Still waiting...38.5weeks

The past three weeks my blood pressure readings have been high.. reaching a peak last Saturday of 153/80 along with low iron levels (slight anaemia). This coupled with two days of severe headaches last week has caused slight concern that I may have pregnancy-induced hypertension, which can happen at the end of term. The fact that the lower reading is still below 85 and that I don't have any signs of protein in my urine makes it less worrying (it isn't pre-eclampsia). However, we are watching this carefully and I did a NST test to monitor the fetal heartbeat and movement over one hour. Thankfully, the baby is healthy. During this test, the monitor also picked up on pre-labour contractions spaced 25 minutes apart!! This was very exciting and I could really feel them. Our doctor was also visibly pleased and expressed that he wouldn't be surprised if things didn't happen in the next week. Previously, I had been having the Braxton Hicks contractions which were more subtle and erratic. These were definitely stronger (to ripen the cervix) and continued for the rest of that day and into the night. Naturally, I started getting excited but knew to remain calm and just go about things normally as they could be false. The frustrating thing about these pre-labour contractions is that you never know if they are early-labour or false/pre-labour contractions until they actually stop! The best thing to do apparantely, is to change activity, but that night it didn't help - pretty persistant. I went to bed, keeping my head, knowing that even if they were real there was still a long road ahead and the best thing to do was to try and get some rest to prepare. That night, all signs pointed towards the coming of our baby. Imagine this, a full moon (which has strong significance in that both me and my brother were born on a full moon) and a raging thunderstorm, torrential rain and an orchestra of frogs outside my window. The whole scene was so dramatic, it just fitted perfectly with the exciting magic of childbirth. My bag was packed...
I woke up at 2:00am to go to the bathroom only to discover that the baby had changed his mind. This has been going on now every day this week, making the waiting game next to impossible! I feel ready now. Another thing is that my Vietnamese friend had her baby last week (36+ weeks) by c-section. She suffered a lot of pain in her pelvis when the baby dropped and decided to bring back her scheduled operation date from the 18th to 8th, despite doctors wanting her to wait a few more days. I suppose the fact that she is more petite in build and hadn't been doing any exercise throughout her pregnancy made the pain unbearable for her. We went to see the baby the same day as our doc visit.. well, I just want to have mine now :-)
The plan is that if by next Saturday I still haven't gone into labour, my blood pressure continues to be high, and the baby's weight is still the same or decreasing, we may need to induce. Only time will tell...