ally-cat

This week’s post is kinda long, but it actually ended up covering all the stuff that went on at the doc this week in my Babycenter weekly update. 

How your baby’s growing:

It’s hard to say for sure how big your baby will be, but the average newborn weighs about 7 1/2 pounds  and is about 20 inches long. 

How your life’s changing:

After months of anticipation, your due date rolls around, and… you’re still pregnant. It’s a frustrating, but common, situation in which to find yourself. You may not be as late as you think, especially if you’re relying solely on a due date calculated from the day of your last period because sometimes women ovulate later than expected. Even with reliable dating, some women have prolonged pregnancies for no apparent reason.

You still have a couple of weeks before you’ll be considered “post-term.” But to be sure your baby is still thriving, your practitioner will schedule you for testing to keep an eye on her if your pregnancy continues.

Fetal heart rate monitoring (called a nonstress test or NST) will generally be done as well — by itself or as part of the BPP. Or, you may have what’s known as a modified BPP, which consists of an NST and an ultrasound to assess the amount of amniotic fluid.

If the fetal testing isn’t reassuring — the amniotic fluid level is too low, for example — you’ll be induced. If there’s a serious, urgent problem, you may have an immediate c-section.

Your practitioner will also check your cervix to see if it’s “ripening.” Its position, how soft it is, how effaced (thinned out) it is, and how dilated (open) it is can all affect when and how your labor is induced. If you don’t go into labor on your own, you’ll be induced, usually sometime between 41 and 42 weeks.

What’s the procedure like?

You may be advised to eat a meal just before the test in the hope that eating will stimulate your baby to move around more. Although there’s no hard evidence that this works, it can’t hurt. It’s also a good idea to use the bathroom before the test, because you’ll be lying strapped to a monitor for up to an hour. The test consists of:

A detailed ultrasound to observe your baby’s body movements, muscle tone (flexing of the arms and legs), and breathing movements (the baby’s ability to move his chest muscles and diaphragm), and the amount of amniotic fluid surrounding him.

A nonstress test to assess whether your baby’s heart rate changes when he’s moving. For this, you lie on your left side. A technician straps two devices to your belly: One monitors your baby’s heartbeat and movement; the other records contractions in your uterus. The technician listens to and watches your baby’s heartbeat on an electronic screen.

So I had all of that done at my appointment today since I’m now considered “past due” of my Feb 13th due date that the doctors go by. However, since the original ultrasound due date was like Feb 18th, and she consistently measured behind like that at every ultrasound (and I’ve had 8 of them!), I don’t really consider her late yet. The nonstress test was actually kinda stressful for me, because I had Lucas with me in the room, and while I was *supposed* to be lying there restfully and counting fetal movements, I spent most of the time fussing at Lucas to stop pressing buttons on the machine and trying to keep him entertained. The midwife I saw today was able to get the results though, luckily. Then we did the ultrasound, which was kinda disappointing because Arianna is all lowered and in position (a good thing) so all the tech could see was the top of her head and not her face, so I didn’t get any pix this time. Arianna scored a 8/8 on her BPP  so everything is looking good in there. She measured at 7lbs 3oz currently. Her size measured her at only 38.5 weeks — even further behind than the other ultrasounds had been showing — but the tech said she could just be measuring small for her age. 

Unless I end up going into labor over the weekend, the current plan is: Monday @ 1 I go in to my regular doc for my 3rd NST (I had my first one at last Monday’s regular appointment). Monday evening I call the hospital and find out if they have a bed available for me, and as long as they aren’t full, I’ll check into the hospital Monday night. There they will give me a medicine(Cervidil) to prep me overnight. Then Tuesday morning I’ll be given pitocin to actually induce labor.

“How your baby’s growing:

Your baby’s waiting to greet the world! He continues to build a layer of fat to help control his body temperature after birth, but it’s likely he already measures about 20 inches and weighs a bit over 7 pounds, a mini watermelon. (Boys tend to be slightly heavier than girls.) The outer layers of his skin are sloughing off as new skin forms underneath.”

Hmm even Babycenter didn’t have much to say about this week. Probably because nothing seems to be going on in there…it’s all just waiting. I had my 39wk check-up on Weds, and the doc said that nothing was going on. 0 cm dilated, ~50% effaced, and that she had lowered a little bit which was probably what is causing the ucky cramping i keep having. sometimes i can barely move. buuut, I’m hoping I still have until the end of next week, because anything before the 16th just doesn’t really work for me. i have my 40week appointment on Monday which will be when they schedule the induction. *fingers crossed i don’t go Mon, Tues, or Weds!*

Heather, one of my Girl Scouts, made me these awesome onesies for Arianna. Then all the scouts signed the back of one of them. So sweet!

(i found this in my drafts folder, apparently it never got published)

How your baby’s growing:

Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She’s shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she’s in a head-down position.

A post Paul put on my Facebook that made me LOL:

This is what it is like living with you while pregnant :D
http://i.imgur.com/7Eve8.jpg

So the heartburn has gone away over the past couple of weeks, but I still have the awful lower back pain when I try to sleep at night (or lie in bed more than a couple of hours). i still want to sleep all the time, and get headachey/dizzy occasionally.

we (paul) got the room painted and the border up!! i’m so excited how it is coming together

talked to a nurse today (my insurance has a nurse that calls me monthly to check on me), and found out that the ultrasound measurements are only accurate for due dates in the first trimester. that the babies grow at different rates, so just because she is measuring to be due Feb 18, doesn’t mean that is as scientific as it sounds. so now i have no idea when she will come. i’m sticking with *fingers crossed* my guess of the 16th. anyone else want to register a guess?

