Lucky I Live Hawaii

What a cool day. This morning I went down to the beach for my workout. Swam for about 15 minutes down the bouy line, then spent about 40 minutes deep water running while watching numerous kayakers, windsurfers, and kite boarders do their thing before swimming back to my starting place. Workouts just don't get much more enjoyable than that. The beach was full of moms and babies, dogs playing in the waves, people exercising and running (or just lounging and reading a book under a shade tree)... I couldn't help but think how lucky I am to be living here and how lucky our little kid is going to be to get to grow up here!

After a quick outdoor shower I headed over for my monthly prenatal check-up. Scott always meets me there (my MD is about a block down the road from his office). I'm sorry to report that we don't have any ultrasound pics to show this time... she did do the ultrasound, but more just to check measurements and growth of the baby. It's really too big to get any good shots right now, but we did see the head (which seems to get exponentially bigger every time) and the belly (also looks pretty big- even bigger than the head!). She said baby weighs 4 pounds, which means it's doubled from last month! I'm glad to know that actually because I feel like I've been super hungry lately (eating all the time again, including in the middle of the night) so baby must have gone through a growth spurt in the last month. Heart rate was 119 which was quite a bit lower than last time (150). She said she thinks that might be because baby's super fit since he/she's been exercising with me everyday. Ha! Low heart rate... isn't that supposed to indicate a boy? But my mom said since I'm carrying straight out in front that it must be a girl? Still sitting on pins and needles!

I asked Dr about my Braxton Hicks contractions... I'm having plenty of them... but not an alarming amount... she said she thought that was very good news- that my uterus is getting ready to do it's thing. She said that women who don't feel the contractions ahead of time tend to get to their due date but still nothing is happening. She thought my BH contractions might indicate that I would go a week or so early, which I'd be thrilled about. Partly because 9 more weeks of pregnancy sounds so much better than 10 more weeks of pregnancy... and partly because my mom is flying out from Ohio for the month of November to help, and logic would say better that the baby is here already so she actually has something to help with other than just waiting impatiently and watching me get bigger everyday. ;)

So I've graduated to the 2 week cycle of Dr visits rather than the 4 week schedule I've been on all along. That seems like progress.

The best part about these MD appointments (besides hearing that baby is all healthy and growing as expected) is that we schedule them at 11:30 so I get to go to lunch with my awesome husband after each one. That's a real treat in the middle of the week. :)