the update

so i said i'd give you an update and i'm going to stay true to my word.  and it's good news, so that makes it easy!

so i went into the hospital for my first NST and BPP yesterday.  my appointment was at 2 pm.  i got there at 1:30 to be safe.  i called beforehand to see how long it would take.  they said only about 30 mins to an hour.  wrong!  i was there until almost 5!  this was particularly unfortunate considering i had an event i was working last night and was supposed to be there at 4.  factor in taking Adam home and then getting back on the freeway and diving right into the heart of rush hour traffic at the prime hour of 5:30.  correctomundo. . .i did not arrive at my event until 6:15 and that was actually making pretty good time!  thank goodness for my business partner Rachel who took the lead in my absence.

anyhow, here's what went down.  first off, the testing is done in the Women's Pavillion of the hospital where i will give birth.  we had never been there, so it was nice to start getting acquainted with the place.  and we had a good experience.  it's clean and nice and the nurses and staff are all very friendly and helpful. . .so far.  so after check in, we had to wait for about 20 minutes before they called us upstairs to begin testing.  as we sat waiting, who should appear but my lovely OB Dr. Perlow.  she was rockin' the scrubs and had just delivered a baby boy to a woman who was 37.5 weeks along and whom she said had been having similar issues as me.  the baby was perfectly healthy albeit a tad bit early.  so that was good to hear.  it was nice to run into her.  she gave me a hug and some additional reassurances which is always nice.  just love her.

so they finally get us upstairs and they put me in an actual hospital room in an actual hospital bed.  they hooked up a fetal heart rate monitor and also a monitor that checks for fetal movement.  the monitors track the baby's heartrate and movement at the same time to ensure that when the baby moves her heartrate also increases which is also indicative of her being well.  so we were well underway with this monitoring when the BPP guy arrived with an ultrasound machine.  so he unhooked the other monitors and did the u/s part of the test which checks for various movements, breathing and fluid levels.  in all, it checks four things and you either receive a 0 (bad) for each or a 2 (good).  well i received all 2s for a grand total of 8, the highest you can score.  hooray!  and my amniotic fluid had gone up from 8.3 cm to 11 cm.  double hooray!!  i guess all that water drinking is working.  good thing, because it's not much fun drinking all that water when you have acid reflux as bad as me and all the water keeps trying to coming back up.  blah!  but i'll do what i have to do.

so then we had to go back to the fetal monitoring and just wait while it collected all the data the doctor would need.  unfortunately it took way too long. . .but fortunately i at least had a TV to watch.

so now i just keep doing what i'm doing. . .drinking 80 ounces of water a day, eating 80 grams of protein a day, spending a lot of time in bed and spending as much time as possible on my left side.  it's a good thing i really like my bed!

in other news, my middle has expanded considerably.  it's getting pretty difficult to do everyday tasks such as shaving my legs and tying my shoes.  comfy slip on boots have become the most convenient shoe to wear and my lounge pants are the standard pant of choice.  as of yesterday, i look like this. . .at 30 weeks and 2 days.  only 9 weeks and 5 days to go!