almost there

We had a great and uneventful 39 week appointment with my midwife group yesterday. Baby is holding his/her vertex (head down) position beautifully, and I'm so thankful.

Medical stuff: baby's position is Right Occiput Anterior, heartbeat is in the 130's, my blood pressure is nice and low (no signs of preeclampsia), uterine (or fundus) measurements are now shrinking instead of increasing because the baby's head is moving down into my pelvis...and I've gained 28 lbs. Jeepers.
I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted a dilatation check at this appointment, but in the end my midwife never even brought it up, and I left thankful that I didn't have either the disappointment of no progress or the fixation on labor that progress would have brought.

After the version 10 days ago, I had a few days where I felt much fewer Braxton-Hicks in the evenings and thought this meant I might be settling into "nothing is happening towards labor" territory for a while and I'd go overdue. I'm not feeling that way at all anymore. Every night I go to sleep with false labor and wake up with it in the morning. Contractions are coming so easily all day, I need only lean forward or even just yawn to make one start up. Sometimes the contractions get painful, come regularly and close together before eventually fading off. I've started getting sharp, surprising "corkscrew pains" (my own created term) where suddenly it feels like the baby's head is pushing and turning its way down farther than it has room to go. I used to get those only while standing but last night they started coming as I was sitting and even laying down.

So I don't know if all that means I'm headed into labor soon or if it's just regular stuff that many pregnant women experience and I'll be living with it for another three weeks. Either way, we're back to spending our evenings hunkered down at home, and whenever we do go out I have to take it really slow through all the contractions and unexpected corkscrew pains that come up (and can make me gasp and lean over...it's a little awkward to have those in the grocery store). My mom arrives in 2 days and I was really hoping to show her Chicago since she's never been here before, but I'm feeling less and less like I can trek all over town on foot. Maybe a Segway tour...just kidding.

Even though we're in the holding tank of "any moment" (and moments could take weeks), I have a lot of peace. Tim is tearing through his last pile of editing before all the work of 2012 is done, and once it is--save for a couple of shoots--he will be free to do nothing but care for me and bond with the baby for all of January! The greatest gift! I'm looking forward to having my mom and my sister here with us for a couple of weeks, and even the thought of being up all night for the coming months isn't too daunting since I've been doing that for most of my pregnancy anyway.