37 Week Appointment

So in my last post I said I probably wouldn't post again until after the baby was born, but the appointment I had this last Friday was too fun not to share. I hit the 37 week mark on Wednesday and I am feeling so many emotions at this point. The main emotions I am feeling is nervous and extreme excitement. Our little girl could really arrive any day now and be healthy. At the end of my 36 week appointment they told me that they would like to do an ultrasound to determine if she has moved into the head down position and then also get an estimate on how much she weighs. I was so happy to find out that I would be getting another ultrasound done before she was born, I hadn't had an ultrasound done since I was about 25 weeks along and was curious to see how much has changed.

I have been really lucky to be able to have Brian come to all but one of my appointments this pregnancy. I think he enjoys it despite the sometimes long waits in the office. I think his favorite appointments have probably been the ones where he gets to see our little girl, or at least those have been my favorite appointments. A couple weeks ago at my appointment it was actually the midwife at the practice that we go to that we met with and she showed Brian how to feel the position of the baby. It was really fun to see his face light up as he identified her head, then her back/butt, and then her arms and legs. Again Brian was able to come to my appointment this last Friday and even though he is getting nervous about the actual deliver I think his excitement for meeting our little girl face to face has increased.

So we get to my appointment and luckily don't have to wait long at all to see the ultrasound technician. We go back in the room and for the first 10 minutes or so she was doing the measurements, making sure everything looked good. Unfortunately for me the screen was turned, so I couldn't really see anything, but Brian was able to watch as she did the measurements. After she finished the measurements she turned the screen so I could get a look at our sweet little girl. She is so much bigger than the last time we saw her! Based on her measurements the technician estimated her to be about 6 lbs right now. I am curious to see how accurate the estimate is and how big she will actually be once she is born. She was still head down like she was at my 35 week appointment, which is good, hopefully she wont decide to try to flip around before she is born. As she moved around to show us her face and profile she point out that there was hair floating around her head, so that was really neat. It looks like she will be coming out with hair on her head, the question is how much. We spent several minutes looking at her profile. As we were doing so the technician said "Oh, it looks like she was going to open her mouth, but she stopped." And then a few seconds later she started opening and closing her mouth, she was practicing sucking. It was so neat because we could see her little tongue moving as she was doing this. Here are some of the ultrasound pictures:

Her profile, making duck lips.

Her heartbeat. Nice and healthy.

She is the funniest little girl already. Throughout my pregnancy each time they try to measure her heartbeat she will move away from the device. Her heartbeat will actually become more rapid and then settle back down. So following in her same pattern she had to show her dislike of having her heartbeat recorded, she gave me the biggest kick while the technician was listening to the heartbeat. She is so funny. I can tell already that she is going to have a ton of personality. I cannot wait to meet her face to face. The doctor we met with after our ultrasound appointment let us know that they don't like to go more than a week past the due date, and so it looks like we will have her in our arms no later than February 8th. It feels surreal that this pregnancy is almost over.