I got to the doctor’s office and there was a police car in the parking lot and one of the doctors was standing outside talking to them. Apparently, she got in her car, realized she forgot her glasses, got a page, and was talking to a patient on the phone and backed into a patient’s car (not mine). She’s totally the “crazy doctor” of the practice (super sweet but a bit aloof) and she felt mortified. She definitely entertained me while I was waiting for 25 minutes to get called back to the exam room.
So, I get called back, finally, and the nurse takes my weight (up five pounds from last week 🙁 ) and I pee in a cup and she takes my blood pressure and then informs me that I’ll be having my last blood draw and Group B strep test this afternoon. I start to panic because it’s been a while since I was able to properly groom myself and I go “Uhhh…uhhh….isn’t that next week????” and she goes “Nope. We do that at week 35, and you’re at week 35.” Awesome.
She takes me back to the exam room and hands me one of the paper sheet things and says, “Just get undressed from the waist down and Michelle will be in here in a minute.” Oh, ok, cool. No problem. So I do. And then I realize that this “sheet” she’s given me must be for someone MUCH MUCH smaller (like, a toddler, maybe?) than me. I managed to wrap it from my front to my back, but that left half my ass exposed. Not cool, man. Not cool.
Michelle finally makes it in and asks me how I’m doing and I say “Well, I totally wasn’t expecting THIS today” and she laughs and goes “Don’t say ‘I didn’t shave’ because I didn’t either!! Everything will be fine.” So that made me laugh and eased me up a bit. Then, she saw how small the sheet was that I had stretched as far around me as I could get it and she was kind enough to get me another one to wrap around the naked half of my lower body.
Then came the loveliest part of the visit. The first internal exam. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as horrible as I had imagined it would be. She said that I’m not as high as she thought I would be considering his position, and I’m starting to soften up but I’m not dilating yet (which is good considering I still have five weeks to go and I really don’t need him to come yet since I’m not ready).
She listened for Baby’s heartbeat and shocker! My stubborn baby is still being stubborn. He wouldn’t hold still so she could listen to his heartbeat and at one point she shook her finger at my belly and told Baby to straighten up! He responded by kicking the doppler. Easy kid. I’ll have to ground you!
She finally managed to get the heartbeat, but it was up REALLY high near my rib cage. Then, she measured my belly with a tape measure and said “Wow, you’re measuring really ahead of schedule!” Awesome. My baby is huge. Or, I’ve got too much fluid.
I told her I just wanted to know how big his head was and she recommended an ultrasound to see if we can get an estimation of how big Baby is and to see what’s going on with his position. He was definitely not head down today. Perhaps transverse, but not head down.
Everything’s looking good so far. We’ll go back on Monday for the ultrasound and my next visit. I’ll keep you posted.