No baby yet...

We made it do our doctor’s appointment this week.  The doctor this week chuckled a bit when we told her that Dr. Day said we wouldn’t make it too this week’s appointment and she said, “he is always the optimist”.  I guess it was a little bit of false hope, but probably good for us to be prepared daily for the possibility that our baby could arrive any day now.

The appointment went well today.  All of my stats were looking good which is always a praise.  Baby’s heart beat was 152bpm, strong and healthy.  It was however interesting to find out that in Dr. Day’s notes it said I was almost completely effaced (even though he told us I was completely effaced last week).  So, basically not much has changed since last week.  I am still 80% effaced and now I am dilated to 1.5cm.  Dr. Stroud was not going to make us any promises, but she did say that everything is still progressing well and she hopes that if she sees us again that it’s in the hospital before next Tuesday.  That works for me!

Baby has cooperated quite well so far.  We were able to have a fun game night this past weekend with friends from church, then go to watch the Super Bowl with good friends old and new from Cedarville.  Plus I was able to watch Glee on Sunday night and most likely tonight as well! (Yes I know I am a dork, but I was really hoping to watch those episodes baby-free.)  Now the only thing left is that my parents request baby not arrive before they get here this Friday, but at least by Feb. 20^th so they can still be here for the birth.  I guess we shall find out very soon when the big day will be!

Mixed Feelings...

I definitely have mixed feelings about the doctor’s predictions.  It’s been a few days since the appointment and now the reality of what he said has had a chance to set in.  I am thankful that things have begun progressing and that he gave us the heads up, just in case I do in fact welcome our little bundle of joy before my next appointment on Tuesday. However, it has also changed my mindset.  Prior to the appointment, I was completely content and had accepted the fact that the baby would probably arrive late.  And with this mindset, I was okay whenever the baby decided to arrive, no anxieties at all.  Now, I feel like it is a day-to-day “what if” situation.  I am constantly wondering today is going to be the day, I mean the doctor said it could be any day so he is right, isn’t he…  I guess it’s good that Ben and I have a game plan with each individual day, but I still miss the anxiety free-ness I guess.

All that said, I am trying to adapt a new more peaceful mindset.  I know God has a greater plan and His hand is at work through this entire situation.  Yes, the baby’s head is dropped, I am completely effaced, and I am at least 1 cm dilated, but that still doesn’t mean that I will be delivering this baby any sooner. It could be weeks (according to much of what I have read) before I even get dilated enough to need to go to the hospital.  That is the same reality that I was fine with before so I am trying to be fine with it now.  It’s still hard, given the excitement that surrounds the possibility that the doctor could be right.  But I am trying to find peace and patience in the waiting period.  We will get to see our little bundle of joy before we know it and all that matters is that it will be in God’s timing which is always the right timing.  :-) 

38 weeks, 3 days and baby just might arrive sooner than expected!

Today was a wonderful doctor’s appointment.  Going in to the doctor I was a bit nervous since my last appointment had been so stressful.  However, God was good and all went well.  My weight gain was satisfactory, my blood pressure was great, and the baby’s heartbeat was at 146bpm.  Yay for all good stats!

Then the doctor had to check to see if there was any progress toward labor.  And, it looks like the ball is already rolling.  When he checked, we discovered that the baby has indeed dropped (which definitely explains a never-ending need to pee), my cervix is completely thinned (which I think is called fully effaced), and my cervix is dilated 1cm.  He basically told us that he doesn’t expect us to be back for another appointment next Tuesday because most likely the baby will arrive any day now.  Craziness!

Obviously he could be wrong and I could stay minimally dilated for a while, but it’s pretty crazy to think that the baby could be here within a week.  I was definitely completely prepared for baby to be late.  I guess we will just have to wait and see when the grand entrance will be.  God has a plan, even if that doesn't fit into my timeframe or the timeframe in which family was already planning on coming.  Only time will tell!

38 week belly

The crib is all ready for whenever baby decides to arrive. :-)

37 weeks, 2 days...WOW!

This week is a very important milestone in my pregnancy and the life of Baby Hill.  As of Saturday I am considered to be full term and everything developmentally is supposed to be fine if our baby decided to come at any point now.  It's pretty crazy to think that time is already here!  Time hasn't necessarily flown by the entire pregnancy, but over all it definitely seems hard to believe that I am less than 3 weeks away from our official due date.

Now as far as the due date goes, I am not holding my breath that baby will be born on or before then based on how similar my pregnancy has been to my mom's pregnancies and she was always late.  I am sure as it gets closer to that time I will be ready for the baby to arrive, but at this point I am content with baby being on time or late.  I feel this way for many reasons, some silly and some I think are pretty legit.  One silly one is that I do not want to go into labor before Feb. 9th because Glee is having a special after Super Bowl episode on the 6th and then a Valentines day episode on the 8th.  It's probably pretty selfish, but I am really excited about those coming episodes and I know my TV watching will decrease once baby arrives.  Another somewhat silly, but kinda legit reason is that the further away from Christmas this babies birthday can be, the better just to help spread the celebrations out some. :-)

And really probably the most legit and justified reason is that my parents will not be coming in to town until February 10th or 11th.  So really the ideal time would be for baby to be born sometime between Feb. 12th and Feb 20th because that is the heart of when my parents will be able to be here on their vacation time.  Ben and my mom are going to be the only people allowed in the labor room with me because I am pretty sure that is all I will feel comfortable with.  And I know Ben and I would be just fine if it was just the two of us, but having my mom there would be not only special for her, but I think it would be great extra support for Ben when I am being a crazy woman in labor. :-)

So that's lots of ramblings to say that Baby Hill could come any day now and all would be good, but for now we are just fine waiting until the due date.  However, God's timing will be perfect and we are ready for our baby to arrive whenever He sees fit.

