This week was certainly better than last week. Again today Emmie passed her BPP very quickly. We also got to see her swallow a little. My fluid was 11, a little higher than it has been but still at the low end of normal. Today was culture day, so I got swabbed for Group B Strep and examined. My cervix is a firm 2 (not a ripe 2). The nurse practitioner seemed to think that cervical dilation might be another reason to bump our delivery date sooner. She also measured my belly with a tape measure and said that I'm measuring bigger than expected. I don't know if that's bigger than 16th percentile or bigger than anyone at 35 weeks. Either way it's a good sign that Emmie is not as small as they feared, especially since I didn't gain any weight this week. I'm not concerned about a big belly; my belly measured big with Lucy, and she was still under 8 pounds when she was born. After the office visit, we went to the hospital. It was very busy and took a while to check in. Eventually, we got to our NST, and all went well. Emmie battled one of the monitors a little. She hasn't been doing that like Neil and Lucy always did. While hooking me up to the monitors, the nurse, Connie, felt my belly to see how Emmie was positioned so that she could put the heart rate monitor in approximately the right spot. The other nurse in the room (who has felt me while hooking me up to monitors before) asked Connie if she thought Emmie felt small. They both agreed that Emmie doesn't feel especially small. Hearing multiple people say she doesn't seem small is reassuring, the exact opposite of what we felt last week. Connie asked when we would be coming next week, so we told her about Tuesday and then Wednesday in Louisville. She frowned. I was afraid she was going to say that we really needed to come in for an NST at the end of next week, so I asked why she was frowning. She said she was concerned about our toxoplasmosis result because we had enough to worry about already. She was much less concerned--in fact, she smiled--when she heard what Dr. Ackermann had said about a false positive. It's nice to know how much the nurses are rooting for us. If not for the long wait to check into the hospital, we would have gotten home in a little over 3 hours. We still got home in less than 4, so we spent about 8 hours on medical stuff, much better than last week's 11 hours.
Lucy was asleep when we left this morning. We weren't sure if it was better to wake her and immediately say goodbye or to let her sleep. We opted for sleep. Shawn was here when she woke, and I had breakfast ready for her. I haven't talked to Shawn to know how that went, but Lucy didn't seem upset about it when I asked later. Then Susie came and took Lucy outside for a little while. When they came inside, Lucy insisted on taking a bath. After Lucy's bath, Erin came to watch her for the rest of the afternoon. They watched TV, played trains, and played outside a little while, too. There were a couple of tantrums, and Lucy stubbornly sat in the stroller for 10 minutes even though Erin told her it was too hot to go for a walk. But it seems things went pretty well. And we were home before 2:00. I made sure that Lucy got cuddle time as soon as we got home and again before I took a nap and again after my nap. In fact, we're still cuddling.
I needed the nap because I didn't sleep well last night. I was hurting when I went to bed and took some Tylenol. When I woke up a couple hours later, I still hurt. Eventually, I got up and took a warm bath with Epsom salts. When I got out of the tub, I didn't hurt anymore, but I felt jittery and had trouble settling down. I now wonder if the mid-evening Coke Icee I had was too much caffeine too late. During all of this, Emmie was really active. She's never been so active. Part of the time she had hiccups. I was a little worried that all her activity would make her lethargic today, but it seems like it just got her warmed up. I was awake for about three hours in the middle of the night before falling back asleep for four more hours. I think I just overdid it yesterday. I never felt like I was overdoing it, but apparently it all added up and caught up with me.
Our plans for the weekend include resting and cleaning. And I have a little more work to do in the garden if weather allows. I want to get my squash plants transplanted in the ghetto. And I want to plant green beans, purple hull peas, corn, snap peas, herbs and chard in the Pea Haven. That sounds like a lot because of the variety, but the quantities aren't large. Hopefully, we can get the house straightened out this weekend so that if we have a baby in week 36, we're prepared.
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