Progress Lacking but an End in Sight

Well. I'm not surprised but I'm no farther along than I was 2 weeks ago. Still only 1cm dilated and nothing else is happening down there. No softening, no head moving down anywhere, no effacing. I have literally had 0 contractions. I mean nothing. No braxton hicks, nothing.

So. Yeah.

But we have a plan now and it helps to have that at least in my head. We go back to the doctor on Friday for another ultrasound, NST& checkup as that will be my exact 41 week date. If all looks ok, in other words that don't need to induce right away the induction will start at 10:30pm Sunday night. I know I know, there are a lot of people out there that are against inducing, but Jason and I are not. The baby is already measuring very big and frankly I'm done with being pregnant and so I'm looking forward to it.

The time sounded weird to me at first, but now I'm happy with it. The doctor said they don't like to just pump me full of lots of pitocin and would rather try to have it take some time so that my body can maybe figure out what it's supposed to be doing with just a little nudge. My doctor will be at the hospital on Monday and so with me going in on Sunday night I'm pretty much guaranteed to have her there to deliver the baby which I'm happy about.

If the baby is born on Monday her birthday would be 12/7 and what's cool about that is Jason's birthday is 7/12 so we got that going for us. The non-cool part about that is that we have to wait till Monday. Not that it can't happen on it's own before then, but worst case is the plan laid out for us and we really trust and like our doctor and that's the most important thing.

I never went into this with a set plan of "This is how the birth of my child HAS to go". About 18 months ago I went through some pretty major panic attacks and through that experience learned that as soon as you think something HAS to go a certain way, you can end up panicking and being severely disappointed when it doesn't go that way. Then being upset that you are upset and it's this awesomely bad spiral of badness :). I'm not the best with going with the flow, but I'm getting better and the thing I did to make that better was to stop saying, I HAVE to do something only one way. One of the best things for me to do is to ask, ok, this is how I would like something to go, but what if it doesn't? Then what? Knowing that the other options or outcomes to a certain situation are laid out and aren't "bad" is extremely helpful to me.

Yes I had to go to a therapist to learn to stop saying I HAVE to do this. Those months a year and a half ago might not have been the most fun in our household and I would say that they might have been the worst of my life. But I would never take them back because I am a better and calmer person for it. This situation would have been out of control I think had I not had some internal tools to deal with situations. So Yay for panic attacks!

Jason took a personal day today in case something went bad and now that it's not we are going to run some errands and then decorate for Christmas tonight. We are going to get the tree after Lucy gets here I think which should be fun. It'll be all decorated for when my mom gets here on the 12th which is perfect.

And so I'm off. And who knows, maybe Lucy will get her head in the game and figure out that she's very uncomfortable and make a move to exit on her own. You never know.

12 Week Visit

Baby-

You are going to be shocked when you get here and realize that your mother is a complete maniac and your father is a nice calm perfect man. Ok perfect might be stretching it...but not too far, you'll see.

Today at our 12 week doctors appointment they took my blood pressure and it was a bit high. And it was high because the nurse was terrifying and completely unfriendly and I want to ask her how she expects my blood pressure to be when she's just a terrifying robot in a nurses uniform. So that had me a little freaked out and the the doctor came in and gave me some tips about dealing with these fantastic headaches I've been getting lately. Turns out I need to drink more fluids. Apparently my blood volume is going to double (!) during the duration of your life in me and I just need to drink more fluids. I guess it's true that my headaches are a lot worse when I drink less, so there is probably something to that.

Then she used this little doppler machine to try and find your heart beat. The first thing she did was let me hear what my heartbeat sounded like and she was surprised because it was racing (I wasn't surprised) then she started looking for your little heartbeat. And she looked and looked....and I started to panic, and I might have cried a tear or two. She said it was totally normal and went to get the ultrasound machine. Your dad tried to calm me down which didn't work because I couldn't believe that I couldn't hear what you sounded like and yes....you'll find I tend to panic for no real good reason.

So she came back in with the machine and we got to see your very strong and beautiful heart beating and I had an easier time seeing it this time around. You currently have a *huge cranium* which is expected as I guess right now you are 50% head and 50% body. Then I was sad because you were sleeping in there and you wouldn't wake up....until I started laughing. I laugh a lot, so maybe you like when I laugh....I have a good loud laugh, I think you'll like it.

So everything looks great with you in there, and your mom is just manic and your dad is going to be your calm stable go to guy. You'll see, he's really the best.