It's All Starting.....

Today was my latest doctor appointment. I just finished my 37th week on Saturday and am now in my 38th week. So, what that means is that the baby is full-term. She is fully developed now. Yeah!

I got my results for the Group Strep B and I tested negative. That's a good thing, so now I don't have to be hooked up to antibiotics while I am at the hospital.

I just started retaining water like it's going out of style. My fingers are swollen and at times I can't get my rings to budge. My toes look like overstuff minature sausages. I am starting to lose shape to my ankles. When I ate salty fast food stuff recently I got very uncomfortable, so I think it's plain rice & veggies tonight. I'll pass on the salty stuff.

So, this picture to the left here illustartes the different pelvic stages. When I was in 2 weeks ago, I was not dialted at all and the baby had not dopped and the baby would have been considered to be "floating" at the -4, well, today I am at the -1

My cervix dialation is 2, which technically puts me in the first stage of labor in the early phase. Now, I could be in this phase of the 1st stage for hours (meaning I could end up going to the hospital tonight/tomorrow morning) or days, or a couple weeks.

When I called daddy to tell him what the doctor said, he ended the conversation with "I gotta go puke now." That makes me laugh. He wasn't really going to go puke. I think he was just counting on me getting to my due date or beyond.

I set up my next 3 weeks of appointments with my doctor, but he said he doesn't anticipate me needing the last one for sure and maybe not the 2nd one, might not even need any of them actually.

I told the doctor I was thinking of a full moon baby (May 13th is the next full moon) and he said that was more likely than my actual due date of the 21st (Sorry, Steph, doesn't looks like the baby will be born on your birthday.)

So, I think I will be closing the betting pool now. As we don't want some cheaters changing their due date. :)

Oh - he also said she's not going to be a huge baby. No 8 pounder or anything like that. So, I am afraid some of you will not fair well with the baby pool. And my kids at school have a due date competition going on -- many of them say I am going late. Actually I think the earliest someone picked was the 17th. Maybe wishful thinking on their part, should that make me feel good that they want to see me there as long as possible.

So, until the contractions become regular and get to 5 minutes apart, I guess I'll be just doing my thing. Like I said earlier, this could take days or a couple weeks to get to the phase where I need to be going to the hospital.

In other news regarding the baby -- as long as I make it through tomorrow, we'll be doing some maternity photographs with this photographer that I had take pictures of me with my mom & sisters. She's coming out to the house to do them after work. And tomorrow is supposed to be a nice, warm, sunny day. Yeah!

We also finally got our tree from Lowe's that we are planting for the baby. It's a red maple. Daddy plans on getting that planted tomorrow. And also tomorrow we are signing the purchase agreement to put in new windows in the nursery (& kitchen). They are custom ordered, so they won't actually get put in for 4-6 weeks, so after the baby is here. But how long will she actually be in there. We plan to have her in the bassinet in our room in the beginning and when we had them put in windows in the master bedroom & master bath this winter, it only took a few hours (only inside for a couple hours.)

That's it.