Another Day, Another Appointment

Today I had yet another NST.  I love hearing the reassuring heartbeat of my son, but these appointments are getting old - and it's affecting the whole family.  Yesterday I began having pretty intense contractions that were coming every 20 minutes even, but they were only lasting 15-30 seconds.  Chris was getting pretty excited but I just had a feeling that they were going to peter out.  Sure enough they stopped by the evening.  The scary thing was, though, at times it felt as if there was a body part in my vagina!  I had read about cord prolapses and was a bit worried.  Today I told the nurse what happened and she grabbed my doctor who seemed quite concerned and decided to check me out, even though I wasn't scheduled to see him today.  He said that strangely enough a lot of his patients had contractions yesterday without them going anywhere.  The contractions have further effaced me, and moved my cervix more forward and under Charlie's head.  Originally Charlie's head was in front of my cervix, so this was great news.  There was no cord prolapse either so thats reassuring.  He said he wouldn't be surprised if I went in the next few days, and if I didn't I'd see him on Friday.  I've had a few contractions this evening, but nothing major or exciting.  For some reason I've had the 23rd stuck in my head since I became pregnant, so we'll see if that means anything.  Regardless, it's exciting to know that in the next few weeks I'll be holding my new son in my hands!

Also, Chris and I have been reevaluating his name.  It is still most definitely Charlie.  We have been debating since we've chosen the name whether or not it should be Charles, a name neither of us likes at all.  After going back and forth we've decided to not use Charles, his legal name will be just Charlie.  Honestly, in this generation, we feel Charlie is more professional sounding than some of the other names that we've seen gain popularity.  And if a person can nickname themselves, we see no reason why he can't decide to go by Charles in the future if he chooses to.  His middle name is the big, up for grabs.  I have never liked the name Vincent but Chris loves it.  I agreed to allow him to use it if he wanted as a middle name, just like I got to use Cillian as David's middle name.  All of our children, though, are named after someone.  Anthony is named for my grandpa's best friend who died, Anastasia has my middle name (a middle name that has been passed on for a few generations), and David is named for Chris's best friend and a person I care deeply about.  So right now we are going back and forth on whether the middle name should be Vincent - which would mean he wouldn't be named for anyone, or we'd use the middle name George - which is my dads name, my brothers name, both of my grandparents name, Chris's grandfathers name, and Chris's dads middle name.  Charlie George sort of sounds like a country singer, but it doesn't sound too terrible. I think we've decided to let Dr. Schropp decide when he is born - so we'll announce it then!