39 weeks

Gestational age: 39 weeks
Weight: -.5 pound
Total weight gain: 26 pounds
BP: 122/70
Fetal Heart Rate: 145
Dilation: 4.5 cm


This past week has been interesting.  Last Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I had a lot of strong Braxton Hicks contractions in the evenings.  In fact, on Saturday night, they started off pretty small and got progressively stronger and closer together.  At around 8:30 they were 6 minutes apart and stayed that way for about an hour.  If I was a first time mom I might have made Forrest take me to the hospital.  Even though I knew they were not quite the real deal - they were getting closer in pain to what I know they should be.  After talking with Forrest - I realized that all of our main kid watching people were out of town for the weekend - Bellingham participating in the Ski to Sea race, Wenatchee and Lake Oswego.  Um... crap.  I called my mom and she willing agreed to come up Sunday morning (we found some other friends willing to help us out Saturday night if need be - and Forrest's parents know that they are "on call" at all times).  My mom arrived around noon on Sunday and left Monday around 5.  I had approximately 3 contractions the entire time she was here.

Today I woke up not feeling well.  I haven't been hungry all day and I am exhausted.  I have taken two naps while letting my children watch tv.  I walked into my doctor's appointment almost convinced that there had to have been some progress over the week and that she would just send me to the hospital.  1/2 a cm is not enough progress and I am back home.  My doctor was surprised to see me this week - she had been on call Thursday and Friday and kept waiting for me to walk into the hospital.  She is willing to induce me this Thursday, but I'm not quite ready to go that road yet.  (Interesting side note - according to my last period, I will be 39 weeks on Thursday.  On all her early ultrasounds - baby measured 5 days ahead of my LMP -which makes way more sense of when I think she was conceived - which would have been 39 weeks on Sunday.  I choose Tuesdays as my weekly date - so that I would be inbetween both.)

I am actually pretty comfortable at the moment.  I am having a hard time sleeping - because my hips end up hurting and I spend a lot of time flip flopping in bed.  I haven't hit that "I'm done with pregnancy" phase yet - so while I would love for Baby girl to make her appearance, I am not quite ready to induce to get her out.  My doctor knows that I want to avoid pitocin and would be willing to just break my water and see if that gets my body to go into labor, but there is no guarantee that it would work, and then pitocin might need to be used anyway.  So, we will wait.  And I will enjoy my two big kiddos - who were pretty disappointed that the baby wasn't coming out today.