Happy (?) 41 Weeks to me and Baby today.
We woke up early and headed to the doctor's office to get my post date testing done. The first test was the NST (nonstress test), where they hooked me up to monitors and had me sit back for about an hour to watch baby's heartrate and contractions. This was anything but not stressful for me, as I couldn't stop staring at the heartrate, which bounced all over the place from 112 to 167. For the first 15 minutes, he refused to wake up, so they were only seeing him as 112-125. I got a large cup of ice water to chug, which really got him angry. Within about five minutes, he was trying to beat the monitors off my belly (direct kicks right to the monitors!) and kicking me hard in the ribs. That's when his heartrate kept surging up to the 160's. When they reviewed the paper scans, they said everything looked great, but only one contraction happened the entire time, which isn't exactly as promising as I was hoping.
From there, I went right into the ultrasound room. After waiting over a half hour in there and the same nurse (Melinda?) that I've seen since my very first check up back when I had medical problems, told me she really wanted to tell me congratulations again on my little miracle. The ultrasound itself was pretty short, and the doctor kept saying that I definitely had a lot of fluid in there - not surprising, as I had waterfalls of fluid last time with Katie, to the point where none of the nurses knew what to do with me. Looks like that's going to be how my pregnancies go. It's good that there's plenty of fluid there though, as it means I don't need an early induction and baby can continue being happy and comfortable in there without any danger. He looked over my placenta too and that seemed fine as well. My AFL (amniotic fluid level) is a 24, which apparently only about 1% of women have. The normal range is between 12-18, which drops down to about 14 after 35 weeks. So 24 at 41 weeks is quite a lot!
After the ultrasound was done (which also showed our little boy being head's down), Bill asked if the doctor could guess how big the baby is. He said doing it by ultrasound at this stage is basically useless as it can be so far off (which I know, it's quite common for it to be off as much as two pounds in either direction, so there's not much point in an estimate.) He did decide to feel around my belly though. He asked about how big Katie was and then asked if I thought this baby was bigger than her. I said yes, he sure feels bigger, but after feeling around he told me he thinks this baby is a little bit smaller, and I'm probably feeling the fluid. While I'd love for him to be right (as it's a bit nerve wracking to go two weeks over when my first baby at 40 weeks was almost 8 lbs), I'm not sure if he is. I don't think he realizes that Katie also had just as much fluid as I have this time, so when this baby feels bigger, I'm still going off of the same amount of fluid levels, since that's all I've known.
The two appointments took so long that we barely had time to get home to eat before Bill had to go to work, so we stopped off at Arby's. I was dying for a big milkshake, so Bill tried to order me a large chocolate chip swirl one. When they said there was only one size, he said something along the lines of "oh, that's fine. I was just trying to get my wife a big milkshake as she's been craving it like crazy and is 41 weeks pregnant." As soon as the woman heard that I was 41 weeks pregnant, she said nevermind, she was going to hook me up. When we pulled up to the window, she used a large soda cup to fill with my milkshake and she didn't charge us anything for the upgrade. While they got our food together, she stood there and chatted with us about her funny stories about childbirth and how she firmly believes that a woman about to go into labor should get anything she wants. I liked her! Though in the end, it was actually a lot of milkshake and I couldn't quite finish it!
So now today I'm just having a lazy day. I'm sleepy, and my only goals today are to make an easy, quick blueberry pie for Bill's work party tomorrow and to straighten up the downstairs. I'd also like to wash my fuzzy pj bottoms because I'm in my last clean ones and my labor clothes are now dirty. But, that does include going all the way upstairs and then all the way to the basement to get them in, so they may have to wait until Bill gets home to happen.
Seven days overdue...I'm really not sure if this kid is going to come out on his own! He seems too happily snug in there.
Also, turning 41 weeks is not nearly as fun as turning any other week in pregnancy. Instead of the email I look forward to seeing each week about what baby and I are doing, this week the email was "Your 1 Week Old Baby." Wow, if I wasn't already feeling left behind and aching to hold my little baby, that sure did it! My adorable ticker on Facebook that usually counts the weeks with me no longer pops up. When I went into it, it said "Your pregnancy is complete, do you want to sign up again?" No...because I AM still pregnant, I haven't completed this pregnancy yet! So there's no fun 41 week memos. The only thing that acknowledges that I'm 41 weeks are my blog tickers, and even they say that the baby should be here by now. At least when I hit 42 weeks, I'll be too busy getting ready for the hospital to be checking these kinds of things.
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