stripping

Who doesn't love a good stripping? Of the membranes, I mean.Here's how that one goes. The hub and I went to my doctor's appointment today, finally getting into the exam room almost an hour after my appointment time. But, whatever, I'm supposed to be understanding and accommodating. So, after the doctor comes in, we discuss any issues I may have. She likes my blood sugar numbers, but points out that yes, I will get a 168 when I eat pizza. I want to point out that I could have lied, but I didn't, and I just nod. I point out my swollen legs and pitting edema, and she's not worried because my protein levels are good and my blood pressure is freaking consistently awesome. Then she measures my belly, and gets the coy look when I ask if I'm measuring big, which I have been for months, and so she nods and says, "Forty weeks." This is my brilliant segway into the fact that the ultrasound I have seven days ago says the belly is 39 weeks, and that the baby is 7 pounds, 11 ounces. She repeats the numbers I've just given her and turns towards my chart to see what the hell I'm talking about, and the hub sees her eyes get big. Uh oh. I asked her if we'd need another ultrasound, and she gets vague about how maybe after next week's appointment we'll see. Then she goes in for the internal.

This time I know something is different because she camps out for a bit. And I told her that the hub was going to hit me if my cervix wasn't dilated and how I didn't think her nurse thought my joke about domestic violence was funny when I said the same thing to her. Well, my doctor goes into a story about how a longtime patient had come in beat to shit that day and that her nurse was probably thinking of that poor girl when I made the joke. The entire time she is looking at the hub, never at me, and she proceeds to cause me agony and pain. I start whimpering and she never breaks in her story to the hub. Afterwards, when I'm feeling used and alone on the table, she says she "roto-rootered" me, never once using the term "stripping the membranes," which is in fact the medical procedure she did. I am officially 1 centimeter dilated and 30 percent effaced, and now my membranes are stripped, which I had to google once I got home because I didn't really know what that meant.

All this after last night's fiasco of the non-stress test. Seems even though I can't feel the baby, everyone else can. When the nurse was putting the heart rate monitor on, she said, "Oh! She kicked me. Twice!" I never felt a thing. So, the NST confirmed that the baby is fine and that I'm paranoid, and also that I was a bit dehydrated. Now, filled to the gills with water, I'm still feeling Braxton-Hick contractions, still crampy from the stripping, and excessively sweaty from the high humidity I've had to deal with for the last couple of days.