Thursday, May 5, 2011

Perhaps I'm Gestating an Elephant


Happy International Midwives Day! I would love to celebrate by going into labor, but unfortunately that's not looking likely. One of these days I will have a baby...I promise :)

So I went to Dr. Bowen's yesterday. He was out on a delivery and Dr. Wall couldn't stay and see me because he had to do rounds....so I didn't get to see a Dr. I *did* have them do a urine dip and take my BP (which was pretty normal...not bad considering I had rushed in and was stressed about driving all the way out there without getting to talk to Dr. B). So really, there's no update. I didn't get results from my urine, but I figure if there was anything super exciting, they'd have told me. I set up my NST for next week on Tuesday.

So on paper, today I'm 41 weeks....but I'm not entirely convinced and here's why: We had a miscarriage on July 20th of last year....so I'm clearly not more than 41 weeks because the math doesn't add up. We're pretty faithful NFP charters, but hadn't started charting right after the miscarriage because I didn't know it was possible to get pregnant again just a few weeks later :) I got to the point a few weeks after the miscarriage where I just was feeling terrible and it would hit me about the same time every day. After a few days of it, I said to Ben "Man, it almost feels like I'm pregnant!" But we didn't think that was even possible.....joke was on us :) When we found out, we were of course thrilled, but had no idea when we had conceived.....but knew that it was most certainly a "new" baby...and not a continuation of pregnancy #3.

So, all we had to go on was an ultra sound at Dr. B's. While in the room way back then, the tech said the baby looked "about 10 weeks" and asked if that sounded right to us. I said that seemed a little further along than I felt since I'd only been feeling crummy for about a week (the three times before, we'd found out we were preggers at 4-5 weeks and I had a few weeks after than before I started to feel sick). I told her if I had to guess, I would have said I was 8-9 weeks. (also, both of my girls were "big fast" according to ultra sounds...in fact, with my first, they wanted to change the due date by several weeks....we didn't let them because, like I said, we're faithful charters and knew exactly when we conceived)....but since we didn't have anything else to go on, she said, "well, it looks like 10 weeks and today is Thursday, so we'll call you 10 weeks today and set a "made up" due date for 30 weeks from now...let's see...that's April 28th.".

Growth at 20 week ultra sound was consistent with me having been 10 wks at the first ultra sound, so no one said anything.

Two weeks ago, my midwife measured me at 36cm and last week I was measured at 38cm. While that's not an exact indicator, your measurement and wks gestation are about the same. I didn't get measured yesterday because I didn't actually have an exam.....so we'll see.

I think saying all of this is more for my sanity than anyone else's concern. Dr. Wall gets a little excited, but he's new to this game :) Anyway, it's possible that our math was off and I'm actually 40 wks THIS week, not last week....either way, I still feel fine, bp is good, baby movement is good...all that jazz.....

I had three days (Sun, Mon, Tues) of real crampiness for a few hours each day...some low back pain, but no real pattern of contractions....and nothing I couldn't walk/talk through...just kinda made me go "Oh Man!" and feel like I needed to get up and walk around. Other than that, I've had no early labor signs. At some point I'll have a baby...I just don't want to end up in a situation where I'm being treated and possibly pressured as though I'm 42 weeks when I'm really not. I just keep praying and taking deep breaths...trying to stay relaxed and enjoy a day of sunshine...and work on making this baby is faced the right way....felt some little feet up top again yesterday...gotta get him turned around!!

One of these days, even if we're were wrong about the initial due date, I will hit 40 weeks....if it's not today, then it'll be soon :) Come on Baby! M keeps telling me to call the midwives to tell them we want to have the baby today :) Oh how excited I am to be able to fulfill her wish.....