Andi’s exciting life.

Our due date is now two weeks away. I hope it really will be two weeks or less until Baby G is in da house, but I guess I’m just as likely to be late as early. OK, I’m probably more likely to be late than early since this is our first, but let’s stay positive here. I’m penciling him in to arrive next week, and hopefully he will cooperate.

In the past few days I’m pretty sure he has dropped. My belly looks lower, and he feels heavier and lower. I’ve had a few contractions here and there, some a tad painful, but nothing to make me think it could be the real thing. I’m basically constantly on watch for any signs of labor at this point.

Friday is my last day of work, which I am happy about. I’ll probably spend a good bit of my time off hanging with my friend, Lynne, and also just trying to stay busy on my feet to try to get things moving along. I’m planning to make some meals to freeze for after the baby comes. I’m also going to work on a little craft project, which is making a clock for the nursery, so hopefully the parts I need for that will be here by early next week. I really don’t have any artistic abilities, so it’s likely that it won’t turn out well, but at least it will be a fun distraction to pass the time.

My appointment today had a little excitement. I saw a midwife who I hadn’t met before. She was nice and friendly but seemed rushed (she was about 20 minutes late getting to us). She palpated my belly and said that I had a nice sized baby. I asked her how big she thought he was, and she said about seven pounds! At 37 weeks!? She said she thought he would be over eight pounds by my due date. Then, she measured my fundal height and listened to the heartbeat with the Doppler. She heard the heartbeat right away and started to say that the baby sounded great, but then his heart rate sort of abruptly slowed down. I said, “That sounds slow, doesn’t it?” and she said yes. I asked her if she was sure it wasn’t my heartbeat, that’s how slow it sounded to me, but she checked my pulse and said that it was faster than mine but slow for the baby. It sped up a little and then slowed down again. So, she said she was going to send us to antenatal testing to be on the monitors for a little while. I was a little worried but couldn’t really feel too worried because I had been feeling the baby move like crazy all morning and thought he was doing fine. I was really glad Matt was with me at this appointment so that he could be there during the monitoring.

So, then we go wait for a while to get called back to the testing center, which is just a room with a few tables separated by curtains where they have ultrasound and fetal monitors. The nurse who brought us back said they wanted to see his heart on ultrasound and then use the fetal monitor for about 20 minutes to watch for normal (or abnormal) accelerations and decelerations. She asked if I had been feeling the baby move today, and I said he was very active about an hour earlier but that he was calm now. So, she starts the ultrasound and he was still being pretty calm. He is head down (yay!), and his heart looked fine with a normal rate. Then she hooked me up to the monitors.

At this point, the baby started going crazy. Seriously, he would not be still, and his heart rate was in the 160s and 170s. It would slow down for a few seconds to the 140s or 150s, then he would squirm all over again and get it high again. Matt couldn’t believe how much he could see my belly moving with his movements. This lasted probably five or ten minutes, and she said she was going to try to get him to calm down because they needed to see a baseline heart rate when he was at rest. So, she turned off the light and told me to close my eyes and not talk and pretend I was going to sleep. She also turned on some classical music. I did that, and he was still going crazy! I was having a hard time not laughing because he was more active probably than he had ever been the one time that I actually wanted him to be still.

It seemed to me like he never stopped moving the entire time, but I guess his heart rate did stabilize and she got a baseline for about two minutes of around 135, which is normal. Then she looked at him and his heart one more time with the ultrasound and said he looked great. During that second ultrasound, she said she could see him doing practice breathing movements which was very reassuring and good. Then he just kept on doing them. He was truly putting on a show for this testing! She basically just said that it was a fluke thing that we heard that deceleration during my exam. I asked her if it could have been because I was lying on my back and she said maybe or that he could have pressed against his cord right at that moment or something like that. Anyway, she said everything they saw was good and reassuring and there was no reason that I needed further monitoring. That was good to hear, but I was pretty sure he was OK since he was being such a spaz! Oh, and she checked my amniotic fluid level on the ultrasound too and it was good.

We left there, and he was STILL going crazy! I don’t know what got into him! It probably took a good half hour after we left before he settled down. I’m back to my theory that he will come at least a week early because if he is that big and active I think he’s ready to get out of there and see the world. He is considered to be full term now, so it’s perfectly safe for him to be born at anytime. We are so ready for him, so I hope he will decide to make an early appearance.