36 Week Update

I had an OB appointment yesterday. Terry and Micah were waiting for me in the car and I was rushing around the house looking for my makeup bag. It occured to me that we might have left it in our hospital bags (which were still in the car) during our mad-dash to the hospital on Wednesday. So I went to the car and asked Terry to look in the trunk. Sure enough, it was there, so we buckled up and drove off.

15 minutes into the drive I'm texting someone when pregnancy brain rears it's ugly head and I ask Terry, "How do you spell 'unless'?" After he laughs at me for a good while, he tells me. We sit in silence for a few minutes and it occurs to Terry that if I'm having trouble spelling words that I might be having trouble doing other things. So he turns to me and says, "Did you remember to lock the door?"

CRAAAAAAAAP! Not only had I not locked the door, I'd left it w-i-d-e o-p-e-n! When we'd left the house, I'd been searching for my makeup bag and had expected to go back in to do some more searching. When Terry found it in the car, I forgot all about the door, and had just hopped in the car!

By this point we were 20 minutes into our drive and we would miss our appointment if we turned around. Luckily, Emily was able to drive by and close and lock the door for us. Thankfully Terry accepted this loopy turn of events without getting angry or I would have felt even worse about my mistake.

At the appointment we got some very good news. Dr. Holste checked me and Caleb and said that at this point, if we go into labor again, she'll let us progress with no intervention! If it happens in the next week or so, they'll give Caleb medication in utero to speed the development of his lungs, but she said even that would just be a precaution, because she sees no reason why we won't be able to deliver a healthy baby!

I didn't realize how stressed I'd been until I suddenly heard this news. I'd spent the last 48 hours lying on my side and timing contractions constantly. I was perpetually worried that with every contraction that came, Caleb was getting dangerously close to being a pre-term baby. Now that I don't have to be on bed rest and I don't have to pay any attention to the contractions until they get strong enough to indicate true labor, I can finally relax.

I'm still having regular contractions, but they never progress in strength. If I'm able to lie down for 3-4 hours at once, they go away until I change positions. When I wake up in the middle of the night with a relaxed tummy, it feels like I've been doing sit-ups because my abs are so sore.

I think this is all payback for how judgemental I used to be. A few weeks after Micah was born I was walking around Babies R Us when a pregnant woman and her mom stopped to coo at my newborn. The woman told me she was trying to walk around to get labor started because she'd been contracting for three days. I remember thinking, "Yeah right. Can that even happen?" I'm so getting what I deserve!