37 Weeks, 2 Days

Saw the OB today - now that I'm past week 36 I have weekly appointments with her until I give birth. The general schedule is: first 2 trimesters = once a month appointments, starting Week 30 they become twice a month, and Week 36 they are once a week. Usually the appointments involve peeing in a cup to test protein(pre-eclampsia) and sugar(gestational diabetes) in the urine, testing blood pressure and weight, listening to the heartbeat with a Doppler, then 5-10 minutes of talking to the doctor about any questions. Now that I've hit the weekly appointments they're now also checking fundal height(belly circumference), placement (engaged or not), and the fun one: dilation and effacement. Basically, the doctor feels up your cervix. C has been pretty game about coming with me to almost all of my appointments, which seems really rare - most of the other women in the waiting room are there alone, so I get to feel pretty special.

I'm also 2 cm dilated, which first doesn't mean anything and yet is 1/5th of the way there - at 10cm you're ready to push the baby out, and most of the hard work is getting from 5cm to 10cm. I don't know what I should visualize - some books say to think about your cervix as a flower opening in order to start labor. Since I've got two more weeks until 39, should I think about a flower in stasis? The existential questions are the hardest ones :) The real reason it doesn't mean anything, though, is that the average baby is born late. How is that possible? Statistics! Don't forget, average can imply the median, the mode, or the mean. In this case, the mode is a few days late, and the numbers are also wonky because more than 2 weeks late usually gets induced. However, this means I'm going to start keeping a towel in the car, because it really could be any time now. Scary and exciting and nervous all at the same time!