36 Weeks!

One more week and I will be FULL TERM! What an amazing feeling that is! I cannot believe how fast the second part of my pregnancy has gone! While we are SO excited to meet this little baby and we are DYING to know if it is a boy or a girl, we need at least 3-4 more weeks to prepare!! We have a few more baby items to get but mostly we just need to get stuff done around the house! Actually what I should say is my dad needs to help us get stuff done around the house haha. Because let's face it, I am no longer capable of doing these tasks on my own and both Chad and I seem to break everything we touch. We tried to put together a dresser the other weekend and it almost cost us our marriage (jk). I think we have all of the major gear put together and have plenty of batteries for swings/bouncy seats! I have done most of the baby laundry and I am working on packing a baby bag for the hospital as well as a bag for myself.

Last week we (meaning I) decided on a pediatrician. I really like the guy I met with and my favorite part about the whole practice is that each doctor is actively practicing at Cincinnati Children's, which means God forbid our baby ever had to go to the hospital for anything, our pediatrician is still in charge of our care and can access all information at any given time. He had my exact sense of humor and he already told me he has red flagged our baby's chart reminding him that mommy is a crazy NICU nurse :)

We decided not to do any prenatal hospital classes. I am sure we will regret it at some point, but my birth plan is pretty simple. Go to hospital. Have a healthy baby. Go home from hospital. End of story. I think the classes would have been slightly redundant for me, but probably helpful for Chad. I am confident in my skills though and I THINK I can teach him a thing or two about baby care :) I am more worried about my anxiety than anything, but I know the nurses at the hospital will be wonderful coaches telling me/us exactly what we need to do. I think it is kind of hard to prepare for things, because you just don't know how everything is going to pan out. I guess my biggest fear is laboring for hours/days and ending up with a c-section. I know that it happens and at the end of the day I won't care because I will be holding a baby in my arms, but I just hope and pray that this does not happen!

And last but not least an update from my 36 week check up yesterday. So yesterday was the day that I was going to see the infamous doctor that had cancelled on me three different times. Chad was unable to go with me because he was scheduled to be in a 7 hr surgery. I get to my appointment on time as usual and I wait for about 30-40 minutes in the waiting room before they even call me back. The nurse comes in, checks my BP and says you can wait 10-15 minutes before getting undressed, because she is still running behind! Well thanks for having enough consideration to not make me sit there naked for a half an hour! She came into the room 15 minutes later with 100 charts in her hand and threw them all down on the counter. She looked completely frazzled and apologized for making a bad first impression. I wanted to tell her that she made a bad first impression a long ass time ago, but I refrained. She hardly made eye contact with me and she repetitively said "that's cool." So anyways, on to the appointment. She asked me the normal questions and then went on to do my cervical check and GBS culture. She told me that I am about 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced. She also told me that the baby is super low and hanging out right next to my bladder. I could have told you that lady. She then moved on to listen to the baby's heart rate with the doppler. She found it at first, but then there was a slowing in the heart rate and I had to tell her that I really think that is my heart rate and not the baby's. So she moves to the other side of my abdomen to try and listen there. I had to tell her that the baby is not on that side, and we have never heard the heart beat on the left side. Which if you look at me it is completely obviously by the huge hump on my right side that the baby is NOT on the left. She then moves back to the right side and finds it. She goes on to say that she wants to listen for a while to be sure that what she heard before was not a deceleration. By this time, I am almost in tears, because I feel like she just does not know what the heck is going on. After some time, she decides the baby is fine and sends me on my way with no further advice on what to expect. I schedule my next appointment for one week and I leave the office an hour and a half after my appointment was supposed to start! I had some errands to run, so I did not get home until around 2 pm. When I got home, of course the first thing I do is run to the bathroom. Much to my horror I noticed a decent amount of bleeding! I immediately freaked and called the doctor. They told me on the phone that some spotting was normal after a cervical exam, but this was not spotting AND it would have been nice for the doctor to mention that before I left the office! I may be a nurse, but I have never been pregnant before, so how the hell am I supposed to know what to expect? I was balling my eyes out saying that she did not tell me to expect bleeding/cramping and all the talk in the office about the baby have decelerations just had me completely freaked! They asked me to come back to the office to do an NST. I finally got a hold of Chad and he met me back at the office. They hooked me up to the monitor for a half an hour or so and everything appeared to be fine. The doctor I saw that day came into the room and I could tell she felt horrible about the whole series of events. She apologized for making such a bad first impression and she would have felt the same way that I did about everything. She spent a decent amount of time talking to us and explaining things to us. She felt confident that the baby was okay but wanted me to stay off of my feet until the bleeding had completely stopped. She then decided to do an ultrasound just to make sure the baby's position was where it is supposed to be for delivery and sure enough the baby's head is in my left groin with it's entire body curled up on my right side. She didn't do any measurements, but she said my fluid level looked good and asked if I felt reassured by everything. I did feel a TON better, but the whole series of events that day had me completely drained! I am still having some spotting, but it has slowed down, and I continue to have a decent amount of cramping. The baby is still dancing away, so that is the best reassurance that everything is in fact okay. The only bad thing is...how the heck am I supposed to get things accomplished from the couch? Oh well I guess I will have to go back in my nursing school notes and re-read the section on delegation!