Fingers crossed

I'm down to my weekly doctor visits, and so far they have both gone really well.  The first one (last week) she was still "head down" and I was dilated 1.5 centimeters and 80% effaced (at 36 weeks).  My doctor said this was a really good start, especially for a first time mom.  Even though I hadn't felt any contractions, I had been feeling period-like cramping, and I could feel her down in my hips, if that makes sense.  They did the strep test, and that came back negative as well.  My doctor said I should have my hospital bag and car seat ready because the next couple weeks will go by fast.

I was hoping my appointment today would show progression.  "At least 2.5 centimeters, just give me that."  I have still been having period cramps, but no contractions, so I was worried I'd be the same as last week.  I think the pregnancy gods are smiling down on me, because I progressed to "almost 4 centimeters", 70% effacement, and her head is at station -1.  Before my birth class, none of that would have made sense.  But now I know it means that my body is practically ready to go in to labor whenever the baby decides to come out.  I don't want to get my hopes up too high, but my doctor seemed pretty confident that she should come within the week.

I have my baby shower on Saturday, so I just need her to stay put until then.  Other than that, I'm super ready for her to come.  I can't really sleep on my sides anymore, even when I prop pillows everywhere.  I get stuck and it takes me a good 2 minutes to sit up because everything hurts.  That's one thing I didn't expect about pregnancy, being sore and not having my muscles work properly.  Sure, it's annoying having to maneuver with a giant belly, but I didn't know that equates to sore muscles and ligaments, and physically not being able to lift my legs to put on boots or pants.  I have to sleep sitting up, which apparently makes me snore really loud (poor Doug).  My feet have also gotten huge.  Even shoes that used to be slightly too big, are too tight.  I'm glad it's not summer, but in a way it would be convenient to be able to wear flip flops.  I can feel (and see) her wiggling all the time.  Usually it's not too painful, but every now and then she'll push on my ribs, hips, or back and that doesn't feel good.  She also gets the hiccups multiple times a day.  I don't mind the hiccups, it's good to know she's exercising her diaphragm.

As much as I might complain about the third trimester, it's also a blessing.  I'm so uncomfortable that I'm not so nervous about the delivery.  From this point I know that I'm going to get more uncomfortable and miserable each day until delivery, but once she comes I can start healing and feeling better, if that makes sense.  Kind of like when you have food poisoning and you can feel yourself getting sicker and sicker and you know that as unpleasant as vomiting is, you'll feel so much better after you do.  (Did I really just compare my baby to vomit?  I think it's time for bed).

Little Update

It's been so long since my last post, I don't know where to start catching up.  It felt like the holidays were taking forever to get here and now they're over.  And now that I'm on this side of the new year, it feels like my due date is right around the corner (which it is).

Nothing too eventful has happened in the pregnancy since the last post.  My appointments have all gone well, and I'm down to one more 2-week visit on January 15th, and then 1-week visits from that point on.  I feel her moving constantly, she has a tendency to poke out on my right side.  At my last appointment the doctor said she was head down, and that at this point she will probably stay that way.  I am feeling the sleep deprivation.  Between the heartburn/acid reflux, back pressure, and hip pain, I'm lucky to sleep more than 2 hours at a time.  I was sleeping on the couch for a while because the cushions were softer than my bed, and my tossing and turning wouldn't wake up Doug.  But on Saturday we bought a foam mattress topper from Costco, and it makes the bed so much more comfortable.  It seems like my first trimester nausea has made an unwelcome reappearance as well.  It's the same queasy feeling, but it's not quite as constant as before.  The good news is that I only have about 6 weeks left, and she could even come in 3 weeks and still be "full term".  We just about have the nursery all ready.  She could come now, and we'd be able to get by with what we have.  Here are some belly progression pictures in case you haven't been following me on Facebook ;)

25 weeks

30 weeks

34 weeks.  It feels like my boobs are small, but it's only because my belly is HUUGE.

Rag quilt mom and I made.  It was hard picking "girly" fabric, I was drawn to the boyish stuff.

