24 weeks - Prepping for the Baby!

We had a busy weekend, with social activities and continuing to prepare for our upcoming family expansion!  Despite being tired, I have so much trouble sitting still and not being “productive.”  This weekend we got to spend lots of time with friends (and a quality couple lunch) while also going to Ikea and getting our baby room rug, getting some organizing done, and also getting a bunch of stuff we needed at Target and Home Depot (thanks Becky for the company and the help).  We know have some paint samples to look at in the baby room, which is even more fun.  We also cooked my lunch soup for the week and cooked beef and butternut squash stew (a new favorite) on Sunday and Frankie’s pumpkin pasta on Monday.  Fit in full days at work and we have had about 30-45 minutes on the couch to just veg and visit each night.

I also gave in and bought my first pair of maternity pants and got an awesome black maternity jacket (I don’t go anywhere without a basic black thin jacket and my pre-pregnancy one was looking pretty crazy).  It feels good to have some clothes that fit and are comfy and I don’t have to continually adjust everywhere I go.

In addition to productive time, I am also reading books on pregnancy/labor.  I read Ina May Gaskin’s book and I also read the pregnancy and labor portion of the book Women’s Bodies: Women’s Wisdom, by Dr. Christiane Northrup.  Both had surprisingly similar takes on labor.  It was really interesting and inspiring to read these powerful women talk about how effective the female body is.  Ina May says that if people take one thing away from her book, she hopes it is that they realize their bodies aren’t lemons and they are meant to do this.  I think it is so tempting to give into the societal message about labor being “too much to handle,” and fun to hear some encouraging language and inspiring stories.  Society is obsessed with horror stories and telling people how hard things are.  Honestly, lots of things are hard, but encouraging words mean a lot more than a reminder about how hard it will be!

Tara warned me that Ina May’s book is very one-sided, but that I would learn a lot.  I have to say that although Ina May is certainly anti-hospital, it wasn’t as bad as I thought and I learned even more than I expected about the labor process and your body.  I have read the book the hospital gave me and although I thought it had a lot of info, it focused on what medical interventions can do and very little on what your body can do on its own.  Of course, things with my labor may not go exactly as I want, but I am really glad to be well educated on the risks of induction (and various methods) and other interventions.  Sometimes you really need medical intervention, but I need to communicate with my doctors how I feel about interventions so that we don’t end up doing something just because we can.  I flipped to a TLC show the other day on labor and a woman was just told point blank from her doctor “oh, we are breaking your water now and starting pitcoin.”  No discussion of the effects of both of those and her other options, just a statement of fact.  I want my doctor to be looking out for me and my babies best interest, but I don’t think that is always through immediate intervention and would like to have an open dialogue every step of the way (also one of the reason’s we have the doula!). 

I am excited for my personalized labor class on October 7^th with my Doula and my good friend from high-school Kira, who is a hypnobirthing teacher.  I can’t wait to learn more!

The baby has been really active the last few days.  Yesterday was sort of an odd transition day where he went from periodic kicks to almost 8 hours of continuous kicking.  Today I am already noticing it is easier to ignore so I can sleep or focus on work.  I still enjoy thinking about him, but unlike before where they were so infrequent that it was a fun distraction, I think the kicking/moving is going to be a constant presence from here on out. 

This weekend I am really hoping to finish up most of our cleaning in the two rooms and tomorrow I finally have someone coming to give a bid to de-bird-ify our attic.  The closer I get to having everything ready the more excited I get to see the baby room and everything all put together.

23 weeks

The last few days have finally brought consistent kicking from our little one!  It is weird but also fun to feel him kicking.  It will be hours in between kicks and then all of a sudden I’ll have a flurry of kicks in about a 10-15 minute period of time.  I’ve tried to have Charles feel for them on the outside of the belly but he hasn’t been able to feel much yet.  I look forward to when we can both share this experience. 

We had another ultrasound and doctor appointment today and the baby (and mom) are looking great.  Our baby is 1 lb 6 oz now!  (almost double its previous size)  He’s measuring in the 80^th percentile for his gestational age (down from 90^th last time).  This means the baby is still growing, but not as crazy quickly (both are good things).  Slow growth is still the biggest concern, so a healthy sized baby is a great thing.  Poor kiddo had terrible hiccups racking his entire body during the ultrasound; wish I could have comforted him!

My blood pressure and everything are still looking good.  Although the last few weeks have been a little bit of a struggle with return of stomach symptoms, my overall health seems to really good.  After tapering all the way off of prednisone, my stomach symptoms returned almost immediately.  It is hard to say if this response was my body just missing prednisone and having depravation or whether it really needs the prednisone to work.  I am back on 10mg a day now (I had started at 60 mg long ago), and I am going to stay on for about another week (to try to return to as “normal” as I can get) and then taper much slower (1 mg per week rather than 5 mg per 5 days) until I am off (or until things get bad).  I feel good with plan and am glad not to give up on tapering, but to listen to my body that it needs to be much slower!  I have another Dr appt in 3 weeks to see how things are going.

Since I will still be on prednisone for at least 10 more weeks, we are going to do additional diabetes testing.  Instead of doing another awful screening, they are going to give me my own glucose meter in a few weeks and then I will check my own sugar a few times a week for probably the rest of the pregnancy (FYI - baby is kicking as I type).

We talked briefly about the end game this appointment (aka labor).  Dr. Kline reiterated that she is worried about growth problems and my placenta giving up at the end of the pregnancy.  Her experience (and literature) shows that auto-immune patients with flares during pregnancy are more likely to have a placenta crap out earlier.  Given that, and the multiple flares I have had, she thinks that likely I shouldn’t go past 40 weeks (36-40) being the ideal range.  She wants us to stay on top of it so we can do an induction if necessary rather than an emergency c-section if the baby starts showing distress.  Although I would love to avoid any kind of intervention, we have to be a little more careful given how my pregnancy clearly hasn’t gone smoothly for my body. (wow he is kicking a lot!)  She is really excited we have hired a doula, and I think she really will avoid intervention unless necessary, although I have to be realistic, that I can’t be as laissez-faire as a regularly pregnant mom is about the process.   

We got sooo much done over last weekend and nearly both the office and baby room are devoid of “crap” now (piles of things that had to be sorted and organized).  I think there is literally one small bag/pile in each room left.  Note: Charles powered through despite me being tired and a bit whiny, thanks Honey!  It feels very attainable that we could be ready for this baby!  We also got an amazing surprise this week when our crib and dresser arrived from amazon courtesy of the Inverso Family!  Thanks Guys! I can’t wait to see it all in our future baby room.  We also bought new shelves for the pantry and an amazing new couch for the living room.  We need a new coffee table too (we already found a good potential), but then most of the little projects will be done.  Everything is coming together in a way that makes me feel really good about having our house set up conveniently, ergonomically, and practically for the arrival of our son!