Spacefem's Weekly Wikipedia Pregnancy Blog: 36 weeks pregnant

This week I had a cervical exam and the doctor said I was starting to dilate... about 1cm. My husband whispered to me, "Does that mean the baby can see out?"

What would I do without him?

For the record, I felt totally okay refusing about every other cervical check the doctors planned for me. I read online that half the reason doctors do it is to make patients feel like there's progress happening, if they say "You're more dialated!" you'll get all this confidence. But if you can just convince yourself that your cervix probably works just fine, you don't need that.

I just don't feel like I need anything unnecessary done to me. Cervical dilation tells you nothing about when the baby's coming. There are slight risks of infection any time anything is in your vagina, especially when it goes through vagina TO cervix (your body is pushing bacteria the other way).

My doctor does them every week starting at 36 weeks. I asked her why, I said if there was a good reason I'd get one. She acted like no one had ever really questioned it before. But it wasn't a problem, we could skip it. So we did.

One of this week's articles is about jaundice in newborns... something I came way too close to dealing with. As it turns out, it's incredibly common, and we were incredibly unprepared to deal with it. Jo was born on a Wednesday, sent home on Thursday. By Saturday my milk was in. She slept well Saturday night, like, oddly well. Then she slept Sunday. I mean, she slept... nursed around 9am but when we tried to wake her up to eat at 1 she was too lethargic. She just kept sleeping. We tried again at 4pm... same story. At that point I freaked. We even tried putting a cold washcloth on her, she yelled, and then went right back to sleep. There'd been no dirty diapers all day.

So since it was Sunday our only option was immediate care. It was a horrible experience. They took blood from her again to check her bilirubin count, they threatened to do a spinal tap to check for infection, we were completely losing it... then out of no where she decided to wake up and EAT.

Newborns are just so scary.

We were sent home after that, with instructions to lay her in a sunny window for 15 minutes twice a day. If I have another baby, I'm planning to start that regime even earlier. Josie's skin was just a little peachy, it wasn't full-blown jaundice, but that one day was the lowest point we ever had with her.

This week's articles

Month	Week	Day	Article
8	36W,0D	252	Nestlé boycott
8	36W,1D	253	Rhodanthe Lipsett
8	36W,2D	254	Rupture of membranes
8	36W,3D	255	Cord blood
8	36W,4D	256	Hemangioma
8	36W,5D	257	Susan Slade
8	36W,6D	258	Neonatal jaundice