38 Weeks & Still Hangin' On!

Wow, the day (my 20 week check-up) Dr. Gass told me that my daughter only has 2 blood vessels running through her umbilical cord instead of the usual two and that she may not be full-term, we had NO idea that we would make it to 38 weeks! As soon as he told us that, I just had all these images running through my head of us having to deliver during the 2nd trimester and of Mallory being hooked up to all the machines in the NICU for months with us just being able to visit her but not bring her home from the hospital with us. I immediately thought the worse, but also knew that God would protect my sweet baby and me and that I just needed to TRUST HIM! Well, here we are now 18 weeks later with my baby girl still in my tummy waiting patiently to come out on her scheduled birth day! I will be 38 weeks, 6 days the day of my c-section; Thursday, February 10th. I cannot believe I have gone this long!

We have had at least 3 "scares" of thinking it was time to throw our bags in the car and get to the hospital to have this baby, but they've ended up being nothing. One of those was last night when I woke up at 2 am completely nauseous and barely even able to sit up. I have read that nausea is one of the signs that labor is coming on. Also, I could not feel her move for several hours and was so worried. I wanted to get up and get ready to go to the hospital just to make sure everything was okay, but I was too sick to even do that. So, I just laid back down and prayed that everything was okay. I drank some orange juice and felt a couple of movements from her, but still not as many as I would have liked. Marc just reassured me by saying that she was probably sleeping and giving me a break! Today I haven't felt her move much either, but as I am sitting here typing this, she has been moving a lot more. She's such a stinker, scaring me like this!

Anyway, so here I am sitting up at 1:58 am updating my blog and cleaning house just trying to do as much as I can to feel "ready" for Mallory to get here! I wanted to do a much better job this pregnancy keeping my blog updated, but it just hasn't happened. So I'm trying to do several posts tonight to get a little caught up because I know that once she is here I definitely won't be blogging much. We'll see! Tomorrow, well, actually later today, my parents are coming up with their bags all packed, ready to stay at our house until we come home from the hospital. My mom is going to go with me tomorrow afternoon to the hospital for me to go ahead and get registered and have some bloodwork done, while my dad stays at the house and keeps Mason. I also hope to finally get that pedicure I've been dreaming of for a month now! I want me some pretty toes during that c-section. Ha! :) Like I'll even be thinking about those toes! And we need to Marc's & Mason's haircut tomorrow. AND move baby girl's crib into her room AND I need to sit down and journal about my pregnancy (thank you) AND rest AND take a shower AND put the hospital bags & car seat in the car, AND, the list goes on and on and on!

Oh, this is just sooo interesting knowing the date I'm having me a baby! I kinda liked it much better with Mason when my water just randomly broke and I went into labor and didn't really have a chance to get anxious or nervous. My bags have been packed for weeks and I know there's just nothing really to be 100% "ready" to become parents all over again, but still, I'm a nervous wreck thinking about Thursday morning!

A side note: a woman at Gattliland tonight asked me if I was pregnant with TWINS!!!! ha!!! :) I told her, "No, just one baby girl and she'll be here on Thursday!" Hilarious! I also told her I would have loved to have twins this time, though!

So, here I am at 38 weeks: