30 weeks, 0 days - Belly pic & Glucose Update

Please disregard the silly shorts I'm wearing in this photo and focus on the mighty fine bump I'm sporting directly above them.  Lookin pretty pregnant these days, no?  And, just for fun, since we're 3/4 of the way there, here's a recap:

That's 6 weeks, 20 weeks, and 30 weeks.  I have a 10 week photo but it's a closer shot so it doesn't actually fit into the collage. And really, it doesn't look any different than 6 weeks so this works.  Anyway, HOLY MOSES!  Look how huge I am!  I mean, I feel huge but when I see the pics side-by-side like this, it really makes me recognize HOW huge I've gotten.  30 weeks.  I can't believe it's been this long!!  I wonder how long we'll go.  My mom said that her babies were all at least two weeks late.  My friend Megan went about 2 weeks before her due date.  Oh my goodness, I just can't believe it's coming so soon!
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Well, I got the results of my glucose test; I failed.  :(  It doesn't necessarily mean anything yet, other than I have to take a more sensitive test.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do that or not, as my doctor referred me directly to an endocrinologist.  Generally, if you fail the first test, they give you another one during which they check your levels more frequently.  Since she referred me straight to a diabetes doctor, they might have a different procedure.  Who knows?  Anyway, my appointment is tomorrow at 1:20.

I'm very sad.  I'm trying to keep reminding myself that it doesn't mean anything yet, but it makes me very sad, still.  I feel like I've tried so hard to be so good and watch my diet so closely, but all I can focus on is all of the other things I COULD have been doing or should have been doing.   I'm just so very sad.

29 weeks, 5 days - Dr. Appointment & More Gender Nonsense

Well, I had another glucose test today.  And, I'm again embarrassed to report that I really like that juice they give you.  You know, the one EVERYONE hates.  Ha!  Oh jeez.  I'm so disgusting.  Hopefully, nothing got messed up this time.  The doctor told me to call her tomorrow to go over the results, but she expects all to be just fine.

As for everything else, the word 'perfect' was again bandied about.  :)  Dr. Lashgari isn't quite as free with her compliments as Dr. Elliot is, though, so it was just about the size of my belly this time.  She was very cute; I pulled up my shirt to bare my belly and she exclaimed, "oh, look at that cute little belly!  You've popped!"  It was cute.  I just love that practice.  Anyway, my blood pressure is fine, weight is great, and as I said earlier, she measured my belly with a tape measure and reported that it's just perfect.  Baby's heart rate is 131.  Next appointment is on June 18th.  We're supposed to have them every two weeks from here on out, but we'll be on our Babymoon in two weeks, so we scheduled three weeks out.

So, now that I've visited the doctor again, it's time to revisit our gender predictions.  The old wives say that heart rates above 140 signal a girl.  Looks like we've stabilized around 130, so that suggests a boy.  They also say that if you carry the baby all in your belly, out front, that it's a boy.  I seem to be gaining weight pretty evenly around my belly, hips, and thighs, so that suggests a girl.  Still craving salty and sweet about the same, so that doesn't help.  I think I'm carrying kind of low -- which would suggest a girl -- but I don't have anything to compare it to really, so I don't know if that one counts or not.  The only new thing we really have is that Matt and I were at his cousin Jaime's wedding this weekend and his family was giving their take: Aunt Kathy, Aunt Cindy and Cousin Michelle all said girl.  Soo... pretty much, we're no further along in the gender prediction boat.  It's looking like the guessing is finally evening out, though.  I think at this point, we've got Gramma Rehbein, Aunt Stevie, Aunt Amy, Aunt Holly, Bossman Mike, Neighbor Allison, Co-worker Lynn, Friend Drew, and Mama (me) who say boy, while we've got Great-Aunt Kathy, Great-Aunt Cindy, Cousin Michelle, Dear Friend Sheri, and Dad (Matt) who say girl.  Now that I've listed them all out, I guess we're not quite even yet; still have a few more boys than girls.  What a fun game!! :)

28 weeks, 6 days - A Note from Dad

Really starting to get real

The fact that the little one poking out of Amanda’s belly every few seconds will soon be introducing her/himself to the world has started to become very real.  I feel a bit guilty saying that; it has been real up until now, but when I realized how soon Baby will actually be here, that feeling kicked up several notches.  I might be more in the neighborhood of where Amanda has been for a while now, getting kicked and prodded every which way at all hours.

I don’t know what has changed, but this weekend, I was telling Aunt Amy and Uncle Dave how, since the pregnancy, I’ve become a lot more aware of the historical value of the time we’re currently in and how much I think about the need to capture or document it for our impending posterity (on that note again, Amanda’s well ahead of me with her blogs).  Specifically I was saying how I want to make sure we get a picture of me, Amanda, and baby standing by the car before we make the trek to Georgia, as this’ll be a nice picture with a good story behind it.  Halfway through this point, just how soon that moment would be here washed over me, along with a few healthy flashes of panic.  When that moment does come, there’s going to be a baby around—and not just for nice moments but all the time.  That rather stopped me in my tracks.

