What happens next?

Well, today is an exciting day I guess.

I went in for my 38 week check-up, and my doctor surprised me by offering to stretch my cervix and sweep my membranes. Doctors do that sometimes as a way of inducing labor without requiring drugs. It doesn't always work--my doctor said not to go home counting on going into labor. She says if the baby is ready, it might speed things up, and if not, it won't. I decided to give it a try... hopefully that was the right call! I only knew a little bit about it and I wasn't expecting her to offer to do it this soon. Now I've been home frantically researching. The jury is out on whether it works or not. One website compared it to shaking a tree--if apples are ripe, they fall out, and if they aren't ready, they don't.

So now I am waiting to see what happens. Hopefully baby won't be forced out if he isn't ready. People report such different experiences, I don't know what to expect. Could experience nothing, could have a higher chance of labor in the next 48 hours or even in the next week. Some people wrote they started having contractions two hours after the sweep. Mine was at 4:15 and we're almost to two hours without any contractions, just lots and lots of baby movement. I don't think he liked being poked!

In the midst of my Googling, I heard that Iran has shot 12 missiles at two of our military bases in Iraq. This was of course in retaliation for the death of Soleimani. Trump said if they tried to retaliate against us, he had missiles locked and loaded at 52 sites across Iran, ready to respond. So besides anxiously waiting to see if baby appears, I'm also anxiously waiting to see what the president decides to do. It feels like we're awfully close to the brink of war to me... But I'm no expert and the president is somewhat unpredictable, so really all I can do is wait and see what happens.

Two big "wait and sees" within such a short time. Yeesh.