37 Weeks

Some time ago, I posted about my worries over the baby's position. She spent a few weeks flipping around and experimenting with being breach, but thankfully she's proven to be very open to my suggestion that she get her head down and start preparing for her exit. She's been head down at the last several checkups, thank goodness!

I also learned at my last checkup that my group B strep test was negative--another relief! No antibiotics for me during labor, thank you very much.

The only small bit of bad news is that the midwives think the bean might be posterior. This means that, while her head is down, she is facing my belly and we'd much prefer she be looking backward. I've been assigned some exercises to do to try to encourage her to turn around, since posterior means painful back labor and let's not forget that I'm trying to do this thing without an epidural. I hope she's open to some more friendly suggestions about her position!

Finally, I keep saying over and over that the bean can come whenever she wants, but we only just got a carseat for her this weekend. The carseat is very important if you plan to actually take the baby home from the hospital. We were lucky enough to inherit a gently used seat from a toddler we know and we spent the weekend cleaning it up and reading through the manual. I'll be taking it to the fire department this week to have it installed and then we're ready. After that, you can come whenever you want, bean, this time I mean it.

Early on in my pregnancy, my mother informed me that she believed all babies come early because all of her spontaneous births were early (there are four of us, my youngest sibling was a planned c-section). I'm positive of this information because I've been clinging hopefully to it for the last two weeks. Yesterday, I decided to confirm with her that my oldest sibling was, in fact, born early as well, since that's the only birth relevant to my situation. Mom has changed her story--she insists I'm confused and it was she herself who was born early, the three of us were all two weeks late. *sigh* I'm hoping her memory has faded and we weren't all THAT late. (For me, I'll take due date or just a day or two after, please!)

Finally, I had contractions all weekend with varying degrees of discomfort, none anything I would describe as painful. I know it doesn't mean that the bean is coming anytime soon, but its still comforting to think that something is going on.