40 week appointment and the weekend

Just an FYI... I plan to make a few posts this morning :)





Friday was my 40 week checkup. Everything was fine. My blood pressure was good, I gained even more weight and the fundal height measurement was 40 cm. For the first time they checked me for dialation. Nothing special there. I was 1 cm dialated, 50 percent effaced and baby's head was at -2 station. All of this basically means that there is nothing big going on, but it doesn't really mean that nothing big will start going on soon. Well, in my case it did mean the latter obviously because I didn't go into labor or anything.


For those curious about station, here is an illustration - hopefully you can see it okay. It's basically just a measurement of where the baby's head is in relation to the pelvis and tells us whether he's moving down. Fully engaged would be zero station, and +3 would be the baby's head emerging during birth (crowning).





My feet were still swollen and puffy at Friday's appointment. Ann asked if I was drinking distilled water and keeping them elevated. When I told her I was just drinking tap water she advised me to get distilled water. I bought a couple of bottles of water that day, and by Saturday the swelling was almost completely gone. I'm not sure whether to attribute it to the water or not, but it was strange.



It could have been the massage. A couple of weeks ago at work I won a massage and facial gift certificate so I had the massage on Friday. Wow. I can't believe I have never had a professional massage. It was so nice and relaxing. I was a little nervous about it being a guy, but there was no problem at all. He was very respectful and it was very easy to relax. He did mention hitting some pressure points to try to encourage labor but apparently those didn't work either. Oh well. Still totally worth it. Guess what I want for Christmas, my birthday and any other special occasion I can eek a gift out of? :)



Funny story, Darrell called me a couple hours later when I was on my way home, and said that Col. Babcock, (his former boss and good friend) had called to tell him 'that massage better have worked for your wife.' Apparently Col. Babcock has a massage with the same therapist every two weeks and was getting a massage right after me, and somehow figured that out... What a weird coincidence.



There was really nothing else exciting this weekend, save sitting around waiting for contractions that never came and watching football. So yay.



**as a side note, I'm realizing I should have lied about my due date up here at work. I already want to crawl under my desk to hide from people coming by. I feel like an exhibit. Sadly, they are just being nice and I'm a big grouchy scrooge who doesn't want to be reminded.

**Edited to fix the picture.