Any Day Now

According to my doctors, Jay and I will be meeting our daughter any day now, and we're getting excited.  I must confess though that it still seems a bit hard to believe that Jay and I will be parents very soon.  We started dating in 1995 and were married in 1999, so it's been just the two of us for many years.  I do believe our quiet, predictable life is about to become much noisier and more chaotic.

On Friday, December 10, I had an ultrasound before my doctor's appointment.  The week before, our baby girl had dropped, so we were no longer getting accurate measurements regarding her size.  The ultrasound was really neat.  It was the first time we actually saw our daughter in 3D.  We were able to see her face really well, and she was sucking on her arm the whole time.  As of Friday, the pregnancy was 38 weeks and 1 day, and the ultrasound estimated her measurements to be 39 weeks, 2 days.  It also estimated her weight to be right at 9 pounds, which was quite unexpected. 

After the ultrasound, we met with one of our doctors, and he indicated that the amniotic fluid level was quite low (the 5th percentile), so he decided to hook me up to a monitor to check the baby's heart rate and movement and my contractions for a period of time.  Based on the time of day and the fact that I had not eaten in a while, I had a feeling that our baby was not going to be very active while being monitored, and I was right.  Thus, the doctor decided to send me to the hospital to have a stress test done there.  I actually was having contractions although I couldn't tell that I was; however, I wasn't having enough of them during a 10 minute interval to determine how our baby would respond to contractions if I went into labor over the weekend.  Thus, the doctor at the hospital decided to give me a small dose of pitocin to increase the number of contractions.  Of course, Jay and I were worried that this would send me into labor, and we were NOT ready for that to happen.  I had not yet packed a bag for the hospital (shame on me), and we did not have our camera or video camera with us.  Luckily, the contractions sped up just enough to confirm that our baby could handle the stress.  Shortly after 8:00 p.m., we were able to leave the hospital.  We were starving, and we had lots of family members worried about us since they hadn't been able to get in touch with us for several hours.  After calling family members and eating a late supper, we packed our bags!

I had a follow-up doctor's appointment today to check on the amniotic fluid level to make sure that it had not decreased over the weekend, so we were able to see our daughter again via ultrasound.  She still was sucking on her arm!  I wonder if she will do that after she is born.  We both prepared ourselves for the possibility of having the baby today; however, the amniotic fluid level had not dropped and the baby was doing well, so I was able to go home.  We'll have another stress test done during Thursday's appointment, and I'm thinking that I'll be having the baby very soon thereafter.

Jay is planning to proctor my final exams for me tomorrow and Wednesday so that I can keep my feet up (the swelling has been quite bad for a while now).  Hopefully, I'll get all of my exams graded before delivery; however, I'm at least glad to now have all of the final exams written because that was not the case on Friday.

Well, that's it for now.  I mainly wanted to record what had happened on Friday so that I wouldn't forget later.  I anticipate that my next post will be as a new mother.  Until then...