A Pregnancy Update :)

Hi!

More than a few of my closer connections here have asked me how things have been going lately, so I figured I'd give an and update and take good advantage of Triple Points Week in one fell swoop!  Yay!

As of today... well, it's still Thursday for me, but we'll pretend it's Friday... I'm 37 weeks, 5 days into pregnancy #3.  Aside from feeling more tired than usual, still feeling sick most of the time (this is normal for me during pregnancy), and a chronically tired lower back, it's going fine.  As of this morning, my blood pressure was awesome (lower than when I'm NOT pregnant!), my weight gain was ok (40 pounds so far, which to me is way too much, but hey, at least I started out thin!) and I was dilated to 2.5 cm. 

My OB is open to inducing me at any time, since I've passed the 37-week marker.  I declined the offer today; I'd like to go at least one more week and see if I can make more progress by walking and doing other things to move the process along naturally. 

Before anyone reminds me that 'babies come when they want to and I shouldn't push it', I'll share my experience this pregnancy and then kindly ask that you keep that particular opinion to yourself.  I spotted a little from the beginning, which was alarming because it didn't happen with my first two children.  The severe all-day sickness hit at 5 weeks, and I went on Zofran to cope.  (Still taking it now!)  Then at 11 weeks, a wisdom tooth erupted and made it impossible for me to chew, so I had to have it removed under local.  (NOT fun to hear that cracking!)  I was stressed over it, but came through fine and happily went back to chewing.  At about 12 weeks, I started gushing blood, and found out that a corner of the placenta had torn - a subchorionic hematoma formed.  I had the blood clot until 24 weeks.  From 12 weeks to 22 weeks, I was in bed.  By the grace of God, my husband happened to have scheduled his sabattical from work for those very 10 weeks, so he took care of the house, the kids, everything while I was out of commission.  When my husband went back to work at 22 weeks, I had to resume my normal life, which was stressful, at best!  My 24-week ultrasound revealed that the blood clot had finally gone away, thankfully, and things calmed down from then.  (I've eliminated mention of at least 3 trips to L&D that were taken to make sure I wasn't contracting.)  Since I'd had pre-term labor with my second pregnancy at 31 weeks, I started weekly appointments at that point to be sure nothing was happening (and it wasn't).  So for now, I'm full term, and just waiting for things to happen!

We're not really set on names yet, and we need two sets, since we don't know if it's a girl or a boy.  We've managed to narrow our choices down to just a few for each gender, but there's so much pressure to choose a good one that it's hard to pick once and for all.  :)  I don't tell names in advance and I don't tell names at all in public forums like this (sorry!) but I'll share initials and stats once s/he is here.  :)

So that's about it!  We're just hanging out and waiting for the big day.  And hoping that the big day is SOON.