Pepper claiming the quilt as hers

 In other news, my last day of work was December 31st.  My manager gave me a baby shower/going away/birthday luncheon before Christmas.  It was really sweet of her.  I'll miss some of the people I worked closely with, but overall it's a relief to be done.  My only fear with unemployment is losing a daily routine and becoming lazy.  I expect to relax for a week or so, but after that point I hope to have a new daily routine that involves: showering (makeup is optional), cleaning, personal development (reading, studying, journal writing), and cooking a real dinner.  We'll see how it goes.

Google: Friend or Foe?

I had my "official" ultrasound at the doctor's office on Sept 24th.  She's still a girl!  So that's one less thing I have to worry about.  However, the doctor opened up a whole new can of worms.  He said there was a slight abnormality he wanted to go over.  It looked like Baby had a borderline diagnosis of echogenic bowel.  In normal person terms, the bowels should show up the same density as the liver (tissue) on the ultrasound, so kind of a dark gray.  The lighter something shows up, the more dense it is, so bone shows up completely white.  Her bowels were slightly whiter than the liver, but still darker than bone, so it wasn't a true echogenic bowel diagnosis.  He wanted to bring it up because a true diagnosis is a soft marker for some issues like cystic fibrosis, down syndrome, and a viral infection.  He said he was 95% sure that it was nothing, and it's just a variation (some people are tall, some people are fat, some have dense bowels), but he didn't want to just disregard it.  So he told us to come back for another ultrasound in a month to check on it again.  If that ultrasound showed the bowels still too dense, then he said we should think about doing genetic testing.  He also said, "Don't Google it, you'll freak yourself out."  So of course, we had to Google what it was.  It was actually a little more reassuring to me because I read a lot of cases where they get a false positive, and only very rarely does it actually result in a complication.

Fast forward one month to today.  We went in for the follow-up and it was actually fun to get to see her again (in normal pregnancies your 20 week ultrasound is the last one).  We had a different doctor this time.  The "echogenic bowel" didn't go away, but it didn't get worse either.  This doctor said that we're so borderline that she wouldn't have even noticed it if she didn't know that's specifically what she was looking for.  They even had new technology on the ultrasound machine where they could numerically measure the density level of bone versus the level of the bowels, and that showed that that bone was more dense.  She told us not to worry about it and we can go ahead and proceed with the pregnancy as normal.  Especially since everything else showed up normal.

Stats:
Baby is 30th percentile in size (she's a little small, but they just like to see anything above 10%)
Amniotic fluid measured at 15 (10-25 is normal)
Heart rate 150 bpm
Approximate weight is 1 lb 5 oz.
My blood pressure is good too, 117/70
I've gained about 14 lbs so far, my doctor said I'm alright but to not overdo it during the holidays. (HA!)
I can pretty much feel her moving around every day now.  Mostly after breakfast when I'm sitting at my computer at work, and then at night after dinner while I'm blogging.

We got some better ultrasound pictures this time than we did at the 20 week one.  They did a 3D picture at that one and she looked like an alien, not cute.  But this time she has filled out and they got a much better view.

20 week alien baby

24 week normal-looking baby, pouty lips and all

I already want to kiss those chubby cheeks

I've also bought some of my first outfits.  I can't be trusted at Kohl's with a 30% coupon....

Those are little hot air balloons on the dress.

Hair-bow or Bow-tie?

Patience is not a virtue I was endowed with.  I can be very impulsive at times, and when I know what I want, I want it now. (3 month engagement, bought one of the first houses we walked through, decided I wanted a kitten and brought one home after the first KSL ad, decided I wanted another kitten and brought home another one that day, etc etc.)  So when Doug mentioned that one of his coworkers would go to this place in the mall for an ultrasound to find out the gender early, naturally I was on board.  They claim they can tell the gender as early as 14 weeks, but I didn't trust going that early.  Then the longer we waited, the easier it got to "just wait until the ultrasound at the doctor at 20 weeks."  Plus, I'd have to call to make an appointment, and if you know me, you know I hate talking on the phone.  (Sidenote: You can tell how much I really want something by how quickly I will make the phone call to get it done.  When I saw the KSL ad for Pepper I only deliberated for about 5 minutes before I made an appointment to go see her.)

