36 week check-up

Yesterday was my 36 week & 1 day check-up for Dylan, and Chadmo managed to come along with us this week. :) Once again, Dylan did excellent on her Non-Stress Test. She's an active baby and she's still loving her environment - her heart accelerates when she moves just like it's supposed to, and it doesn't decelerate when I have contractions which is very important! (I was having contractions about every 5 minutes on the monitor again this week, like I was last week, but certainly not strong ones.)

We had an ultrasound again this week, and they estimate her weight at 6 pounds 15 ounces! Her head still measures a couple of weeks ahead of her body, but the ultrasound tech was reassuring that it doesn't look like she has a ridiculously large head, just a big one. (Which is to be expected between Chadmo & myself!) She even commented that you could see some hair, not a ton of hair mind you, but some! This came as a complete shock to me as I never expected to have anything but babies who were bald till they were 2. We'll see how much is there when she's born and if she can hang on to it over time or not. :) My amniotic fluid was a little lower this week, down to 9 again, so they're going to resume doing ultrasounds every week to check my fluid level.

Dr. Copeland is on vacation this week and next, so I saw Dr. Sayat this Monday & I'll be seeing him again next Monday. I saw him once while I was pregnant with Haley, and I'm a big fan so that's just fine with me. I've now progressed to being 4 cm dilated - only 1 more cm to go and we're half way there! Dr. Sayat said any time I go into labor now is fine, and that they wouldn't even try to stop labor at this point. For now we'll just keep on keeping on with the appointments, but he said if my fluid ever gets too low or Dylan seems unhappy with the fluid level, they would just induce me by breaking my water. (Yay for NO pitocin - hopefully!) Hopefully that won't happen and I'll just go in to labor on my own when Dylan decides it's the right time, but that's still good to know. I'm voting she comes on about the 24th, if only we could choose! ;)

One last note, the final lab results are in from the hematologist and my bloodwork still looked good, so we are good to go! And to correct a statement from my previous post - vonWillebrand's is the most common bleeding disorder, affecting 1-2% of women AND men. (It's just less commonly diagnosed in men, because they don't have periods.) vWD is an autosomal dominant trait, meaning you only need to have one gene for it and you will be symptomatic - not just a carrier. I must only have 1 gene for it, because Haley did not have vWD (thank goodness!) If I had 2 genes for it, all of our children would have vWD. But that still means 50% of our children will have vWD, so there were a lot of instructions from Dr. Cataland to the hospital on things they can & can't do to Dylan during & after delivery. I'm certainly glad I went to him, it's good to have all our ducks in a row.