I mentioned previously that baby girl is currently breech and so we’re working on trying to get her turned around. I had an External Cephalic Version* done last Friday with zero luck. Baby didn’t budge one bit and seems to be stuck around my rib cage. I had another regular prenatal visit today and she still hasn’t moved at all. Thanks stubborn kiddo.
There’s still a chance she may turn on her own or that some yoga or Spinning Babies positions may help her along, but the OB still had me schedule a C-section at 39 weeks to be safe. IF she turns before then I can still have a vaginal delivery but if I go into labor before then and she hasn’t turned I’ll need a last minute C-section.** Good times.
The good news is that baby still seems to be doing just fine. And me, well, I’m massively uncomfortable, completely exhausted (the fact that she’s sitting so high up is compressing my lungs which isn’t helping matters), and still having a lot of pelvic pain, but nothing the doctors are all that concerned about. Once baby is out and the pregnancy hormones (and physical stress on my body) go down then my pelvis should start to function normally again.***
It’s weird, but I’m remaining shockingly calm about this whole thing. It is what it is and I trust the doctors to make the call about the safest course of action. It’s also nice in a way because we’re able to schedule with out-of-state grandparents about coming into town to watch Wesley while Matt and I are at the hospital. I also have a definite end date in sight, which given how incredibly miserable I’ve been during this pregnancy is actually kind of reassuring.
That all being said, a C-section is still major surgery, even if it is a pretty routine one. I definitely wouldn’t choose this route if it wasn’t considered medically necessary. I’ve been doing some research and it sounds like recovery is no joke. It will probably be even harder with a toddler at home who won’t understand why mommy can’t pick him up or why he can’t climb on top of her for snuggles. Luckily my mom will be coming into town to watch him while I’m in the hospital and my mother-in-law had already planned a visit that happens to fall right after my now-scheduled surgery. While it was really nice having the house to ourselves after Wesley was born, I think it will be really good for Wesley to have some extra people around to give him attention this time.
* An OB tries to manually turn the baby by shoving on your belly. I’d say it was incredibly uncomfortable but not exactly painful. You also get a shot of something to relax your uterine muscles…which also makes you super jittery. It was like the jitters you can get after a nebulizer treatment.
** I don’t know if it quite counts as an “emergency” C-section since they should be preparing for it as soon as I call the hospital, but they will definitely have less time to prep than they would for a scheduled procedure.
***Grandparents were in town last weekend so we brought Wesley to their hotel to play in the pool. He seemed to have fun, but it was positively glorious for me! Most of my pain melted away and I was even fairly comfortable for a couple hours after getting out of the water. Now if I could only find a pool to live in for the next week….
Yup, that’s right, we’re excited to announce that baby #2 is due in January! So I haven’t just been lazy with the house projects. I got pregnant with Wesley right as I started recovering from some crazy hyperthyroid thing which had sapped ALL my energy. This meant that for for the early part of that pregnancy I felt amazing (comparatively). This time around I got the full prego exhaustion–Matt was a little suspicious when I started going to bed around 7:00 but I was still blissfully ignorant/completely in denial. Not to say this kid was a total surprise, I just figured it would take longer than it did, especially since I’m steadily creeping up on “advanced maternal age.”
Wesley, of course, reacted with all the enthusiasm you’d except from a toddler who’s used to being the center of attention.
Me: Wesley, you’re going to be a big brother!
Wesley: Nrghhhhh.
He’s gotten to the point now where if you ask him “what’s in mommy’s belly?” he’ll respond excitedly with “Baby mommy’s belly!” I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually grasp what’s happening yet though. January will be a nasty shock to his currently cushy status.
So now I’m about 18 weeks and most of the exhaustion has abated. Just like pregnancy #1 I didn’t get much in the way of morning sickness, but I would get bouts of nausea most evenings. The Nesting desire is starting to settle in and since we plan on both kids sharing a room for a least a couple years, I don’t have a new nursery to put together. I do however plan on putting this new energy towards the living room/TV room which I’ve been slacking on a bit. We’re also in the process of trying to hire someone to redo our kitchen because why not just add some more chaos to our lives?
And just in case you’re curious, no, we don’t know if the squish is a boy or girl yet but should be finding out at my ultrasound in the next few weeks. I have the feeling it’s a girl, but I thought the same thing with Wesley so I clearly don’t actually have any intuition for this sort of thing.
First off, I want to wish a very happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, moms-to-be, step-moms, and foster moms out there. You’re all amazing!
It may be my first first sort-of Mother’s Day, but we didn’t do anything special–more work on the nursery and lots of naps for me. Matt did surprise me with the Eames elephant I’ve been lusting after though! He had planned to surprise me with it for the baby shower, but the color he knew I wanted was no longer available. He broke down on our anniversary and asked me if another color would be ok and it just arrived a couple days ago… so it’s sort a combo anniversary/mother’s day/baby shower gift.
I think I will name him Alonso. (Allons-y!)
As for, I’m officially in my Third Trimester now–home stretch baby! I’ve been steadily hitting the pregnancy milestones too. Yay?
