February 3rd 2006

This time it wasn’t raining, but had recently rained. The west parking lot was full, but I decided to pull into the first turn in and the same exact spot I had so skillfully acquired during our last visit was wide open, so stealthily maneuvered the car into the space. I noticed other hunters looking for open parking spaces were starting to head our direction and perceived the urgency at hand.

Collette was busy intently looking at her computer screen, when Kristy approached she said “Can you take her?” to Jane the other front desk worker on duty. This was immediately followed by a very loud “Wow? I don’t know what I just did, but that’s not what I wanted to do” from Collette, now with her face even closer to her computer screen.

Kristy did her duty and fulfilled the brown bag requirement. While I was waiting a doctor came out and he used “Come on down” on a patient, I think the Price is Right fever is spreading throughout the office there.

Kristy came back and we waited a second and then she was called. She looked at me and said, “Let’s see the damage for this week”, referring to the weigh in at the scale. As Kristy was taking off her shoes the nurse was analyzing the brown bag sample Kristy provided and asked if she had a lot of sugar this morning. Kristy said she ate some frosted shredded wheat about fifteen minutes ago, that was it. The nurse just noted that it showed up this morning in the sample.

Her blood pressure was still very good, 126/71. With shoes off and me holding her purse and coat she weighed in at 155 pounds, that’s an increase of 4 and ½ pounds in about a month, I think Kristy was expecting something like eight to ten pounds weight gain.

Kristy measured a perfect 36cm matching her 36 weeks right on the money. The mucus plug has come loose and worked its way out and he has squirmed his way very low, getting into the engaged position. The engaged positions is when the baby works its way down into the hips and pelvic region in preparation for birth and causes mom lot of pain in her hips and lower back, in case you were wondering. Her cervix is fifty percent thinned and all his moving helps to stretch it out further and keep the process moving along. The cervix wasn’t opened yet, but his head was right there, she had to reach around his head to check for dilation. She said that he is very close and could come at any time and when he does come he is in such good position that he will probably come very quickly, which means I need to run some hi-speed time trials from our house to the hospital.

We took a quick listen to the baby’s heart beat, it was a strong 148 beats per minute with excellent acceleration when he moved or responded to her external poking and prodding. He is still in the optimal birthing position, head down, back and butt on Kristy’s left side and feet poking out on her right side, basically the position he has been in since he really started growing.

Next Jill took a sample to test Kristy for Strep Group B. If the mom is carrying then they will give her antibiotics during labor so she can’t pass it to the baby because the baby’s immune system is fully functioning yet and the baby is more susceptible at this time. She said the results would be in the computer by mid next week, so if she went in to labor this weekend they would just giver her the antibiotics.

We went over our birth plan and everything looked good. Jill asked what an Inmotion was; Kristy explained it was our ipod speaker doc with remote control that can also run off of batteries (The hospital said that battery power was preferred for music playing devices). I don’t think Jill is an ipod person so I don’t know if she put it all together but she seemed happy so that was good enough.

She told us that if we had him early, she is working on the third weekend in February and I said that would work for me so she said “We’ll just pencil it in then” laughing. This time Kristy and I both sensed a little more excitement out of her, probably because we are getting so close now. Kristy and I both think Jill has done a great job and we hope that she gets to be the one that delivers our baby, so hopefully he got the memo about the date we penciled in.

She asked if we had any last questions. She said that we should head to the hospital if contractions are five minutes apart, lasting about a minute and have been steady for 2 hours or a big bag of water breaks and fluids come gushing out. Since we scheduled another appointment today a week past the due date in case he is over due, I asked if we have to call and cancel the remaining appointments if he comes early. Jill said no, they will know when he is born and they will cancel the remaining appointments.

That was it! Kristy stayed behind to make the appointment for a week after the due date. I sat in the waiting room and listened to Collette talk about how they pull people over for everything in Washington, especially tags because Vancouver, WA is a border town with Portland, OR. She said in California they hardly ever pull you over, you have to be doing something really bad. Then she had a big story about how they sold a car to a dealership, but the dealership didn’t file for change of ownership on the title, so after a year or two she started getting tickets. She finally had to go to the dealership to find out who they sold it to, found them and they had sold to someone else, track down the someone else and sign the title over and put and end to it all.

Then we started to leave, but Kristy had to use the bathroom one more time on the way out, then we left.