1/14 i think it’s cool that Lucas has a pretty good grasp of verb tenses. we were doing laundry, and he was carrying some clothes to the hamper. he said, “Lucas getting it.” then after he dumped them in he said, “Lucas got it.”

1/16 Lucas got his big boy bed today! paul converted Lucas’s old crib into a full-sized bed, and the mattress and box springs got delivered. so now his crib mattress gets moved to Arianna’s crib, and he gets the big bed!

a few days ago when it was storming a bunch at night, Lucas developed a fear of thunder and lightning. one night the thunder was really close and kept vibrating the house. at 6am Lucas comes to our bedroom door, duckies in tow, and when i asked him why he was out of bed he said, “Lucas scared.” so i tried to let him cuddle in my bed, but he would not stop squirming and would not stop talking. since then, he has started waking up during the night (for no reason that i can tell) and comes to the door wanting to cuddle mommy. hopefully with his new big bed he might break the trend.

the other night i was trying to get him to climb up on the potty, and he kept being all distracted. so i was going “get on the potty, get on the potty,” over and over. finally he says, “okay, Momma, quit. mommy so annoying.”

How your baby’s growing:
Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she’s born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you’ve been nervous about preterm labor, you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine.

How your life’s changing:
By this week, fatigue has probably set in again, though maybe not with the same coma-like intensity of your first trimester. Your tiredness is perfectly understandable, given the physical strain you’re under and the restless nights of frequent pee breaks and tossing and turning, while trying to get comfortable. Now’s the time to slow down and save up your energy for labor day (and beyond).

–

“ Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she’s born — are filling her out”…really? b/c i have tons of fat layers and none of them are helping with my fun new (as in the last couple of weeks) symptom of nocturnal hyperhidrosis, which is fancy medical jargon for waking up in the middle of the night having completely, literally soaked all the bedding in sweat. yuck.

“ By this week, fatigue has probably set in again, though maybe not with the same coma-like intensity of your first trimester.” nope — definitely coma-like. it takes forever to go to sleep at night, usually from major muscle/joint achiness in my lower back and hips and legs, the i wake up pretty much hourly to pee, so i’m tired like allll the time. i nap so much that every time i sigh lucas says, “mommy tired” and every time i leave the room lucas says, “mommy go night-night.” paul has him seriously trained now to never ever ever wake mommy up and he is sooo 100% good about following that rule.

the 2011 baby name list is out now. Arianna landed #22 on babynames.com and #32 on babycenter.com

we finally have our paint colors picked out and paul is going to start taping off the nursery tomorrow and mom is hopefully going to be able to start sewing. now that January has hit, i’m suddenly anxious to get the nursery ready. i also might be nesting, because i suddenly got the urge to organize the master closet and bath – the only two rooms left of the house that weren’t unpacked and settled.

How your baby’s growing:

By now, your baby weighs 3.75 pounds (per an ultrasound she is actually 3 lbs, 9oz) and is about 16.7 inches long, taking up a lot of space in your uterus. You’re gaining about a pound a week (yup, gained two pounds since my last doc visit two weeks ago. was kinda bummed about that until i read this) and roughly half of that goes right to your baby. In fact, she’ll gain a third to half of her birth weight during the next 7 weeks as she fattens up for survival outside the womb. She now has toenails, fingernails, and real hair (or at least respectable peach fuzz). Her skin is becoming soft and smooth as she plumps up in preparation for birth.

To accommodate you and your baby’s growing needs, your blood volume has increased 40 to 50 percent since you got pregnant. With your uterus pushing up near your diaphragm and crowding your stomach, the consequences may be shortness of breath (yup) and heartburn (and yup). To help relieve your discomfort, try sleeping propped up with pillows and eating smaller meals more often. You may have lower-back pain (and yup again) as your pregnancy advances.

So I had an awesome day yesterday. First I went to the doc in the morning for my 32wk check-up. Just the usual, but as he was walking me out and talking about scheduling an ultrasound to figure out when we would need to do the c-section, the tech was hanging out there and said she could see me right then. so i got to go ahead and get the sonogram right then, and SURPRISE! my placenta has *completely* moved out of the way of my cervix and i have gone from a high-risk pregnancy requiring an early c-section to a completely normal pregnancy with no restrictions.

After the doc, I picked up Lucas and we had a dentist appt. It was his first teeth cleaning and he was a perfect little angel as usual (when he is at a doc office) and lay on the chair and held still for the whole thing.

After the dentist I had time for a nap before my plans to meet Lauren and Jana at Melting Pot for dinner. When I went inside, they weren’t in the waiting area. I told the hostess I was meeting people and she asked if it was for the shower and I told her no, just a couple of people. I called Lauren and she said they were seated at the back and came to find me to direct me to the booth. For some reason we went to the party room, and when we walked in, my eyes first saw Raechel Bowman. I was excited she was there b/c she hadn’t been able to make it to the Christmas party. There were a bunch of people there and I was surprised so many people had come to dinner – I thought it was just going to be the three of us. Then I looked more to the left and saw my mom and Sarah…and wait…pink balloons…and wait this isn’t just a bunch of people were able to make it to the dinner with us…this is a party for ME!! i was so surprised, shocked, and thrilled. it was so so cool. I’ve never had a surprise party before and this one was perfect. Sarah and Shelly, Amanda and Macy, Mom, Jana, Raechel, Kristie and Ashley Ford, Lauren, Jenn and her sister Amy and her mom Judy. 

Lauren had spread rose petals all over the table and Amanda had baked an awesome three-tiered cake of yumminess and everyone got Arianna presents! It was all so perfect and amazing and awesome. My friends are so amazing. 

tonight i stepped out of the bathroom, and lucas shouts, “Good job, Momma, pee-pee on the potty!!!”

i’m so proud of myself.