Due Date & Good News!

Today I am finally 40 weeks pregnant! Whoohoo! I would like to take this time to congratulate myself on making it to today. It's been a long, hard 9+ months but I DID IT. Mostly because I had no other choice, but I still made it! Way to go me! :-D

In other news, I had my 40 week appointment today and received the news I had been hoping to hear for weeks but was starting to believe would never come! As of this morning I am "a little over 2 centimeters" dilated, and my cervix is anterior and soft, as opposed to what it has been at every one of my exams: posterior and hard. My doctor is now very hopeful for me that I will go into labor on my own soon or otherwise be a good candidate for an induction later in the week. Whoohoo!

In order to speed the help the process along, my doctor stripped my membranes this morning during my internal exam. He did this without telling me ahead of time which I am really thankful for in retrospect. I had heard scary things about this procedure and likely would have lost sleep if I had known it was coming ahead of time. In actuality, it wasn't bad at all! It just felt like a much more "thorough" exam than I am used to. Actually, my internal exams this time around have been a walk in the park compared to how they were with Philip. I dreaded them during my last pregnancy as I was nearly climbing up the table in an effort to get away from my doctor every time I had to have one. I'm thinking maybe this is a nice perk of second pregnancies. Either way, it's great to have one less painful thing to deal with at this point!

My doctor had me make another appointment for Monday morning in case I don't have the baby before then. He will then check for additional progress and, depending on where I am at that point, we will discuss scheduling an induction for later in the week. Personally, I am hoping to not make it to Monday but only time will tell! I'm just so happy to see that my body is actually making efforts to get this baby out on its own that, no matter what the final outcome of my birth experience, at least I'll know that I gave having a VBAC my best shot. And all that really matters anyway is that baby and mommy are healthy when all is said and done!

So here's to hoping my next update will include a picture and birth stats of our eagerly anticipated new addition!