38 Weeks

This week's belly picture is a special treat, compliments of a professional photographer. As you know, we took maternity pictures last weekend. Alycia sent me a few last night as sneak peaks and said she will post the rest of them as soon as she gets them up on her website. I can't wait to see all of them! I am keeping the ones on the blog PG rated, fully clothed =). If you are interested in seeing others, let me know. Kiley and I had our 38 week checkup this morning and it went pretty good. I actually lost a pound of the water weight which was good. No swollen ankles this week. I'm not really sure what causes that, but I am not complaining about losing a pound! Kiley's heartbeat was 154 beats per minute and my blood pressure was good. My belly is still measuring small at 35 centimeters, so she still had me schedule a sonogram for next week to make sure Kiley is growing.

The doctor talked about inductions. She said that Baylor is cutting down on their tolerance for inductions because a large percentage of them are ending up in C Sections. She will be out of town next week and was inducing some of her patients this week, but the hospital was sending them home. I am ok with not being induced. I think my anxiety will kick in if I know the actual day and time that Kiley is going to come. I think she will be spontaneous like her Daddie and come when she wants. She said that my cervix is actually facing backwards towards my tail bone, so she can't get a good feel of it, but she is pretty sure that it is still closed. I told her that I really don't feel like Kiley will come anytime soon. She did say that she doesn't let any of her patients go past 41 weeks, so we will revisit the induction option if I approach November 11th. We scheduled a sonogram and our 39 week checkup with Dr. Reyes (the other doctor in the office). If for some reason, Kiley hasn't grown since the last sonogram, we will also have to discuss a staged induction where they ripen my cervix. So there are still so many unknowns and we will continue to play the waiting game. We will have another weekend to pack the hospital bag, install the car seat and create a phone tree to share the news. I think I am going to start the countdown to November 11th, 21 days to go!

As another precaution, Mikey and I went to vote today in case she decides to come on her actual due date which is November 4th, election day. This weekend we are celebrating Mikey's birthday. He and his Dad have a hot air balloon ride scheduled for Saturday morning and we are celebrating with the family on Sunday. I am sure Kiley is being the sweet little girl that she is and letting Daddie enjoy his 28th birthday before she comes into the world to join our family.