Was it ever really there

This afternoon we ventured up to Erie for my weekly doctor's appointment. Things went fine, but we had a few tense moments there that made the visit just that much more interesting. We went in for my usual check with the doctor--bp, urine, heartbeat, questions--and everything was fine until he got to the heartbeat part. The good doctor searched all over my belly and couldn't find anything. It took him several tries and a lot of manuvering before he got a reading. He also asked me about feeling movement while he was looking, and I admitted that movement had gotten less frequent this week. I'd even had instances where I really had to work to get the little one to move--orange juice, lay on left side, warm bath, that sort of thing.

All this was enough to get me in for a non-stress test. So while I went to be hooked up to the monitors for twenty minutes, Mike and Ev went down to the car to take a little ride and wait. Once I was hooked up to the monitors, it was still hard to find a heartbeat. It was there, but very faint unless I pressed the sensor down on my belly. So I sat, one hand pressing down on the sensor, the other on my little buzzer that I had to click when I felt movement. And boy did I feel movement. I guess baby didn't like the contraction sensor that was strapped tightly across the top of my belly, because he spent most of the time trying to kick it off. When my time was up, doctor pronounced that all was well, and told me to make sure I do good kick counts every day from now on. At least now I know that tying something around my belly is the way to get him good and pissed off.

Then it was off to a sonogram. They wanted to check size and position so we can start thinking about our delivery options. The news was okay there--baby looks healthy and is head down, but not head down in the right way. Instead of his back facing out toward my belly, his shoulder is. So he's laying sideways--his head is down in the lower right corner, and his butt is up in the upper left. His arms and legs are all over the place. He's definitely not in "birth position", but the way he's laying explains all my current discomfort. He's also a good size boy--estimated right now to be 7.5 pounds. Granted, this could be off by a pound in either direction, but he's definitely not small. We'll find out more about what this means next Friday, but at this point I won't be surprised by a repeat c-section.

So there's the big news at 37 weeks. I'm still hanging in there, and feeling okay. It's really starting to sink in for us now that birth is right around the corner. I feel like we're ready--we're definitely more physically ready than we were for Evan. But emotionally? I'm not so sure. Things have seemed so abstract up to this point, and I'm having trouble imagining what it's going to be like to have another person in this house. Both Mike and I are fretting and anxious, but we're trying not to focus on it too much. We did have another go around at names tonight, and we're starting to agree on some things. I hope this trend continues.