"Take it easy. Really, really easy."

Those words came straight from my doctors mouth today at my appointment, right after giving me his best educated guess as to when this baby would be arriving. (more on that in a short while)

I was having contractions throughout the night and early this morning, then periodically throughout the day (though I think I was trying to ignore them so I didn't keep track of how often they were occurring).

The first thing they did at my appointment (after weight, blood pressure and urine sample) was to hook me up to the fetal monitors, something Chase and I are becoming quite familiar with. Dr. Dustin was there measuring my contractions, which were HUGE and FREQUENT. I was having contractions that were at least 3 times the size of any previous contractions and they were occurring every 1-2 minutes. My doctor came in after about 5 minutes, saw the strip and immediately took me off the monitors to check my cervix. I think, given these contractions, he was expecting me to be dilated.

However, much to my delight, I am still not dilated. On the less bright side, I am 75% effaced. The problem with this is that the more effaced one is (in other words, the thinner and softer the cervix becomes) the easier it is for the cervix to dilate. I was only 20% effaced a week ago, so my cervix has effaced a decent amount since then. It's only a matter of time until dilation occurs.

After the cervical check, I asked my doctor the question that I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to. "Dr. Landon", I said, "Be honest. When is this baby coming?" "Kristi", he responded in a calm and empathetic manner (which I appreciate), "I will be very surprised if you are still pregnant in 2 weeks. If I were to give you my best educated guess, I would say that there is a 50/50 chance you will have this baby within a week and a greater than 75% chance you will not be pregnant 2 weeks from today. BUT, I've been wrong before." I have a feeling this man is rarely wrong, but am really, really, really, reeeeeeeaaaaalllly hoping this is one of those times!

In response to my question about what I can do to prolong this pregnancy, he said "Take it easy. Really, really easy."

Well, I have that one covered. The rest is out of my control.

So, I am feeling defeated, sad, angry, scared, frustrated, and anxious. But, I'm so incredibly grateful that we have made it this far and that Chase seems to be a nice size. The longer he can stay in there, the better. Tomorrow will be 34w 2d, exactly 3 weeks further along than I was when sweet Addison was born.

I will continue to update with anything new. Oh, and if you are one of my Facebook friends, it appears my account has been hacked into because FB suddenly disabled it this morning. I am working on getting this problem fixed, but haven't had luck thus far.