Getting funny looks....

Over the last few weeks, I've been hanging out a lot with my friend, Gayla, who has a 4-year-old son and 14-month-old twins. We've gone to the mall a few times (the better to deal with the heat, humidity, and constant rain we've had lately), and played at her house quite a bit. Well, the last couple of mall trips, I've ended up pushing her double stroller briefly for one reason or another.

The looks I've gotten have been PRICELESS! They've ranged from awe to horror to outright pity. I mean, the poor woman with such young twins and about to pop with another one! Not to mention, are those two older kids BOTH hers? Gayla informed me this last trip that I am no longer allowed to push her stroller!

I had my 33 week visit on Thursday. I got to meet the backup OB for my midwife. I liked her pretty well. She had two of her three children without any drugs or interventions, and her general attitude is to just leave things alone until it's time to catch a baby. Sounds like just my type of doctor! This appointment was a little different, though. I've gotten so used to Karen doing the entire checkup pretty much on her own. She uses the Doppler to try to find the heartbeat, pulls out the little tape measure thingy to measure me, and palpates to check the baby's position. At my last appointment, the nurse did everything except the palpation, so my total time spent with the doc was quite a bit less than my typical midwife visit. I guess that's fairly standard, and once I started thinking about it, that's how all of my appointments went when I was pregnant with Anna. But it was a little odd now that I've gotten used to spending so much time with the midwife every visit!

Anyway, the appointment went great. I gained 2 pounds in 2 weeks, blood pressure was good, measuring right on for dates, etc. We did get a heart rate for the first time in several months, which was 140 bpm. This nurse was a little more tenacious with the Doppler than Karen usually is, so she worked on getting the heart rate for 4-5 minutes before Caroline stayed still long enough to get one. Usually, Karen finds the heartbeat for a few seconds, and when Caroline moves (and she ALWAYS moves!), she just says, "Well, if she's moving around that much, she's obviously healthy!"

As of today, I'm just 45 days from my due date, which means I'll be "full term" in about 3 weeks! That's just insane. Since I'm nearing the end of my travel days before Caroline is born, we'll be taking a series of "mini vacations" for the weekend of July 4th. A friend has offered to let us stay in a beach house they've rented on Crystal Beach close to Galveston, so we'll be spending Sunday and Monday on the beach. Tuesday morning, I have a chiropractor appointment, and then we'll be headed up to the DFW area to visit Jimmy's parents and spend the 4th with them. Then we'll come back Friday, and my wonderful friends are throwing me a baby shower on Saturday. So we'll be very busy for the next week or so, but after that we'll just be hanging out, waiting for our girl to make her debut!