The Home Stretch

The last several weeks have gone by fairly uneventfully. At my 37 week appointment I still had not shown any progress. I decided to get checked at this appointment because Jordan was going to be gone over night the next week and thought it would be nice to know if there was anything going on. Luckily we made it through his trip and everything was just fine. I declined to be examined at my 38 week appointment but my blood pressure was slightly elevated at this appointment. Apparently it was also pretty high at the previous appointment but my doctor didn’t mention anything to me about it. I’ve checked it sporadically during my many trips to Kroger and it was still slightly elevated but not too high to be concerned about. I’m really hoping it doesn’t creep up any higher to the point that my doctor would want to start discussing an induction. I really would love to avoid that situation all together.

For the last few months now we have known that Jordan was going to have to travel at the end of February and would be gone for about 7 days. This is much sooner than he would prefer to be gone from us but unfortunately there isn’t much we can do about it.  Anyways it just occurred to me that the longer Miss Peyton decides to make her appearance, the shorter the time we are going to have to together and adjust before he is gone. So with that being said my plans of not being induced until I absolutely had to are definitely being reconsidered. If she doesn’t come by 41 weeks we will start to discuss our options because that will only leave us 3 weeks until the traveling begins. I’m trying really hard not to stress out too much about this because honestly there really isn’t much that can be done. I’m trusting in the fact that God already knows her birthdate and it will be perfect, His timing is far better than mine.
 
I had my 39 week appointment today and still have not made any progress. I decided to get checked because honestly the curiosity was killing me. So I imagine that we will not have a baby within the next week or so. Although there is a full moon this weekend so ya never know ;) We are sooo ready to meet our little girl which is the main reason I'm ready for this pregnancy to end. There are also a few other things I'm looking forward to post-pregnancy. Like ... sleeping on my stomach, beer, not having numb hands and feet, one more beer, not having to use tongs to get clothes out of the dryer because my baby bump gets in the way of me bending over enough to reach the clothes, not getting totally out of breathe when I'm doing extremely simple tasks like eating, my old clothes and of course one more beer. On a side note my lactation consultant recommended drinking a dark beer after night feedings to increase supply ... cheers.

So now I'm just trying to occupy myself until this baby gets here to make time go by more quickly. We'll keep everyone posted about any progress.

Full Term!!!

 

We are officially full term! It’s hard to imagine that baby Peyton could be here in just a few short weeks. I keep telling myself that she probably won’t make her arrival until I’m way past due so I don’t get too discouraged with the waiting. I think the most difficult part about the next upcoming weeks is the unknown. The waiting would be much easier to take if I had a definite arrival date for Miss Peyton, if only she could text me her calendar J.

Jordan and I had a great visit back home for the holidays. Since being back in Bama I have had a terrible cold though and I’m pretty sure it just turned into a sinus infection : (. Having a baby all up in my lungs and a stuffy nose makes it very difficult to breathe … no fun! Now that we are home and our schedules have calmed down it is time to get to business about getting everything ready for our sweet little girl. There are several things around the house that need to get done and we still have a few baby items we need to purchase. With all of the very generous gifts that people gave us we have very few things that need to be bought though which is so wonderful!

I have packed a few things for the hospital bag but honestly at this point it’s all food! Peyton’s bag should be easy to pack, the biggest problem I foresee is not being able to pick which outfits to bring. Today Jordan put together all kinds of fun things like our swing, bouncer and highchair. It definitely looks like Peyton has already taken over the house. Peyton has been very active as usual and it is now pretty easy to see her move from the outside if I am wearing a pretty tight shirt. One night while Jordan and I were snuggling in bed we were facing each other and she gave him a solid one two punch in his gut. He couldn’t believe how forceful her kicks/movements could be.

At my appointment this week my doctor told me that I was not dilated at all which didn’t surprise me. This exam wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, uncomfortable for sure but not painful.  I’m honestly going to see if I can forgo this check until my 40 week appointment. It really isn’t necessary and I’d just rather not know. We’ll see how this goes over though. We did go to our birthing classes but neither one of us found it very helpful, so we skipped out on the second day. Our instructor was pretty negative and the information she gave us just wasn’t helpful.

After seeing pictures of myself over the holidays I was very surprised by how big I actually look. I don’t feel extra huge most of the time but once I see a picture of myself I start to understand why I get so many comments about my size.

 

This is the same shirt I wore to my baby shower when I was 31 weeks along. It almost did not fit this morning.

I hope everyone had an extra wonderful Christmas and New Years.