This was a good thing to realize.  Besides the fact that I need to be going forward with bug eyes wide open, the panic and fear left almost immediately, replaced by happier realizations such as the time will also soon be here when Amanda and I are living under the same roof again.

And as if to make sure I didn’t get too panicked or begin to take my moment of clarity too seriously, Aunt Amy and Uncle Dave laughed at me for quite a while when I told them how I had to stop talking about when the baby comes because it’s freaking me out.  Almost like they were really enjoying seeing me in that state, kind of like they knew all about it.  Jerks.

28 weeks, 5 days - Dear Baby

Dear Baby -

You're getting very big these days!  Right now, you're approximately 15 inches long and you weigh over 2lbs!  I can't believe how big and developed you are!  You are very squirmy and really seem to enjoy moving around in the middle of the night.  You don't seem to react differently to spicy or sweet foods, but I have seen you react to light.  It's kind of neat to watch you move across my belly when a bright light shines on you.  You're probably getting very crowded in there, as you're growing very fast at this point.  My website says that you're the size of a pumpkin, but I don't think it's ever seen the pumpkins we carve at Halloween.  That would be very large, indeed!

You seem to get the hiccups very frequently, which really shows that you're my offspring; Papa Fred used to call me, "the hiccup kid" because I got them so frequently as a child and I still get them at least once a day now.  I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable when I poke you, but I think it's very neat to feel my tummy and see where it's soft and where it's hard so I can try to visualize how you're laying and what you look like.  Based on the movements and bumps I keep feeling, you must be very strong.

I go back and forth on whether I think you're a boy or a girl.  At first, I was sure you were a girl then I was sure you were a boy.  Now, I just have no idea.  It doesn't matter to me, though.  I'm just so very excited to meet you.  Over the next few weeks, you have a whole bunch of weight to gain.  Apparently, you're only going to get a little bit longer but you should get a whole lot heavier before you come out to meet us.  I've been getting very nervous about meeting you and talking to a lot of people about how they knew it was time to go to the hospital.  Very nervous, but again, very excited, too.

Your dad is busy setting up your nursery in Atlanta and I have all of the things I think you'll need for the first few days of your life here with me in Washington, DC.  Well, not all of the things.  I don't have any diapers yet, but I'll worry about those a little bit closer to your due date.  My coworkers at IBM had a very nice shower for me a couple of weeks ago and my good friends Holly, Sheri, and Jeremy are planning a welcome party for you in early July.  Nana Deb is also planning a party so that all of her friends and our family can get to meet you once you're born.  Everyone is very very excited for your arrival... but we hope it's not too soon.  Better if you stay where you're at for a while yet.

Love you, Baby!  Can't wait to meet you!
love mama

28 weeks, 4 days - Belly pic!

Full disclosure: I took this pic on Saturday, so it was really at 28 weeks and 2 days as opposed to the 28 plus 4 that I titled it, but since I didn't post until today, I thought this would be the right heading.  If that's not officially showing, I don't know what is.  As you know, I'm following the month/trimester guidance posted on Babycenter.com, so by that calendar, I'm 6.5 months along.  My What to Expect When You're Expecting book, however, has me listed at 7 months.  As you can see, I'm for sure showing, but I really expected to be a lot bigger by 7 months.  Weird.  I keep reminding myself what the doctor said last time, "you're not going to believe how huge you're going to get." It's just funny.  Not complaining or anything, I just had a really different impression of how big I'd get at what point when I got pregnant.  Thank you television for setting completely false expectations.  :)

Anyway, I'm still feeling pretty good, so no complaints! Getting a little nauseous from time to time which is pretty annoying, since I thought I dodged that bullet in the first trimester.  I can't be sure it's pregnancy nausea, but I have read that it is not uncommon for nausea to come back in the third trimester so I think there's a good chance that's what it is.  Annoying.  But yeah, aside from that, hooray for feeling good and not having complications!!  I think I might have to start going to the doctor every two weeks or so after my next appointment so they can monitor my blood pressure and make sure there's no signs of preclampsia or other problems but more frequent appointments make the time seem to go by faster.  Which is good and bad, really, I guess.  Good because I'm super excited to meet Baby; bad because holy moly, we are so not ready to have a baby!!!

28 weeks, 0 days - Welcome to the Third Trimester!

Holy moses!  Where did the time go?!  THIRD trimester?  I can't believe it.  I remember counting days until the first trimester was over so we'd be out of the woods on the miscarriage issue but I can't believe we're already in the third!!!  I guess there were a lot of exciting events in the second trimester, so it made it easier to focus on smaller milestones which meant I didn't notice the time passing as much.  Crazy.  I have to think time this trimester will pass very quickly also as there are a lot of things going on between Andrew's wedding, the babymoon, sitting for Carter, my welcome baby party, packing/moving and increasingly frequent dr. appointments.  How wild. 

