Update at 34 weeks

I had a couple appointments this week.  The unfortunate thing was that the first one wasn't exactly planned (but don't panic, because it all turned out okay).  A few days ago, around 4 a.m., I was awake for literally the 6th time that night to make a trip to the bathroom.  If you've ever been 8 months pregnant, you know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, I crawled/climbed/flopped back in bed, but couldn't go to sleep because I was having one contraction after another.  They were just Braxton-Hicks contractions, which normally aren't anything to worry about.  However, the prevailing advice is that if you have more than four in an hour (check!) and they don't go away when you lie down on your left side (check!) and drink lots of water (check!) then you probably need to call the ol' OB office and have yourself checked out.  Especially if you're only 33ish weeks along.  So yes, I was fretting about this.  I made myself an appointment at the OB office for that morning and just prayed that I wasn't in any sort of real labor.  They hooked me up to the monitor, which measures the baby's heartbeat and can detect contractions.  In 20 minutes I only had two little contractions, and Bee was wiggly with a nice variable heart rate (which they like).  The OB declared me good to go, and that was that.

A couple days after that excitement, I had an appointment with the MFM folk.  Nothing new to report there, other than Bee is up to an estimated 5 lb 7 oz!  Her liver (well, part of it) is still up, but sweet Dr. Chapman did say that not seeing it there until the third trimester is better than if they'd been seeing it up there all along.  And yet again, we discussed how none of this has any sort of reliable predictive value for how Bee will do once she's born.

I want to thank you all for your prayers and positive thoughts as we've gone through this process.  I can't say enough about how amazing and supportive my coworkers have been.  Miss Anne (first mentioned in this post) even got a prayer chain going the other day when I was having all those contractions.  And many thanks to all the CDH mommas who commented on my last post (when we first found out that Bee's liver was up) to send encouragement and prayers.

In other news of the "God is so good" variety:

• We've found somebody to house sit for us while we're gone, which includes taking care of our gigantic (but oh so sweet) German Shepherd Zander.  This is a *huge* blessing.
• The daycare that Henry goes to is helping us out in a big way.  Since he likely won't be there for the majority of the summer, they've told us that for the weeks he's not there, we won't have to pay.  (Normally we'd have to, to hold his spot...which we would want to do, because we love that place!)
• I spoke with some folks from HR who have assured me that it shouldn't be a problem getting my insurance to cover my delivery in Charleston at the "in-network" rate.  Again, huge blessing.

So thank you to everyone who has helped us in any sort of way with your prayers, support, and encouragement.  Jonathan and I are humbled by your generosity and thoughtfulness.  Please keep praying for our sweet little girl, that her lungs would be big and strong and functional once she's born.  June 7th keeps getting closer and closer...