38 weeks, 5 days

Still here. Still pregnant. Skeletor is still incubating. I can’t really complain about it since I’m not overdue yet (my due date is the 10th). I am considered full-term so if she was born now, things would likely be just fine. I finished working on Friday so now I’m in sit-around-and-wait mode. I’m hoping to get a haircut between now and when the baby is born.

I had my weekly NST (non-stress test) on Friday. When they took my blood pressure, it was higher than normal – not crazy high, but high enough. This is the second time that this has happened in the past couple of weeks. I had bloodwork done a week and a half ago and it came back fine, so I’m not really worried about it. What brought the resident doctor in was that the baby’s heart was skipping beats. I didn’t notice it until they mentioned it. (some mother I am!) They gave me a quick ultrasound and I could see the heart beating, and skipping every 9-12 beats or so. Other than that the baby was fine, and they were happy overall with her heart/movement patterns.

They told me that skipped beats happen to babies in utero sometimes. Generally after the baby is born it would get monitored and the heartbeat would likely correct itself. Now I’m supposed to go for NSTs twice a week until the baby is born. I also heard the resident mentioning inducement to my OB. They let me go after I was there for nearly 90 minutes (the NST usually doesn’t take more than 30 minutes). However, they did let me go so I figure I can’t be in that bad of shape – if things were bad, they would have admitted me to the hospital.

So now I have to do the following:

  • Fill out kick charts – tracking Skeletor’s movements over a set period of time (six movements in two hours or better). The last three days have been fine – I’ve been getting six movements in about 30 minutes. Yay Skeletor!
  • NST on Tuesday at 8AM
  • Biophysical profile (which is a combination of a detailed ultrasound and NST) on Tuesday at 9AM
  • Go see my OB after these two tests. I’m assuming we will discuss options at that point

I’m frustrated because I feel absolutely fine – no headaches, no blurred vision, no spots, no nothing. Just swollen feet, but they’ve been swollen for over two months so nothing new there. When I told my OB’s receptionist that she just reminded me that they’re taking good care of me, and she is right. Better safe than sorry.

I’m trying not to worry much – if my doctor or anyone else thought there was a major problem, they would have kept me in the hospital. So now tomorrow’s appointments should be interesting. Maybe Sean will end up winning the baby pool (he picked September 2, I picked the 14th, and almost everyone else is between those days).

More news as it warrants.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
This work by Melissa Price-Mitchell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.
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