Monday, July 20, 2015

38 Weeks Pregnant and Midwife Appointment!



I was 38 weeks pregnant on July 13th.

According to thebump.com, the Traffic Cone is the size of a pumpkin.

The Baby

She may have as much as an inch of hair, but if heartburn is a sign of hair she is going to come out pretty much bald.

She is slowly shedding the white vernix, but she will probably still be born with some, which is good for her skin. 

She is around 20 in long and weighs around 7 pounds. I have a feeling she is actually longer, but I could be wrong. 

Her head is about the same circumference as her abdomen. 

She has really started moving a lot, and they are strong movements. She moves mostly during the afternoon and early morning. 

The Mama

This week is VBS at our church and I am in charge of all the media stuff, so it has been a lot of early mornings and then I get a second wind late at night and am up late, so I'm rather tired during the day. It is also causing some swelling in my feet, but nothing to bad. My blood pressure has been fine, even during Braxton Hicks. 

I have been feeling more Braxton Hicks contractions since I started taking the Evening Primrose and drinking the Raspberry Leaf Tea. 

Last week I was sleeping like a baby, and this week I am barely sleeping at all, I can't get comfortable and I am constantly getting up to go to the bathroom. 

We have the nursery all set up, I only have three more projects left I just have to sew them on my machine, so I've been putting that off. Hopefully I can get to them before she gets here. I packed her diaper bag and I have everything all ready to go for her when we go into labor.    

I tried to get into my classroom this week to get it set up for my sub, but it looks like I will probably just be setting up the bare minimum a few days before school starts. Which may be nice, but the baby will definitely be here by then and so it will really just depend on when I deliver as to whether it is better or worse.

Since she has changed her activity. She is now more active in the afternoon hours, instead of at night/evening so Bobby hasn't be able to feel her move in a while. Last night I was trying to get her to move so he could feel her, but she was having none of it. He said, "I miss her and she isn't even here yet." It was the sweetest thing. 

The Midwife Appointment

The baby is doing great and has a really strong heartbeat.

I had another high blood pressure and even though they are only high at my appointments they wanted to go ahead and due blood work and a 24 hour urine sample to rule out preeclampsia. On Friday they called and my blood work came back with elevated liver enzymes so they sent me to the hospital for more blood work, the start of a 24 urine then, instead of Sunday at home, and to monitor my blood pressure every 15 min for 2 hours, along with a Non Stress Test (NST) on the baby.

We get to the hospital around 4 pm and it takes us an hour to get admitted since no one can tell us where to go so we rode the elevator a couple of times. Finally at 5 pm we are in a room in L & D getting hooked up. My first blood pressure was high (not surprising, we were pretty frustrated no one could tell us where to go), but the rest during the 2 hour period were fine. They took my blood work again and again it came back with high liver enzymes and they decided to make me stay for the full 24 hour urine collection and they monitored my blood pressure and did a NST every 4 hours. We still aren't sure why it was needed that we stay I could have done the urine at home and monitored my blood pressure at home, and then brought the urine back to to them Saturday night.

The urine collection started at 6:30 pm so we were stuck at the hospital until we got the results of that after 6:30 pm on Saturday. This was a really long 24 hours. Of course the night was long, being woken up every 4 hours for blood pressure and a NST. Besides the fact that hospital beds are one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever slept on. Bobby's chair-bed looked more comfortable. The one fortunate thing is that even though they are supposed to check on us every hour, the nurses stuck to the every 4 hour schedule since we weren't in labor and had no baby to check on.

Several of the NSTs took a while. The baby kept moving around so much that it was hard to get a consistent reading for the 20 min that they needed. She didn't like the monitor and would push against it and move.

Finally, 6:30 rolled around, and around 7:30 they came back and said the protein in my urine was 217 mg and since anything under 300 mg is ok that we could go home. I only had two high blood pressures in the whole 24 hour period and that was at 5 pm on Friday when we got there and then 24 hours later at 5 pm on Saturday, although the Saturday one was only 3 digits over the limit compared to the 10 or so digits it was over on Friday.

We finally left at 8:00 pm Saturday evening. I got a full 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep Saturday night at home, not even a bathroom break, then took a 2 hour nap Sunday afternoon and I'm pretty sure I could to bed tonight by 10 and pass out without a problem. Crazy!

I have to call the Birth Center on Monday morning and follow up and see what the next steps are. Although I don't have preeclampsia, I could still get it so there is a chance we will be induced within the next week or so, especially since we are at term on the 20th (39 weeks). Even though I really don't want to be induced, I also don't want to develop preeclampsia, so I'm not really sure what is going to happen. I really hope she decides to come on her own and soon, but I'm thinking she is a couple weeks from being ready as I haven't really had any symptoms that labor is imminent. 

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