Having Issues Getting out of Bed
Not because I’m huge (I definitely look pregnant–although not in the above photo oddly enough–and am seeing numbers on the scale that are distressing-yet-normal, but I’m not hugely pregnant), everything just hurts. My pelvis especially hurts when I’ve been laying down for a while and try and get upright again. It’s similar in feeling to having done waaay too many crunches so your abs start to burn and rebel, only lower down. The last midwife I saw sent me a video of some stretches to do, so hopefully they help.
Stairs are Hard
I finally had to give up and recruit Matt to carry my laundry down to the basement. I can handle our main stairs fine, but our basement stairs are narrow and I’m a little unbalanced at the moment so I need to hang on to the hand rail. Suddenly there’s not a whole lot of space for the basket unless I balance it against my belly which is its own level of awkward.
I also feeling mildly bad for the slow, plodding way I ascend stairs when I’m out in public. Then I figure, the stairs are wide enough, if you have a problem with my speed just go around. I did have to come to a full stop on a landing at work because two ladies were walking up side-by-side and chatting. That’s fine and all, but if you’re taking up the full width of the stairs and someone’s trying to head the opposite way switch to single file for like 2 steps. This is even just general politeness and not purely because I’m a cranky pregnant lady.
The Cat is Pissed
Schmutz was napping on my belly the other day when the little dude starting kicking. He’s now big enough that you can feel (and often see) the kicks on the outside. Schmutz turned and glared at me since she’s not used to be kicked by her current bed (and it was clearly my fault). Mort’s started obsessively kneading my belly and then deciding to sleep next to me instead. I don’t know if he thinks I’m too lumpy or what.
So Many Kicks!
The first movements I really felt were just from the kiddo shifting around (I think). I would just get pressure changes in a specific area as he wedged himself into a new position. The last few weeks I’ve been getting more and more definite kicks and they’re getting increasingly more visible on the outside of my belly. They started off feeling like weird little muscle spasm-y things, but he’s gotten some good shots to my ribs lately and thrown a couple punches that have made me wince a little bit. I am really not looking forward to the day he discovers my bladder…
OMG Heartburn!
One of my very first pregnancy symptoms was some mild heartburn (but we were also eating our way through a large batch of chili so I thought I was just getting old and decrepit at the time). Now I’m getting legit heartburn and popping Tums like candy. I get heartburn by so much as thinking about food.
Unsolicited Advice
This actually hasn’t been bad at all! Most people keep pretty quiet or share the “this worked well for me, but it’s honestly a crapshoot” kind of stories (which are actually useful). The only person who rubbed my the wrong way was, oddly enough, the midwife at one of my prenatal appointments. I was talking about how I was considering a water birth because I am deathly afraid of needles* and don’t handle pain well.** Her response was that I clearly just needed to educate myself further because it didn’t seem to her like a good reason to try a water birth. I sort of wanted to shoot back “look lady, the reason I’m already freaking out about this is BECAUSE I was reading about it and looking at my options.” Then she seemed a little miffed that I didn’t have any questions. Maybe it’s because I’m actually reading about what to expect and I hadn’t encountered anything out of the ordinary at the moment? Most of the midwives I’ve seen at my appointments have been awesome, but this one was just not a good match for me.
My mom (of course!) also hopped on the unsolicited advice train after looking at our baby registry. She means well, but she started questioning some of the bigger items (Were we sure we wanted this car seat instead of that car seat because so-and-so really liked that one). While she definitely brought up some good points, it just stressed me out that all the previous research I did was wrong so I re-researched everything…aaaand ended up with the exact same products I picked out the first time. Moral of the story: everyone is going find different products that fit their individual needs.
Trippy Dreams
These have been happening for a while. I don’t tend to remember my dreams but I definitely have while pregnant! The last notable one was a nightmare about how I was never ever going to get the ceiling fan I wanted for the nursery. I was shipped a broken one, then someone tried to convince me it was perfectly fine and I couldn’t exchange it anyway because it was the very last one ever. The next day I called Lowes to check on the status of my order because the dream may have freaked me out a bit….
Bye Bye Wedding Ring
My fingers have started to swell enough that it’s getting really hard to get my rings off. I had to resort to some windex the other day, so going forward I’m probably safer just leaving them off before they get solidly stuck. My ankles are starting to swell a bit too, but thankfully they haven’t morphed into full-on cankles yet.
Pregnancy Brain
More notable moments have been going to work with my skirt inside-out (thankfully it was stripey pattern and really not noticeable!) and getting halfway to my car before realizing I was still in my slippers. I also nearly forgot Matt’s birthday. Ooops. In general I’m just spacey as heck and very easily losing my train of thought.
Glucose Challenge Test–PASSED!
The internet really builds this up as being awful, but it wasn’t that bad. The drink they give you is sort of a like a half-flat soda, so not exactly tasty, but not completely vile either (I went with the orange, but everyone I know recommended a different flavor). I chose to have mine done first thing in the morning and grab breakfast after since I’ve heard any sugar consumption (not just sweets, but things like fruit too) beforehand can mess up your results. How true this is, I don’t really know, but I really didn’t want to get stuck doing the 3 hour test so I figured it couldn’t hurt.
* Really, it’s bad. My regular doctor tried giving me valium before a shot once and it didn’t do a thing. Nitrous Oxide at the dentist doesn’t have any effect until after the shots are done (ie I calm down again). I currently have my own stash of prescription lidocaine to use before blood work, but I still get super anxious until it’s over Yeah, I’m kind of mess.