The Friday approaching my 17 week mark Doug texted me, "Should we find out the gender tomorrow?"  And just like that, I was on board again to go early.  Surprisingly enough, there were even appointments still available for that Saturday, so I made one and then had to patiently wait.  When the time finally came, I was excited and nervous (just like I get before my doctor's appointments).  The guy (doctor) who runs the place was super nice, and right away we were looking at our little baby on the screen.  He asked which gender I thought it would be, and since the beginning I've thought it was a girl.  He said in his experience, mothers are right 80% of the time.  We saw the little heartbeat first, and I was amazed to see the little bones for the spine.

Already practicing yoga

This was the first still shot we saw, and he said he could tell from the profile which gender it was.  I still think he was pulling our leg (that somehow he'd seen a bum shot before focusing on this), but he told us it was a girl, "look at those pouty lips, how could it not be a girl?" he said.

It's a girl!

But then we got to the definitive angles to prove she was a true girl.  Even though I've been fairly certain (95% sure) from the beginning, I still felt awed and amazed to have it confirmed.  It's not an "it" anymore, just using the pronoun "she" makes it feel more real.  There's still a tiny part of me that worries "she" will turn into a "he" by the time I go to my next appointment, but logically I know it's silly.

This is one of my favorite still shots.  Look at those tiny little fingers.

It was a fun experience going there.  He spent quite a bit of time with us, pointing out different body parts.  We got to see her move around, and it was just so reassuring to see activity and know she's okay.  I have my real 20 week ultrasound this next week (Sept. 24th) so we'll see if her gender changes.

Other news: I think I felt her really move for the first time on Sept. 5th.  It was super weird, like a fish flopping around in my abdomen.  To be honest, I didn't really like it and poked at her to make it stop.  Since then I've felt other flutters here and there.  Sometimes it's subtle, like a little tickle, and sometimes it feels like I have a frog jumping around in there.

The word "NOT" was missing

After the Sucky September, it took a while for Doug and I to emotionally recover.  The doctor said we could try to get pregnant again after 3 cycles, and at first we were impatient.  My cycles have never been very consistent, and it took almost 2 months after the D&C for my first period.  By the time we could start trying again, we (mostly I) weren't emotionally ready.  I felt so betrayed by my body, "why couldn't it just do what it's supposed to?"  We took this time to grow closer as a couple, taking a few little vacations and learning to be happy with what we had together.  We got to a place where we were okay if it did end up just being us (no kids).  It wasn't what we had dreamed of, but it was something we came to terms with.  I think once we got to this point we were ready to try again.

This is where my pragmatic side kicked in.  I thought, "I'd prefer to not be super pregnant during the hot summer months, and I'd prefer to not have the baby during cold and flu winter months."  So I mapped out a calendar of the months it would be ideal to conceive. The earliest month was June (a March baby) and the latest was October (July baby), but I was willing to go as late as January (October baby).   

We had also decided we wanted to try on our own for a while before going back to fertility treatments.  The plan was to use the ovulation tests on our own, and go from there.  Since it had taken so long to get pregnant before and my cycles were all over the place (32-50 days), I wanted to do kind of a trial month with the ovulation tests just to make sure I was ovulating again.  I picked May to do the trial, since it was right before my planned conception months started.  What was the chance of getting pregnant on the first shot anyway?

A pregnancy test should be pretty accurate 2 weeks after the positive ovulation test, which meant I could test on June 8th.  I've never been very good at waiting until my expected period (I've lost count of how many pregnancy tests I've taken), so for kicks I took one on June 3rd.  It was 5 days early, but that's the soonest the test said it would work.  It came back negative.  By this point I had learned to expect the negative result, so it wasn't much of a surprise.  "Well, I guess there's always next month."

On June 5th as I was getting ready for work I started feeling a little queasy (like mild motion sickness) and the thought popped into my head, "hmmm, this is what it felt like when I was pregnant, weird."  And as quickly as it came, the thought was gone and I moved on with my day.  June 8th rolled around, and I thought, "What the heck, I'll take another test just to be sure."  Sidenote: When we were doing the fertility treatments last year, Doug and I had a ritual.  I would take the test and leave it on the bathroom counter, and he'd go in and look at the result before me.  I thought about doing that again, but I really had to pee and I didn't want to wake him up for a negative result.  But that's not the result I got.

