Preemptive Strike

At my Week 32 checkup, I mentioned the baby had dropped quite a bit.  The doctor submitted the paperwork to the hospital, and I was actually getting a little nervous about the baby coming too early.  Like your typical engineer, I started looking for patterns.  I found that when I went for my 3 mile walks, I would have lots of strong Braxton-Hicks contractions, which didn't push the baby out, but definitely were pushing the baby south.  So, I stopped doing my walks.  (Bummer).  But day by day, things seemed to get worse, not better.  I would sit at work and have contraction after contraction.  I could feel the pressure in my pelvis as the baby kept pushing lower and lower.  Not good.  To be frank, I was getting more and more worried that we would have the baby sooner rather than later and we would wind up with a little one in the NICU.  Ugh.  Not the way I would prefer to have this baby.

So, we have found some ways to reduce the contractions, and thereby (hopefully) keep the baby inside my belly til at least week 36.  We tried to change my focus at work so that I wouldn't be as stressed, but we quickly found that it really wasn't the stress, but the mere walking around the building!  So, now I work from home, thanks to everyone in the management team that thought that would be a better alternative than me having the baby early.  They have authorized me to work up to 40 hours per week at home, although I do try to go in to the office once a week.  This has been the biggest help so far!  It's Thursday and I haven't had many contractions this week.  (First time in over 2 weeks I can say that.)  Usually, by Thursday, I'm staring at the calendar wondering how in the world I'm going to keep the baby inside of me for another 3 weeks.  Now, I'm thinking "no problem", and in 3 weeks I'll be back to walking around everywhere!

The other small thing I found was the mere act of cooking dinner.  Yes, but the end of the day, even though I work from home, standing in the kitchen and preparing dinner brings on contractions.  Granted not as many as when I work a full day at work (and I'm starting the dinner process already having quite a few contractions), but they do show up.  So after dinner is spent laying on the couch while Kim cleans up.

But all I need to do is last 3 more weeks and we should be very safe.  Now we just have to prepare a hospital bag and pre-register at the hospital...