36 and counting

Yesterday marked 36 weeks gestation for little Freida. Just one more week until we have a full term little one. My Braxton Hicks contractions (fake, "practice" contractions) are getting more serious, I can feel her little head engaging, and now I'm washing little blankets and a small mountain of burp cloths in earnest. Thanks to friend E, I have a stash of newborn clothes for her to come home in. We're all getting the feeling that we need to wrap of various items of business pretty quickly, like getting registered at the hospital. In my defence, I just barely hit 36 weeks which is about the earliest they want you to get that stuff done.

I went to the dr this week to have my eye looked at again and part of the "since you were here and you happened to be pregnant" routine they wanted to do a Doppler of her heart. Two different nurses tried for 45 mins to find her heartbeat. They finally called someone up to get a better Doppler (no, this wasn't my OB's office) when the dr basically said "forget this", grabbed an ultrasound machine from the other room, found the heart in 1 second, and declared everyone safe and sound.

So my question is, why is it so dang easy for them to "just grab" an ultrasound machine from the next room rather than wait for a superior Doppler, but it takes weeks to schedule an ultrasound otherwise? I know, I know, the system has procedures it has to go through, protocols, formalities, proper channels. ::sigh:: Now I know why Tom Cruise bought his own darn ultrasound machine.

According to a previous ultrasound, if Freida kept up her track record of being about 3-4 weeks ahead of her due date, then I'm now waddling around with a 40 week-sized little person. A lady in the ward gave birth recently to a baby who was 10 pounds, 10 ounces and had a 16" circumference head. She blames junk food. Thank goodness for C-sections.

Anyway, I've gotten up to 45 on Free Rice. And yet I am well (quoth Benedic from Much Ado About Nothing).