A few things happened at my last doctor's appointment that I didn't get a chance to post because I was getting ready to travel. Most importantly, I heard the baby's steady heartbeat on the Doppler for the first time! What a neat sound. It was steady enough that I could hear it, but the nurse couldn't get a constant enough grab of the sound to get a bpm count -- I guess the baby was squirming around too much. So sorry, no gender predictions based on heartbeat speed this month. Maybe next month.
Secondly, I confirmed with the doctor that the baby will be delivered at George Washington Hospital's Childbirth Center. He told me he'd give me the info on signing up for classes and such at my next appointment (in four weeks). But of course, I had to hop online to see what I could find out in the meantime. Looks like we are going to have to sign up quickly if we want to be able to take the basic childbirth class as a weekend course and take the natural childbirth class. I am going to run the dates past Michael and get those nailed down SOON.
Back when I was getting ready to coach Keri with Sean, Hertle and I took childbirth classes at GW (imagine Allison and I walking into a childbirth class with a bunch of yuppie parents, with neither of us pregnant. We had some 'splaining to do!). My foggy recolection of that time is that the class was pretty good, and the facilities were impressive. Hertle reports that she has blocked the experience from her mind completely. From reading the website, it looks like I will for sure have a private post-partum room (yay!) and may even be able to wrangle a sleeper sofa for Mike. The normal hospital stay is two days for vaginal delivery, and three days for a C-Section. They have one of the most state-of-the-art Neonatal Intensive Care Units in the area, though I pray to God we don't have to use it!
Mike's a little worried that GW is far from home -- it is about 20 minutes away (same as my commute to work). But I figure, as long as we don't wait til the last minute to leave for the hospital, we should have plenty of time. And it's not like a June baby is going to be born during a snowstorm, so getting on the road shouldn't be a problem.
Finally, I nailed down date ranges for my "big" ultrasound and some other testing. So more pictures should be on the way in January.