baby don't you cry, baby don't you cry, gonna bake a pie with a heart in the middle

Today was a little bit of an adventure.

I had an appointment with my OB this morning at 10:30. It was for a non-stress test where I sit in a recliner and have a monitor strapped to my belly and a print out shows the baby's heart rate. I also hold a little clicker that looks like a Jeopardy button and press it every time I feel the baby move. I've had like ten of these between my OB's office and the perinatologist's office. The doctor needs to see a certain number of heartbeat accelerations for a certain amount of time to know the baby is doing well.

My child is quasi-cooperative during things like this. The baby moves like gangbusters at odd hours of the night. The offices are not open during odd hours of the night which is really a shame sometimes. Mostly the appointments have been fine but sometimes take a really long time because the baby is clearly moving but the heartrate hasn't accelerated enough or whatever. At the perinatologist's office, they follow up with an ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid levels, to see a certain number of wiggles, and to check if the baby is making practice breathing movements.

One day at the perinatologist's office I had to lie in the recliner on my side and then switch and hold the monitor and it still wasn't quite enough. Then during the ultrasound, the baby was just sleeping and not doing the breathing motions and the technician had to watch for a certain amount of time to satisfy the requirements. I had to lay on my back, then my side, then my other side and by the time I switched the third time, I just started crying. I just couldn't keep it together anymore. It's a strange thing to not be worried about the baby exactly but to have to be so uncomfortable trying to prove to everyone else that the baby is okay.

So this morning, my mom drove me and we settled in, and everything was fine. Except I ended up on the monitor for two hours with no accelerations. My OB is amazing and straightforward and told me she was confident the baby was just fine but we needed an ultrasound to quantify it. She arranged for me to be fit in at the perinatologist's office because it would be a much faster way to go about getting the information she needed than going to the hospital. We talked about labor signs and she checked my cervix and the baby's position. She decided to schedule a tentative date for my c-section, barring no major changes.

My mom and I drove through Chick-Fil-A and then went to the perinatologist's office. I'm going to skip the whole part about how ridiculous the front desk people are because that's going in an email to the office manager after the baby is born. Heh.

I got on the table for the ultrasound and the baby wiggled a little bit and had a strong steady heartbeat and good breathing motions. And then refused to move any more. The technician jostled my belly quite a bit and the baby just continued to hang out. S/he is definitely still transverse (laying horizontally across my belly) so the c-section is definitely going to be the way I deliver. My mom and I got to watch Baby C on the monitor for twenty minutes or so while s/he didn't move much at all. After some measurements and print outs, the technician took all the newly gathered information to the doctor. Then we got the okay to just go home (after a quick stop to tell Ki in person that everything was just fine)!

I have another appointment on Thursday that will be a non-stress test and then an ultrasound to check on the baby's growth. Barring any major changes, the baby will be here by the end of next week!

Oh, I almost forgot the best part about the whole day!

My mom was driving us back home, almost five hours after my original appointment. We stopped by Ki's store so I could talk to him in person for a quick minute. At a stop light no less than twenty minutes after the ultrasound, the baby was moving so much we could both literally watch THROUGH TWO LAYERS OF CLOTHING. And as a matter of fact, the baby is moving like gangbusters right now. I am really excited to meet this child and see if all of this is indicative of his or her personality or it's just all a bunch of random happenstance for the doctor appointments.