Progress

To answer my question in yesterday's post: No, July 1st was not the day. But, good news: I was almost 4 cm at my 37-week-check-up, so I progressed a cm this week! (I forgot to ask - and she didn't tell me - about effacement and station.) The bad news is that my doctor is off today, tomorrow, Mon, and Tues so now it seems that next weekend would be better for me to go into labor! (I would say Wed or Thurs except Joe won't be here.) She told me her fill-in is Dr Evans who is a great doc, and I looked her up online and she looks normal, but. . .I still want Dr. Sullivan!

So, if I make it to my next appt - Friday, July 8th - then Dr. Sullivan is going to strip my membranes. I have a friend who had this done because she was at her due date and otherwise was going to be induced the following week but didn't want to be - and that night her water broke and her baby came fast. Stripping the membranes has the best success rate of any natural inducers (70%) so I'm surprised more doctors don't tell their patients it is an option because it sounds a lot better than an actual induction! I never would have known about it had my friend not told me. A doctor just sweeps her fingers along the bag of waters to separate it from the cervix. This is not usually painful if done at 2 cm or farther. I've been reading about it and most women go into labor within an hour to three days after having it done. It either starts contractions or causes the water to break. So I'm going to do that before I try castor oil or nipple stimulation!

I had my eggplant parmesan last night and was surprised that I really liked it! I wasn't expecting to at all, I never would have ordered it had I not learned it's a possible inducer.

Anyway, I had to wait forever for my appt (it was supposed to be at 2:15 but I didn't see her for almost an hour later). My blood pressure was 120/80. I'm up 35 lbs so that's another reason why I'm hoping to go within this next week - because I don't want to gain any more weight!

As for the baby's heartbeat, she was at 140 today which was the lowest she's ever been but Dr. Sullivan said that was fine. I asked her if Baby Girl was 6 lbs, 3 oz last week then what would she be today? Dr. Sullivan said generally they gain a half a pound a week - so maybe she wouldn't be the 7 lbs, 1 oz that I had written in my last post but rather 6 lbs, 11 oz. That means next Friday she would be 7 lbs, 3 oz and if stripping the membranes doesn't work and I have to be induced on Monday, July 18 (when I'm 39 weeks + 1 day - that'd be easy to remember our kids' birthdays, lol, since Logan's is April 18), then she'd be roughly the same size Logan was at birth (7 lbs, 13.7 oz)! So that totally eases the anxiety that I wrote about in my last post! :-)