37 week belly

Shower Blessings

This past weekend we were blessed with another amazing shower.  God has been so good to us with provisions for this baby.  Between family showers, friends, and our church we have been able to get basically everything we will need for when baby arrives.  We feel so blessed and relieved by this and are truly thankful to everyone in our lives that made this possible.

The shower this past weekend was with our church ladies.  I was truly expecting it to be just a few of the ladies from our Home Group and then the sweet lady that was hosting, but I was blown away by the number of people that came.  It was such a blessing to have good friends from church there and then precious ladies who I look forward to getting to know as we are able to go to the church for longer.  Plus then my cousin Gaggie was able to come which was such a surprise and so much fun to have her celebrating with me too.

The ladies that planned the shower did a great job. We had wonderful food and they really made me feel special with all the games and treats that they planned.  They had a hilarious baby drawing contest and a contest to measure how big around my belly was.  The belly game was pretty amazing because there were two people that were almost right on the money with their guesses, craziness.  Also, everyone made their gender and birth date predictions which ended up with boys winning again 6 boy guesses to 4 girl guesses.  There are a lot of people that are going to be in for quite the shock if this baby ends up being a girl. :-)  

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the shower and I had a chance to chat with many of the ladies individually.  It was definitely a day of blessings, in gifts, words of wisdom, encouragement, time spent, and so much more!  God is good!

35 weeks 5 days...about a month to go!

Wow, today’s doctor appointment definitely didn’t go as planned.  First off, since there was an accident on base in the morning, they were way behind in appointments so I didn’t get in for my appointment until almost an hour late.  So as a result Ben ended up having to leave before I even got to go in for the appointment.  Thankfully Hannah ended up having her appointment today too so I got to chat with her for a bit while we both waited.

Then I went in for the appointment and the positives were that my vitals were good and my weight was up enough to satisfy the doctor.  However, when it came time to do the fetal heart beat it was up in the 180s which is way high for where it has been (140s/150s every other time).  The tech basically had no idea what that meant and we both thought that it might have been because the baby was moving around like crazy, but she said the doctor would be in shortly to check it out.  The doctor came in and did my GBS test and then he said that he wanted me to get on the fetal monitor just to check things out, but he really didn’t think there was anything to worry about.  He said that maybe I was dehydrated.

Well of course at this point I was a bit concerned, even if he wasn’t, and I was wishing that of all appointments Ben could have been there for this one.  It’s a bit nerve wracking to sit in a doctor’s office alone with fetal monitors on and have no idea what any of the beeping and junk even means.  Thankfully after 20 minutes of monitoring the doctor came in and said that he wasn’t concerned with anything.  He said the reactive non-stress test seemed to be fine and he still thought that it may have been that I was a bit dehydrated.  Which is a crazy thing for me as much as I normally drink, but I guess since I had already been sitting at the doctor’s office for over an hour by that point without drinking anything more, that was a lot less that I normally would have drank by that point.

I guess it ended on a bit of a good note, even though I didn’t have nearly enough time to ask all the questions I had.  I gave him my birth plan before I left and he seemed to think everything looked good.  He basically said that everything he saw on there is pretty much how they do things and he said that we run the show anyway unless there are urgencies with the baby’s health and then things could change then.  So, that was reassuring and now they have a copy of it for all the doctors to read from here on out. Plus I was able to confirm that I know all the numbers to call when I do go into labor because I wasn’t quite sure about all that.

It was crazy at the end though because I went to schedule my appointments only to discover that I will only have 2 more appointments until the due date and we scheduled one afterward just in case.  I had thought I was going to have an appointment a week from here on out, but I guess they don’t start weekly appointments until 38 weeks unless there are complications.  So pretty exciting to think I don’t have to go back to the doctor for another 2.5 weeks and the baby will be here before we know it!

Tri-Baby Shower

This past weekend I had the chance to have a unique type of shower.  There are three of my friends pregnant at the same time as me and two of them are due within five weeks of me with our first baby.  So on Saturday we had a shower together with mutual friends, a wonderful group of ladies that gets together for Grey's every week. I think that it definitely the way to do showers; I loved it.  Not only was it awesome to celebrate with two amazing ladies, but then the spotlight didn't have to be on me the whole time.  Plus it ended up feeling more like just a fun time hanging out as opposed to a shower, which I was definitely a fan of.

The whole gang

The showered ladies due within a month of each other

All the pregos

The four ladies that planned it did a wonderful job and they even had tons of yummy food to fatten me up (which was a success by the way).  They also planned a bunch of fun activities and such that were themed for each of the prego ladies specifically.  So for Hannah we had encouragement books which was really neat to be able to have written down for reading later.  Then for Hollie, we decorated onesies for each other.  This was an activity way out of my comfort zone, but I really ended up enjoying it in the long run and the onesies turned out adorable. And for me, since I am the only one who still doesn't know gender, we had a fun guessing game that included gender as well as many other fun facts such as length of labor, how much hair, future career, etc.  It was a lot of fun to hear what everyone had as guesses and it was crazy because without conversing ahead of time, they all predicted boy for the gender.  I guess we will have to wait and see if they are right.  That definitely swings the prediction poll even further toward everyone thinking we are having a boy.  We all got wonderful gifts and just had a great time chatting and enjoying one another's company.

The food spread with cupcakes themed for each lady

The activity/game spread 

Homemade onesies (mine were the frog and pear)

Lots of good times to be had and before we know we will all be starting the wonderful adventure of motherhood together!