36 Weeks...Count Down until Peyton arrives (4 weeks!)

How Peyton's growing:
Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she's in a head-down position. But if she isn't, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying she'll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of your belly.

***Doctor's Appointment today***
I went to my doctors appointment today since I was unable to see the Dr. on Monday. I had my screening of Strep B, so I am hoping that I will not hear anything back from the doctor about it. I have been having headaches and I was glad that my blood pressure was good at 116/72. Peyton's heartbeat sounded good and very strong, so that was great to hear. I am dilated to 3cm and my cervix is starting to soften. Dr. Roles was unable to tell if Peyton was in the head down position, so I got to see her again today during the sonogram to find out. She is in the head down position and looking very healthy. I was able to see her heartbeat and she was breathing, so it was nice to see her lungs moving up and down. The doctor was also pleased to see this, because it means that she is very healthy and being head down we don't have to worry about having a C-Section. Really I am just glad that I was able to see her again, because it had been a long time since my last sonogram. We also talked and if I feel like we want to go ahead we can plan a date to be induced. We will just have to wait and see, because you never know at this point if she wants to come out tomorrow or in 4 weeks. Brandon and I have some thinking to do!

This is all very exciting and makes us a little bit more urgent in getting everything that we will need right at first together.