Baby update...

We've now reached 33 weeks.  (WAHOO!)  I realized the other day that I hadn't really ever thought about making it this far in my pregnancy.  I always told Matt that my goal was 26 weeks, and then anything on top of that was just "gravy".  I never thought about being 33+ weeks pregnant.  It's all new territory!  Welcome, but new.

Baby Girl is doing great.  The estimate is that she's about 5 pounds now.  She's in the 67% for measurements, and I'm glad for that.  If she arrives extra early, her being a bit bigger will help.

I'm measuring about 4 weeks ahead of where I should be.  But I think that has a lot to do with my body shape (long legs, shorter torso and no space in between them!) and not necessarily anything else.  My blood pressure is doing good, and there is absolutely no sign of gestational diabetes.  YAY! 

I started having weekly non-stress tests at 32 weeks.  The first one Baby Girl passed with flying colors.  No worries at all.  This week's test, however, didn't go as well.  

She didn't fail-fail, but didn't do as well as the doctor needed her to do.  The doctor is looking for her heart rate to rise 15 beats per minute for 20 seconds.  Her heart rate would go up, but not as much or for as long as they needed.  When that didn't work, they tried looking for the activity markers that they needed via ultrasound.  They must have been peeking at nap time, because she wasn't giving the needed movements.  We did get to see her sucking her thumb and arm, but she wasn't rolling over, practice breathing or moving her arms and legs much.  So we had to go into the hospital on Saturday morning to repeat the test.  

When I got there Saturday morning, the nurses hooked me up to the monitors and we looked at her heart rate.  It was just staying steady, no real accelerations, but no decelerations either.  The ultrasound technician got there and she started the biophysical profile monitoring.  Right away the tech started seeing what she needed to see.  

Baby girl was practice breathing, squirming, sucking her thumb, moving her head, and playing with her toes.  The tech was awesome--she spent a lot of time pointing out the different things we were seeing.  It was fantastic!  We also FINALLY got to peek at Baby Girl's face!  We could tell that she already has nice puffy cheeks.  :)

I get to "ditch the stitch" in 2.5 weeks, and then it's just waiting like everyone else does.  I've already had steroid shots for the baby's lungs, her clothes and blankets are washed and put away, and things are slowly going into her bag for the hospital.  Over the next few weeks I'll put my stuff together for the hospital and hopefully we'll be ready to go when the time comes!