Our Hanukkah/Christmas Miracles

We are officially on the schedule to be induced Sunday night/Monday morning. As of today, I am 70% effaced and my cervix is very soft, but I'm not yet dilated at all. If I'm still not dilated at my appointment on Thursday, then we report to the hospital at 7:30pm Sunday night to start the induction. If I have started to dilate by Thursday, then we will go in Monday morning. The theory is that if I'm not dilating on my own, they start with a medication that goes right behind the cervix (can't remember the name of it). They put the medication in every 4 hours and it should take awhile to cause my cervix to dilate. By Monday morning, I should be somewhat dilated and they would break my water and start me on pit.ocin. If I'm already dilating on my own, they will start by breaking my water and giving me the pito.cin, so we skip the first step. This is why they would have me go in Monday morning instead of Sunday night. Everyone confused yet?

The bottom line is that Apple and Banana should be born Monday, December 22nd! We will have two little miracle Hanukkah babies! That is, if I don't go into labor on my own before then. The dogs are scheduled to go to the kennel Saturday and we will keep them there until next Friday (the 26th). This should give us time to get home (hopefully with the babies) and settle in a little before we turn the dogs' world upside down.

The NST was pretty standard today. Apple very reactive, Banana not so much. They both passed the BPP, but Apple took her time about it, while Banana was quick. They tend to take turns like that. The doctor did an internal exam today to check my cervix and it was pretty uncomfortable. Now I'm really sore. Just wait until Monday, right? Both babies are still head down, so we are on to try for a vaginal birth. Yay! They also did another culture for group B strep as apparently the one I had done in the hospital was too long ago and it could have changed. My blood pressure was normal, but a bit higher than it usually is (120/74). Total weight gain is somewhere around 33 or 34 pounds.

My throat was killing me last night and this morning, but it feels a bit better now. I really expected to wake up to a full fledged head cold this morning, but it hasn't fully hit yet. Maybe I can dodge the bullet and just deal with the sore throat for a bit. I've been stuffed up pretty much for the entire second half of my pregnancy, but it isn't completely congested, so hopefully I can avoid that.

Oh, and Monday night is also the Bears/Packers game. And the doctor on call on Monday (in case you wonder Jen, it is Dr. Abm) is a big Bears fan-we bonded over it while I was in the hospital and we were able to get her some Bears gear from our connection (thanks Staley!). I'm actually happy that we were in the hospital for those 11 days as it allowed me to get comfortable with all of the doctors in the practice (there are 6 of them).

That's all for now. Sorry, this post is kind of rambling. My head is all over the place. Can you believe we will most likely be a family of four this time next week?