Todays escapades

First thing today the midwife came to visit for a scheduled check and do another sweep. She managed to a sweep, and said that the cervix was shortened and just over 1cm dilated. She managed to feel the baby's skull and a 'fontinelle' (sp?) - the soft squishy bit of a baby's skull - but couldn't work out which one before she moved, so couldn't work out which way the head was facing. The back is still in the right position, so that's OK. Before and after the examination, Bubble's heart rate was elevated (160-180bpm) so the midwife said that we should go to the hospital for a CTG (continuous measurement over ~30 mins) to check it out over a longer time-scale than she can do with her machine at home. She advised that we take a bag, since if there turned out to be a problem, they would want to keep C in - either to closely monitor her & Bubble, or to deliver baby ASAP, by C-section if req'd.

When we got to the hospital, we got a nice surprise in the way of free parking, courtesy of STH in their multi-storey, so we didn't have to scratch about for change! The midwife had phoned ahead, so they knew to expect us, and soon after we arrived, C was hooked up to a machine that goes boing and it started to record Bubble's heart rate, which appeared to have settled down since Dawn examined her. The midwife there said everything was OK, and let us go again.

After that faff, we grabbed a sandwich & drink from Starbucks, just down the road from the hospital before going for her acupuncture appointment. That was a bit 'hand-wavy' and odd for me, but C says it was fine. The needles were in for about 45 mins, and the acupuncturist kept "twiddling" the needles every 5 mins to 're-stimulate' them to encourage things to get moving. Nothing has happened yet, although the tightenings are gradually becoming stronger, but are still miles apart at the time of writing!

Things are moving in the right direction at the moment, so lets just hope & pray that they continue that way.