a little progress

I went to my doctor on Friday and she said I was 2 centimeters dilated! While I'm glad my body is doing what it's supposed to do to prepare for labor, I know not to get that excited. From what I've heard/read, you can be dilated up to 3 centimeters for weeks before you actually go into active labor. I still haven't really had what I've heard contractions are supposed to feel like. I've just had occasional painful menstrual-type cramps. From what I understand, the cramps are kind of like "baby contractions" that are helping my cervix to dilate and my body to prepare for going into labor.

Last night I had a little bit of a scare. I had gone to my book club meeting and during the course of the evening, I noticed that my feet and ankles had gotten really swollen...like quite a bit more than I'd ever seen before. I hadn't been on my feet all that much, so I didn't really have anything that would explain the swelling. I didn't stay as late as I usually do and when I got home I checked my blood pressure since I thought maybe it could have caused the swelling. It was really high when I checked it at first, but my pulse was also pretty high and Rey and I figured that the reading was probably due to stress since I had gotten myself so worried. We took it again about 20 minutes later and it was still a bit high, but it was much better than before. I'm going to keep checking it for the next few days just to make sure I don't see anything I need to call a doctor about. Since I had just been to the doctor on Friday and my blood pressure was fine then, I'm hopeful that last night was just a fluke caused by my own anxiety.