37 week midwife appt

I'm officially full-term and allowed to go into labor and birth at home. It feels wonderful :) Granted, I still expect to go past my due date, but in case she surprises us it's good to know we'd be ok.

My appointment was great, blood pressure still nice and low, like 98 over 56. Honestly I attribute a lot of my healthy normal pregnancy things to how comfortable I am with my caregivers. I can not emphasize enough how important I think that is. If you aren't comfortable with your caregiver, whether midwife or OB, how can you be comfortable with them during one of the most intense experiences of your life? Trust is essential. Anyway, we all know I love my midwives <3

They don't do cervical checks unless you ask, and I've been having pretty consistent practice contractions on and off for a couple weeks and I've been dying to know if anything was changing. Last month on my birthday I had a bout of ligament pain combined with a lot of braxton hicks contractions (BHC) and she had checked me at that point. My cervix was about kind of cone shaped, about a 1.5 at the front but still closed in back. When she checked me at my appt, first she reached a little too far posterior (toward the back) where she kind of expected my cervix to be and actually had to pull back a little because it was lower than she expected. Said it's still a bit of a cone shape, about 2cms int he front but a 1 all the way through. Cervix is nice and soft, about 65% effaced and she could actually feel Cadie's head. That also did not surprise me, because ever since I had a round of contractions the other day that lasted for 5 hours I've been feeling like I was going to squish Cadie's head between my legs! I've been measuring about 2 weeks ahead for the majority of my pregnancy now, but since she has dropped so much I'm actually measuring a week behind now. I'm absolutely thrilled to hear that my body is ripening and getting ready. I'm already more dilated than I was when I went in to be induced with Victor! I count that as major improvement.

I basically have BHC on and off all day, usually an hour or 2 where they get a little closer together but still pretty irregular and then they taper off. They are starting to get a little more intense too, at this point I'm more likely to call them early labor contractions than just BHC. More and more of them require me to pay a bit of attention to them rather than just poking my belly and saying "oh there's another one.." I love it though, I love knowing my body is gearing up and getting ready. I'm hoping that I'll slowly dilate the first couple cms over the next couple of weeks and that when I finally hit active labor it'll be a little quicker than if I had to have hours of early labor. I've also decided that I want my active labor to start in late evening and have her in the middle of the night. That way Victor is asleep for all of it and we won't have to worry about him handling mommy in pain or people touching me or trying to take him over to the neighbor's house for who knows how long. That also would give us some time to clean up and have little sister to ourselves for a little bit before we introduce them. Of course, I obviously have no say in the matter, lol, but if she wants to listen then that's what I want! Ha!

So that's all my updates, at this point it could be tomorrow or in 5 weeks.... The surprise is all part of the fun!!