Twelfth Prenatal Dr Visit

I’m now 38 weeks!  I definitely feel like I’m ready to have the baby.  The doctor did a vaginal exam today to check to see if I’m dilated at all.  It involved laying in an odd frog position on my back and putting my hands underneath my bottom to prop up my cervix.  She warned me that I would feel a lot of pressure and probably experience some bleeding.  It didn’t involve any instruments (just her fingers) but there was a lot of poking and pressing.  It was a lot of pressure and started to hurt.  I kind of cried out when it got painful.  She said that I’m not dilated at all but the baby’s head is super low.  Like right against the cervix pressing down.  She basically said that the baby is ready to come out and it’s just the closed cervix holding it in.  I asked her if that means I’m going to have a quick labor and she said most likely yes, it will.  I had told her about getting the Braxton Hicks contractions and she said it was all normal but that I should start timing how far apart they are.  Since I’m forty minutes away from the hospital she said that I need to record the time between each contraction and go to the hospital if it’s five minutes for an hour and not to hold off if I think it isn’t too painful.  Now I’m a little bit worried that if I go into labor it’ll be too fast.  I definitely want to make it to the hospital and have time to get an epidural.  She also asked me if I was constipated and said she could tell there was a hard back up and that’s probably why I feel so heavy and bloated.  She said I should take 30ml of milk of magnesia every 12 hours until it all clears out.  Then to take Colace (a stool softener) in the morning and at night after it’s cleared.  It’s all over the counter stuff so I didn’t need a prescription or anything.  She just wrote down the names and directions for use.  She even said she wouldn’t be surprised if I went into labor after clearing out the constipation.  She said it's possible that I could go up to my due date but she really thinks it’ll happen by next week.  It seems like the baby is ready to go.

She also did an ultrasound to check the location and heart rate of the baby.  She said she didn’t need to measure the weight again as it’s likely to be 7 and a half to 8 pounds by the time it’ll be born.  She showed us how low the head is.  She had the wand way down low, almost near my urethra to show us the head so it’s definitely super low.  After the exam I was bleeding kind of a lot.  Like I was on my period.  Though it lightened up by the time I got home and seems to have stopped completely now. 

On the way home we stopped at Warner Park to have a lobster roll from Lobsta Truck and take a few pictures.  Joe used to live right there next to park when we first met and so it was a nice reminder of when we first started dating.  I wanted to take some pictures of my belly now that I’m 38 weeks since there’s no guarantee I’m going to make it to 40 and in fact it seems like I won’t (which I’m totally okay with).  So I did want some end of pregnancy pictures.  Especially since I’ve really ballooned up this last stretch.