36 weeks

Today I'm 36 weeks. I had a doctor appointment this morning. She wasn't going to check to see if I'm dilated yet, because she said it really doesn't mean anything at this point. I could be 0 and still go into labor tonight or I could be 3cm and have 3 more weeks to go. But she said if I wanted her to then she would check. And since I was under the assumption that I would be checked today and was already undressed for a different test I told her to go ahead and check. And the result is...

1 cm and 50% effaced

It does make me a little happy to know that some progress is being made, even if it's just a little :)

This picture is a little older, but I just found it on the camera. Its from just a few days before I was 33 weeks:

Update: I just looked in some old emails from before Paige was born. I had a doctor appointment on May 8th and I was 1cm and 40% effaced at that point. That was 11 days before she was born!

A look back at the first trimester

If you haven't heard already, Paige is going to be a big sister! We were being cautious and not making a public post about it until the first trimester was officially over. Tomorrow I'll be 13 weeks along! I met with my doctor today. It was a new doctor, because the one I had been seeing was not working out so well. I didn't feel comfortable with either of the 2 out of 3 doctors that I met in the practice. And I knew that if I was dreading going in for the routine appointments this early on, that it would only get worse down the road. So I made the switch to a practice out of the hospital that I plan to deliver at. Today I met with a midwife, but I'll get to meet each of the 4 doctors eventually as they rotate the patients so all the doctors are familiar with all the patients since any one of them could be the one on-call for the delivery.

At today's appointment, she did an internal exam, listened to the heartbeat, took tons of blood from me and we filled out a bunch of medical history paperwork. They also sent me home with a goody bag and all kinds of paperwork to read through that covers all the testing and everything else that will occur during my upcoming appointments. I had such a good feeling after leaving my appointment today and they covered so much more with me than we went through during any of my 3 appointments at the old practice!

The midwife was able to quickly find the heartbeat with the doppler and the baby was very active and making big thumping noises as we were trying to listen! The heartbeat was in the 160s.

I'm very happy that the first trimester is officially over. I haven't been throwing up, but have been feeling very nauseated since the beginning. Hopefully that will start subsiding as we enter the second trimester.

It's snowing again today. The forecast is calling for 5-7 inches by late tomorrow afternoon. It snowed a little this weekend, but we haven't had any accumulation since our first snow at the end of October.