On Tuesday morning, I had my 27th week doctor's appointment to monitor Baby Foster's development or was it ...? You see, I have received three different due dates over the past several months from my doc in Indianapolis - July 28, Aug. 4 and Aug. 7.

So I decided to finally break down and ask the doc - "when is my ACTUAL due date?"

For quite a while now I've been telling friends and family Aug. 4 - makes sense to me - its the middle date - so assumingly it seems most appropriate to me. You'd think I would've asked this much earlier, but if you know me very well, I'm pretty laid back and just assume Baby Foster will come when she is good and ready!

Truth be told - I learned that July 28 is the first date they gave me, so that's the one they will go with, ALWAYS. Reason being that from my two ultrasounds in January and March they took measurements of the face, stomach and femur bone. Many times, these measurements will differ - face - 21 weeks, stomach - 23 weeks and femur bone - 21 weeks. So what they do is take the average and then give you the estimated date of delivery (EDD). But apparently ultrasound measurements aren't completely accurate, because my doc said no matter what the measurements say - they will stick with the first date they give you depending on the length of your cycle and first day of your last cycle.

While my doc is explaining all of this, I'm thinking to myself - "good grief, it's not this complicated with hog (114 days) or cattle gestation (280 days) -when we know a due date - it's pretty darn accurate!"

Another thing I learned on Tuesday that I found kinda interesting - if I don't go into labor within 7 days after July 28, they will induce me. And if the conditions (I'll spare you the gorry details) are favorable at 39 weeks and I'm "ready" (whatever that means!), they will induce me early. I guess this sounds "good" to me, however; at this point the idea of labor still scares the bejezus out of me!

From this point moving forward (as I enter the third leg of this pregnancy journey-28 weeks), the doc will see me every two weeks. Then at 36 to 40 weeks, she'll see me every week! Also in two weeks, I begin childbirth prep and childcare classes and will get a tour of the maternity suites at Community North. Big D is supposed to come with, but we still have all of our fieldwork left to do in Ohio on my folks farm - so I may be looking for volunteers on Wednesday evenings beginning May 12 to accompany me!

Tata for now!