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!