Doctor's Visit #9- Week 35

Today was the last of the bi-monthly doctor’s appointments. Next Monday I’ll go to the first of the weekly appointments!

I’m still marveling at how quickly time has passed during this pregnancy… and at how quickly the last two years have gone by with a little Princess Bunny in our house.

The doctor’s appointment went pretty quickly as well. I did almost manage to make an entire rosary bracelet in the waiting room, but once I got into an exam room things I was in and out. I’m still one pound less than I was when I delivered Sadie, but I think I will definitely hit a new all time high by the time Maggie arrives. Right now I’ve gained 42 lbs... and I’m now more curious than ever to see how much this baby is going to weigh!

My blood pressure was 102 over 60 (I could hardly believe that it’s stayed that low!) though so the early scare with the headaches and the blood pressure seems to be well passed.

And I did what all the pregnancy blogs about c-section birth plans that I have read suggested and made sure that my doctor does double sutres to close the uterus incision (I was a little nervous asking this question… it’s a little hard to approach a doctor that gives you a letter at the beginning of your pregnancy that says that if she happens to be unavailable during your labor, she’s going to be sending you to another hospital forty five minutes further away, which would be over two hours for us, because there aren’t any other doctor’s up to her standards at the hospital we’re going to…). She assured me that she always does and that was pretty much the entire 2-minute appointment.

The longest part of the appointment was spent with two of the nurses, one of who had just started working there and who was learning how to find the heartbeat. While Maggie repeatedly kicked at the little microphone thing, it took a good ten minutes before we heard anything (and at that point the more experienced nurse had taken over).

After answering that I hadn’t had any contractions so far I went home only to have the contractions start up. At first they actually felt like the description the books give of Braxton Hicks Contractions, and I was thinking about how much nicer these were than those “warm up” contractions I had with Sadie. But after about half an hour of contractions that were eight minutes apart, they were kicked up a notch and were the seriously uncomfortable ones (I’m avoiding calling them “painful” because they’re still much less painful than the ones after my water broke or the ones following the pitocin mishap…) that I remember from the four weeks before Sadie arrived. They were four minutes apart and then two minutes apart for about an hour, but now they seem to have become more infrequent.

It’s so much easier to be relaxed about them this time! With Sadie contractions this close together would have made me think I was in labor… but having gone through this once before I feel like I have some idea what to expect. Now I just wonder if these are going to be as “effective” as they were last time…

I can hardly wait to meet Margaret Rosella (aka Maggie Rose!)! And yet I know these next few weeks are going to be gone very quickly!