I looked at the test in disbelief.  Shouldn't there be the word "NOT" before the word "PREGNANT"?  I don't know how long I stood there, mixed emotions is an understatement.  Of course I'm happy. No I'm not. How did it happen so soon? First try? This is awesome. This is horrible, what if I miscarry again?  I felt like crying out of sadness, but couldn't help smiling at the same time.  Now I had to go and wake up Doug and show him....  He was happy, but had the same mixed emotions.  It became real again.  As much as we thought we were prepared or okay with living without kids, this test brought back the possibility.  The possibility of finally getting what we dreamed and hoped for, or the possibility of going through hell again.

I'm going to try and quickly cram in the last 3 months in a large nutshell so this post doesn't go on forever. June: I called and made my fist prenatal appointment for July 23 (they want to see you at 10-12 weeks), but I was having some spotting so they had me come in to the lab for blood tests just to make sure my HCG was rising normally and they did an early ultrasound.  They thought the baby measured a little small so I went in two weeks later for another ultrasound.  At this one I measured about 7 weeks and I saw the heartbeat, so that was comforting.  July:  I guess that second ultrasound technically happened in July, it was right after we got back from our trip to Baltimore.  The next few weeks I stressed out everyday because I was still spotting on and off.  I freaked out the most in the few days leading up to my appointment, I was so worried it would go the same as last time - I'd get in there and find out the baby was gone.  Thankfully it was good news, and I love my OB/GYN.  She is one of those bubbly people who automatically puts you in a good mood, and she had obviously read my file and was super sensitive and understanding about my fears of miscarriage.  We got to hear the heartbeat for the very first time ever.  I thought it sounded like a train (chug-a-chug-a-chug-a), and we even saw the baby kick around and move.  Both Doug and I were close to tears, but we held it together.  I found out the reason for my spotting, a stupid cervical polyp.  It's benign, but it will probably cause spotting the entire time and freak me out.  August:  The happy feeling of relief from my last appointment lasted about a week, and then I was back to stressing out.  I knew that making it to 11 weeks was pretty good, and the chance of losing it was low, but I still stressed about it.  I had my next appointment Aug. 20th, and in the days leading up to it, I was just as nervous as before.  But that appointment went well.  I didn't have an ultrasound (the next and last ultrasound will be Sept. 24th), instead my doctor used her doppler machine and she found the heartbeat pretty quick, much to my relief.  That appointment was pretty quick, and I can breathe a little easier now that I'm in the second trimester.

It looks like I just ate too much, but I promise there's a baby in there. (15 weeks)

Memorial Day Trip

Doug wanted a nice camera for his birthday, so when Doug and I went to San Diego over Memorial Day weekend, we broke it in.  Be prepared for lots of pictures.

We used our free nights from Marriott to stay at a hotel right next to the beach in Oceanside.  Literally a 3 minute walk to the pier.  It was awesome.

On Friday we went to the San Diego zoo.  In the last year we've been to this zoo more times than the Hogle zoo.  Probably because it's 100x better.  The weather was PERFECT!  I think it was about 70 degrees and overcast.  So the pictures turned out nice, and we didn't get sunburned.

This is the Pappa giraffe.  He really gets around.

A good example of what a nice camera can do.

Normally we never see this little guy (Arctic Fox).  Look at that little face.

Snow Leopard

The majestic Sun Bear

 

I didn't think Doug was actually taking a picture

Baby orangutan.  Look at its hair!

So then Saturday we went to the Safari Park.  Again, the weather was really nice.  It wasn't too hot or too sunny most of the time.  I think our favorite part was the lion cubs.  They were just born in December and the mother rejected them, so they've been raised by the keepers.  They get to be out in the exhibit for half the day and then they swap with the parents.  The cubs were so active and romping around, it was really fun to see.  They also opened up their new tiger exhibit (that day, so it was super crowded).  They have six tigers, so you're bound to at least see one (they like to hide).  We also did the caravan safari again (because we can!) and it was just as fun the second time.

She has a little baby in her lap.

They have prickly whiskers, and their spit is really yucky.

That can't be comfortable.

I didn't count how many giraffes they have, but it's a lot.

That about sums things up.  Sunday we relaxed and walked on the beach, and then Monday we pretty much spent the day at airports.  Now our next vacation is the trip to Baltimore.  We're excited to see you all!