Out of the Woods, On the Home Stretch

Those are the two cliche phrases my doctor decided to use yesterday to describe where we are in the pregnancy. She isn't terribly concerned about my slow increase in contractions because we're so close to 37 weeks, and she thinks the medicine will do it's job for 10 more days.

We started the appointment off with an ultrasound - so already it was a great appointment. The purpose of the ultrasound was to determine William's size (which my doctor used to be concerned about, given my size at birth and Austin's size at birth...but now she has no belief that he'll make it to 40 weeks anyway) The ultrasound technician wasn't able to get good measurements, though, because "Man he is just so far down there". I think from now on I should tell newbies, or people who haven't come across this realization in the past few weeks, "Hey, just FYI, apparently my baby is abnormally low". I just figure it might fend off the shock and amazement on their part. Plus, they all say it like its something I haven't heard before...like saying "hey a MAN...duh!"...yeah, that didn't get old in first grade. But - I didn't prewarn Missy, so she did have the opportunity to be shocked and in awe that I am walking around with a baby sitting where he's sitting. Hence why I'm not doing much walking :)

She did let us watch him play for a little bit. We got to see him yawn twice which was pretty cute - and I will say his lips do look more plump like mine rather than Austin's :) Then she turned on the 3D function and we saw him sticking his fingers, and at one point his entire hand, in his mouth. I have a rare talent of being able to fit my whole fist in my mouth (I have a pretty big mouth) so I almost said "Oh, that's a talent we both share William!" but I thought Missy might think I was a little weird. Apparently Austin almost blurted out a similar comment before he thought better of it too. So we watched him suck on his fingers, yawn, blink, and wiggle his little butt before she ended the ultrasound. He was moving a lot, and it was hard to get good images because of where his head is placed, but here's the best picture Austin got on the camera. Play "where's waldo" and see if you can find his eyes, nose, and his itty bitty fingers:

After the ultrasound we went in to see the doctor. She was happy to see on the fetal monitor that I only had 1 small contraction in 20 minutes and that his heart beat was "happy". She thinks he likes her :P She checked my cervix again, and was happy with those results as well - no progress since Friday. She said she'd like me to continue taking the medicine through next Saturday, which is the 30. Then she said it generally takes 1-2 days for all of the procardia to wear out of your system. And then...SHOWTIME. Just like she said last week, and the week before, she can not predict that he really will come soon after Feb 1...but her most educated opinion is still that it would be sometime that first week of February.

Two weeks ago I was mortified at the thought of him coming early...didn't think we were ready, wanted him to bake until the 21, etc. But now I've settled with the idea so if he decides to be stubborn NOW and wait until the 21, we may have minced words when he comes out. Or maybe a few days later, I'm sure at first I'd be a softy and pretend I wasn't mad at him :)

So like she said - we're on the home stretch!!!