Sorry for the lapse in updates - contractions have kept me down

UPDATE ON RUTH
For those of you who have been praying for Ruthi, thank you! We did see the specialist last month. Ruth was 33 months old at her checkup and measuring in the size of an average 18-month old child. We also learned that she is growing asymmetrically, meaning that her right hand/arm/leg/foot are all measurable longer than her comparable left ones. Yet her left leg (the one that would be anticipated to be weaker) has a noticeably strong and larger thigh muscle.

We don't exactly know what this all means yet, but will be monitoring her growth closely over the coming months. It may be simply that she is a "late bloomer" and will eventually catch up in growth without any outside intervention, possibly even hitting a later puberty and adult maturity. It may also be our first signs of any one of a number of possible "syndromes" that she will be watched for including one specific one called Russell-Silver Syndrome. At this time she has no specific diagnosis and is a happy, healthy child with a bright future before her. We will continue to watch her with care and prayer and cross each future bridge in her care as we come to it.

PREGNANCY NEWS
My doctor and I currently can't agree on dates, so I'm officially 29 weeks by his charts now (even though my math still puts me at just shy of 30). I'll just go by his system-of-the-week and know baby will come when baby will come.

While I celebrated at 24-weeks that I wasn't officially on bedrest, my contraction activity has continued to build and I have been having to stay down more and more (translates to less and less computer time) to keep them at bay. On Thanksgiving night things got really "exciting" as I had contractions (lasting for up to 75 seconds per contraction) every 2 minutes for over three hours, then continuing at 5-10 minute intervals the rest of the night! So I've spent this past week truly down in bed, but just got home from the doctor's office with a very good report.

Had the cervical measurement and ffn again. 13 days ago (Tuesday before Thanksgiving) my cervix was 3.58 cm (anything under 3.5 indicates heightened preterm labor risk), but today my cervix is back over 4 cm so it [B]lengthened[/B] by over half a cm in the past 2 weeks! Major praise!!! I should have the ffn results tomorrow morning, but am not anticipating anything but a clear reading just as I have had with the prior two. :D

Baby's head-down for the moment (has been breach at previous checks, but Ruth turned back and forth from breach to head-down to breach to head-down all the way up until about 36 weeks). I got to watch his heart-beat, see his entire spine and just marvel at God's handiwork via ultrasound this morning.

I go back a week from Friday (Dec. 16) for our "30 week" growth check ultrasound (3-D ) and another cervical length check and ffn. As for contractions, I'm averaging about 4-6 per hour if I'm not on my feet too much, and typically these are staying well under a minute in duration. Given the way my cervix is reacting, we are still chalking it all up to "irritable cervix" and I'm just to continue monitoring my activity levels by my contraction activity and report to my doctor (or L&D if after hours) if anything takes a more dramatic change and I can't get things to settle down with rest on my own.