Message to Kelley

I just wanted to say good luck to Kelley, who comments frequently on my blog. (She's due in a week and a half with a baby girl.) I would love to have your e-mail address so I can reply when you comment on my posts! :)

Just send an e-mail to wheresmywhitepicketfence@hotmail.com!

Pink

I've been holding out on you...

Truth is, I found out at my first regular OB appointment after the amnio that we're having a

GIRL!

I'm so, so thrilled, and it's been a pain to refer to the baby as "it" or "the baby" on here, so there ya go... We are also telling everyone in our real lives that we know the sex already. Just easier that way.

D doesn't completely get the whole concept of the fact that a baby will be coming to live with us, but he does often ask me when I pat my tummy, "you have a sister in your belly?" He also says hi to my tummy randomly, so maybe he gets it more than I think. :)

I'm 32 weeks and 3 days today. I had a long ultrasound today which the OB's office called a "survey" ultrasound, where they took a look at all of her organs again, just to check for any red flags one more time. Unfortunately, they weren't able to see all of the chambers of the heart because she was turned the wrong direction (and the heart was also what they were having trouble viewing during the Lev.el II Ultrasound) so I was kind of bummed. However, both u/s techs said that they didn't see anything that raised any red flags, so hopefully we just have an uncooperative baby when it comes to viewing the heart. (We know it has 4 chambers... They were able to see that at the lev.el II, so that's reassuring!)

I'm feeling really good still. I had a little bit of swelling in my ankles last weekend (for the first time during this pregnancy) after a long day of yardwork and such, but I'm hoping that was just because of all the standing and walking around that day.

My blood pressure at the doctor's office today was 120/80. BOO! It seems that it may be creeping up, although it's still in the "normal" range right now. I was told to try to always lie on my left side, drink lots of water, and avoid sodium as much as possible. I'm going to try to pay more attention to all of those things and hope that I can keep that BP down!

In other news, as of the last two weeks, it would appear that I've popped...

31 Weeks

Just had an ultrasound this morning. Baby decided to flip! (Yay!) I know it can still potentially flip back to breech, but the more appointments from here on out that it's facing the right direction, the better.

Baby's weight: Over 4 pounds now! I keep reading that they should be over three pounds by this week, but the u/s tech assured me that the baby is still on track to be around 7.5 or 8 pounds.

My weight: Holding steady for the past few weeks (after my gluttonous vacation!) Today I think I was down one pound from last week, but my appointment was also first thing in the morning, so I'm not really counting that. If I gain a pound a week from here on out, I'll end up at about the same weight as I was when I delivered D.

Blood pressure: 114/80. The person who took the BP asked if I had coffee this morning (and I did) so I'm hoping the coffee right before the blood pressure reading was the reason the diastolic was higher than normal.

Movement: Baby was very active all day yesterday, but then when I lay down at night (when it usually does its little boogie routine) it was very quiet. Just a couple of jabs. It was also fairly quiet this morning. Of course that made me nervous, but the u/s was fine. (Baby scored 8/8 on its biophysical profile.) The NP (nurse practitioner) gave me a kick count instruction sheet which now has me much more nervous than I even was before. For instance, it says that babies may sleep for 60 minute periods, and this is normal. I feel like both of my babies (the successful pregnancies) had/have longer periods of time when they're quiet than 60 minutes. Should I be worried all day, every day?? Pregnancy was so much more fun the first time when I was ignorant...

Preparation: We've been buying some diapers... slowly allowing ourselves to believe that this baby will be coming home with us in July. My husband wants me to pack a bag for the hospital (which is only about 15 minutes from home) but I told him that if the baby comes this early, I'm going to be worried about a lot of other things much more than whether I have deodorant or a change of clothes with me.

Got milk?

I'm sure that when my husband married me, he was not counting on being told about my spontaneous lactation, mid-pregnancy. But, as you may have guessed, in the past week, I had a couple of episodes of very slight leaking, following a strange, slightly painful sensation in one boob or the other. (I remember this vaguely from my short breastfeeding experience with D as that feeling of "letdown.") Of course, I had to share this news with my husband. He can thank me later.

I had my 29 week appointment on Wednesday, and everything is still peachy. Baby is practice breathing already, which is totally cool. It didn't want to move on the u/s screen for the tech, so she used this little buzzer thing on my belly (which vibrates and makes a loud noise to the baby). Clearly indignant over being tazed, the little one did a dance for the tech and the tech was satisfied. Baby is still breech, but I'm still not terribly worried. There's lots of time to turn.

My pudgy "I'm not pregnant, just fat" belly is finally rounding out, and I'm starting to feel like I might look pregnant, although I still haven't had one stranger ask me when I'm due. (That's when you know you look official.) I'm still able to sleep on my back pretty comfortably, which I'm allowing myself to do. When I do turn to the side, I make an effort to make it my left side, just to even the score.

I know this weekend is Mother's Day, but truthfully, I'm looking forward to celebrating my son, and how lucky I am to have him, as well as being thankful for his little sibling. Keep on growing, little one.

It never really goes away

It was a warm day here yesterday - in the 80's. T and I spent the day doing little chores that have been waiting on an invisible list. He installed our rain barrel. We fixed D's changing table so we'll actually be able to use it for the new little person. I mowed the lawn. T spread some dirt and I sprinkled grass seed to try to nurse our pathetic lawn back to life. We did laundry. We took a walk with D. You get the picture. It was a full day.

I realized in the afternoon that I hadn't really felt the baby move during the day. I quickly reminded myself that since *I* had been moving around all day, it would have been hard to feel the baby move. Nonetheless, I found myself poking my belly in the afternoon, trying to get a response. After D was happily in the tub getting a bath from daddy, I went upstairs to take a shower, all the while planning that after my shower I would lie down on the bed to see what was going on with the little one.

When I lay down on the bed, there was kicking and jabbing and general mayhem from the inside, as I had (mostly) expected that there would be. But... I was reminded, as I often am, that the fear is still there. It doesn't matter that I brought a healthy baby to full term once before. It doesn't matter that everything looks fine on every ultrasound. I am still, and always will be, the mother of three dead babies. And for two of them, I'll never know why.