A Busy Due Date!

The day started with us leaving the house like we were going to have the baby after our doctor's appointment. Let me say, that was an odd sensation. It's somewhat relative to leaving for vacation in the sense that you have packed bags. On the other hand, it's not at all the same! We started at our doctor's office and the visit went well overall. In her words, they are here to help me out from this point on. That's a nice thought, I guess :)

The report from that visit was that Sam's head seems to have dropped a bit and my cervix is slowly starting to get ready. However, our doctor wasn't overwhelmed with the fact that Sam's movements seem to be harder to track. I'm supposed to be able to count ten movements in an hour. Until a couple of weeks ago, I could get ten in five to ten minutes. Now it definitely takes the full hour. Just to be safe, our doctor sent us to have a non-stress test.

We went to the hospital for the non-stress test, specifically the perinatologist (see previous post about Mr. Bean). We LOVE this office! They have a super nice staff and comfy chairs. For about 45 minutes, they monitored Sam's heartbeat and me to see if I was contracting at all (I wasn't. I was laughing, however. That seems to have the same effect on the monitor as contractions...). Every time Sam moved, I pushed a button (the controller was very Jeopardy-like) and they watched to see how his heart rate responded to movement. That looked good, as did the level of amniotic fluid. Apparently he is still happy in his home.

After we left the doctor's office this morning, we were kind of under the care of the head nurse for the rest of the day. She's the one who taught our childbirth classes and has been with the practice for a LONG time. She's also the one in charge of scheduling inductions and c-sections. After I dropped Josh off at work, I called her to schedule an induction date. At this point she asked how big the baby was. I told her I didn't know and no one had seemed very concerned with really finding out. After much debate, she sent us for an ultrasound this afternoon. So, about two hours after I dropped Josh at work, I went back to pick him up!

We ended up having the same ultrasound tech as when we found out he was a boy! The really good news is we got firm confirmation that he is indeed a boy (Josh was especially worried because we never saw a picture of "the evidence...") and that everything looks great. The not so comforting news, however, is they think he might be as big as nine or nine and a half pounds!!! That is WAY bigger than we had planned on or guessed. Now, we know that this is a pretty big guesstimate and it's not that accurate. BUT, the fact that there is a chance he measures that big, makes me VERY nervous!!! We talked to the nurse at our practice again and she seemed slightly surprised too.

The plan right now is the nurse is going to talk to the doctor that comes in in the morning (we also really like her) and call us with a recommendation. We have a list of questions we've thought of and if there is any need for discussion, I'd really like to go into the office to have this discussion. If they just decide what to do (which is what we're hoping for) then we'll go with that. That being said, Sam will not arrive later than next Tuesday from everything we heard today.

Think small thoughts!