Full Term! We Made It!

Today marks thirty seven weeks pregnant. THIRTY SEVEN! Full term! Hooray! We made it!

At this point Eden is considered “fully cooked”. She could come any time from now and be ready for the outside world. Her lungs are likely mature and she’s done the majority of her growing by now. She’ll be continuing to grow over the next couple of weeks and could put on another few ounces before making her entrance, but she’s mostly done.

We had a midwife appointment a few days ago. Everything was great with Eden. When the midwife was feeling for her position she had real difficulty finding her head, and I thought for a minute that she was going to say that she’d turned breech again – but NO! She is most definitely head down and she is VERY low. I checked my notes after the appointment and she is 3/5 engaged, which is exciting. After all of the breech drama, I’m so glad that she is headed in the right direction. The midwife was asking if I had pressure in my bum (constantly!) and was hinting very heavily that she thinks Eden will be early, but of course these things are impossible to tell at this point. I’m just so glad she’s in the right position! I had some interesting Braxton Hicks yesterday and a couple today, but they’ve been very sporadic and barely painful.

My blood pressure was still high at 142/93 and I did have a trace of protein in my urine. I haven’t had protein in my urine since 9 weeks pregnant, so the midwife sent that off to be analysed and ordered bloods too just to check liver and kidney function. I’ve been getting more frequent headaches, but it’s very hard to judge because I got frequent headaches before I was pregnant. I haven’t had any other pre-eclampsia symptoms so we’re just on the look out for those and keeping an eye on BP.

I’ll get the blood results at my BP monitoring session at the day unit today, but as they haven’t called I am going to assume that there was nothing wrong. With regards to the urine, trace protein can mean anything from UTI or dehydration right through to pre=eclampsia. So, let’s see. As I said, though, no phonecall so I am assuming all is well.

The plan from here on in? Twice weekly blood pressure monitoring at the hospital and keeping an eye out for pre-eclampsia symptoms and protein in my urine. That’s pretty much it! Unless my BP goes above 150/95 and stays there, we won’t be talking about induction before my due date, so it’s just a waiting game. The midwife had us book our forty week appointment, but hinted heavily that she thought we would need to cancel it.

Who knows what’s around the corner? Either way, we are a maximum of five weeks away from meeting our little lady – FINALLY!