means she's officially baked and can come out whenever she wants. Anything from 37-42 weeks is considered "full term," meaning her lungs are mature and she's ready for life on the outside. If she decides to stay longer, she'll just be putting on weight, potentially as much as 1/2 pound per week. I figure most of that is made of pretzel.

Getting this close to term is of course pretty scary for us, and we're very anxious for her to get here safely. We're trying to be patient and let her come on her own time, but my providers aren't crazy about letting her hang around forever either, so starting next week we are going to try to "encourage" her to move along. I will leave out the details, but if you're curious you can write me back and ask.

We have continued to have weekly non-stress tests, which is the heart rate monitoring that I described before, and they've all looked really good. This past week she slept for the first 20 minutes of the test, which made me scared (sure she has to sleep, but does it have to be while we're watching for activity?!), but after that she woke up and acted fine.

Yesterday we went for another sonogram and consultation with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. We saw the partner of the one we saw 2 weeks ago, his name is Dr. McGee.
We LOVED him. Our visit with him was exactly what we needed. He spent a lot of time explaining to us exactly what babies do and what signs they give off when they are struggling so we would really understand how reassuring the exam looked. He also made a point to explain things to us in ways we could relate to professionally (like he said "look, her foley bag is full" when he measured her bladder and compared other measurements he took to things we monitor in adult ICU patients.) He also had a very compassionate and kind demeanor. If I stay pregnant for a lot longer we will probably go back and see him again to recheck everything.

I am including two sono pictures, but I think I've told everybody before that late term sonograms tend to not look like much. It's sort of like those old magic eye puzzles - use your imagination and don't try too hard. The first one is from two weeks ago, and it's of her head, which is pointing to the right. You can sort of see a squished little face - look for lips to the left, then nose, then squished little eyes sort of in shadow. The second one is from yesterday, and it's a profile shot of her head except with a little princess hand in a fist draped accross her face. She was feeling bothered I think.