36 Weeks

[sal_amanda]

How can I have dry skin when I'm retaining all this water?

My latest fun symptom is a wee bit of carpal tunnel syndrome.  Certainly helped by the amount of time I spend online, I'm sure.

Got a call from the insurance company in response to my grievance that they are working it out with the hospital.  Not sure I totally believe it.  We'll see.

We have been madly putting together and washing all things baby.  I'd really like to point out what a trooper John has been through all this, as I'm trying to have everything done and ready and unfortunately, he has to do a lot of it since I can't.  I told him last night that I couldn't have gotten through this pregnancy without him, to which he responded that I wouldn't be pregnant without him.  Good point.

Had our first of what will now be weekly appointments with the midwives.  They see no reason to send me back to the perinatalogist with my glucose scores doing so well on the diet, but they're still thinking sonogram in a couple weeks to check on size and fluid levels.  I got to thinking, though, that depending on what position the baby is in, I still might not be able to find out gender until we deliver.

However, the midwife is concerned that the baby is positioned with its back to mine, which is not a good thing during labor and delivery so she suggested I do some cat rolls to help move it around, and also to try going up and down the stairs sideways.  Now that should be fun.

I also got to have a Group B Strep culture done.  Standard procedure.  It's a bacteria that many people have in their intestines and it's not normally anything anyone need worry about.  But with women, all our holes are so close together that it's easy for the bacteria to travel, no matter how good your hygiene.  Again, not normally anything to worry about as it's pretty harmless.  But if a baby is coming through that bacteria, they like to err on the side of caution and have the mother take some antibiotics during delivery.  I guess it's fairly common so no big whoop.

Apparently this is the point when most doctors do internal exams every week to check out the cervix.  I inquired about this and it turns out that the midwives don't do this as there's not really any point.  Even if you start to dilate and efface, it doesn't actually mean that labor will be happening soon so why bother putting women through all those internal exams for nothing.  They'll worry about dilation and effacement when I'm in labor.  I can get behind that.