Week 33 Appointment: She'a Cute Little Sucker

We started with another BPP. Most of the BPP is watching for movement and for fetal breathing. There's a time limit during which a baby must move a certain number of times and show a total of 30 seconds of fetal breathing. Elsie breathed almost continually for the first minute we watched her. She's a pro. With that out of the way, we just needed to see her move. The ultrasound tech, Jenny, poked her a little to see if she'd wiggle or kick, but she didn't. So Jenny focused on her head and face. That turned out to be where the action was today. She was sucking her thumb, and that counts as movement. Jenny said that people often think their babies are sucking thumbs when they're actually sucking fists but that because we could see four fingers out of the mouth, which was sucking on something, Elsie really was sucking her thumb. She sucked her fist some, too, each of them; she's an ambidextrous fist sucker.  I was happy to see that Elsie has mastered the two skills she'll need most after being born: breathing and sucking. And she rubbed her face a little. And she yawned deep, cavernous yawns followed by sticking her tongue out and smacking her lips. She yawned and smacked several times. Because she showed off her breathing so quickly, we had plenty of time to watch her yawn. I think Jenny enjoyed watching her. Not all of Jenny's ultrasounds are so pleasant, so I'm sure she has no problem taking some time with the fun ones. She also checked amniotic fluid levels, which were within normal parameters this week. We didn't find out anything about her weight because they're only checking growth every four weeks. We did finally get a reasonable facial profile picture, and for once we didn't get a picture of her genitals. We think it's a good precedent to take pictures of her face and not of her genitals.

After checking my weight (up a pound) and blood pressure (normal), the nurse sent us into an exam room to see Dr. Ackermann. After greeting us, he looked at my chart and said, "Everything looks perfect." And then he started giggling. He said he couldn't ask for anything to be better. He then felt my abdomen for a second or two, asked if she's moving a lot (she is), asked if we had any questions (we didn't), and said everything is going great. We think he doesn't get many good news cases either (lots of poverty, smoking, and obesity in Kentucky), so we were happy that he was so happy. As we were getting into the car, I said to Matt, "We just made our OB giggle." And the doctor didn't even get to see Elsie yawn, stick her tongue out, or smack her lips. Now that was giggle-worthy.