My what a long cervix you have...

Here's your pregnancy anatomy lesson for the day...

When pregnant, you want your cervix to stay nice and "long".

At the beginning, I had no idea what the docs and books were talking about because it wasn't until I got pregnant that my cervix and I got properly introduced. I mean, it's sort of like one of those people that works down the hall from you:

...you know they're there, they know you're there, but you really don't talk to each other or associate. It's not until you are forced to be in a situation with them (like if you both got stuck in an elevator together) that you would truly acknowledge each others existence.

This was the relationship with my cervix. All I really knew was it got scraped once a year at my girly doctor's appointment and as long as nothing was abnormal we didn't have to associate again until next year.

Now that I'm pregnant, I'm constantly worried about my little southern anatomical part. Here is a picture to help explain.

So, as I was saying, you want your cervix to be long. Long refers to the vertical length of it. As you see in the left panel above the cervix has some height to it. In the panel to the right, when you are ready to go into labor the cervix "shortens" up (effacement) and starts opening (you know the movies, "she's 8 cm dialated!").

A good height during pregnancy is keeping it above 3cm. Right now my cervix is at a nice length of 4.2cm. Let's all just hope it keeps that way. If at my next appointment it starts shortening up (drops below 3cm), it could mean bedrest for me, in order to prevent pre-term labor. Sounds like a good time, but really, I couldn't handle laying in bed all day, I'd have to force myself to take up needlepoint or cross-stitch, and really, you don't want that, it could mean homemade Christmas presents for you.