Do any of you know how big your uterus gets?  I can't imagine that it's going to be able to get much higher in my stomach because Baby seems to really enjoy having a foot in my right rib.  It's very uncomfortable.  I'm able to poke her enough that she moves it, but I wonder how much worse that's going to get as she gets bigger.  I've heard that later in pregnancy it gets hard to breathe as the baby gets bigger and your uterus presses against your lungs.  But how high does it go?  Does it go all the way up to your solar plexis?  I have to think that's going to get uncomfortable to have a baby in your ribs all the time.  Weird.

Hooray!!  Third trimester!!  I just can't believe it!!

27 weeks, 5 days - Belly Changes

It's very interesting to me how much my belly changes throughout a single day.  There are times when it's very soft and it's hardly a belly at all.  Then there are others when it's super hard and I pass a mirror and it looks like I'm smuggling a cantaloupe around under my dress.  And the fluctuations can come within minutes.  It's so weird.

Last night, I was lying in bed feeling my tummy and it felt very, very soft.  That was a little alarming to me because you always think about and read about pregnant bellies being hard.  So I started poking around a bit.  I'd say more than 75% of it was very soft but there were a few spots that felt like I had big rocks under the skin.  and they were all lined up, so I figured that baby was laying with her back to my back and her face toward my tummy, so I was feeling her head, feet and knees.  That was pretty cool.  It's still very bizarre to me that there's a baby inside me.  A nearly fully formed baby.  Babycenter says that if Baby was born right now, her little lungs would be able to function.  It's just so wild to me that she's so far along when she still has so long to cook!

27 weeks, 4 days - Baby Shower at Work

On Friday, work threw a shower for Mika and me.  I was NOT looking forward to it.  Not having had a graduation party for either highschool or college and not having had a shower as I'm not married <cue jokes about not having the OTHER kind of shower either>, I was very uncomfortable at the prospect.  I'm totally comfortable in front of a group of people.  I've done tons of theatre and I'm very good at giving speeches and presentations.  Completely comfortable.  This, however, shook me.  I didn't want to go and I didn't want to participate.  Of course, I couldn't really back out, though.  But what a pleasant surprise I was in for.

As much as I have no love for what I do, I was a little overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness everyone showed.  There were games, but there weren't ones where Mika and I were "on stage."  Everyone participated and everyone was equal.  Mika and I did kind of get on stage to open gifts, but we were there together so it wasn't everyone staring at me while I opened presents.  Which is just so weird.  I was so glad they did a joint shower.   Anyway, the people we work with are just so so lovely and kind.  As our "main" gifts, we each received our monitors.  Just for the record, the one Matt and I registered for was $300.  And ON TOP of that, we got a bunch of other wonderful gifts.  I just can't describe how generous people were and how touched I was that they were THAT generous!  Really, Mika and I talked about it later and it's just so amazing that we work with such loving and supportive people.  How lucky we are.

We also got some pictures and there are few where my belly is fully on display.  Since I haven't posted a belly pic in awhile, I thought you might enjoy seeing these:

 

Belly looks pretty girthy in this one, no?  Anyway, there you have it.  What a nice group of people we have surrounding us.  What lucky girls we are. 

P.S. I just can't believe how much bigger Mika's belly is than mine.  I don't know how well you can tell from the angle of that photo, but it's really really amazing to me what a difference it can be between two people. 

26 weeks, 4 days - Freakshow Alien Baby

I'm officially grossed out by the baby.

At our last appointment, the doctor was trying to listen to Baby's heart beat but every time he pressed on my tummy with the thing-a-ma-jobbie, Baby rolled over.  Dr. Elliot laughed a little bit and told Baby to sit still so he could get it and then chased Baby around a bit before finally getting the heartbeat.  I asked him if he could actually see Baby moving and he said, "oh yes."  I was kind of excited about that because I'd never seen anything like it before, so I started paying attention to my belly during particularly active times.  The first few nights, I'd notice a bump or something but by the time I looked, it was well over.  I'd sit and stare at my belly for awhile then nothing else would happen, so I'd look away and then Baby would kick again.

A couple of nights ago, however, I got what I thought I wanted.  Turns out, I did not, actually, want to see the baby moving around inside my tummy.  It really freaked me out.  I wonder if that's why my dad got so scared during the Alien movies; maybe it reminded him too much of his own babies...?  Anyway, I noticed Baby being very active and caught a few bumps under my shirt, so I pulled it up to look directly at my tummy.  And I saw weird churning, bumping, and rolling around inside my belly.  It really looked like something straight out of a horror movie.  I stared at it for awhile a little freaked out, then heard Jeremy come upstairs to use the bathroom.  I called him into my bedroom and as soon as he walked in, there was movement all the way across my tummy.  He screamed like a little girl.  After he regained his composure, we both just stared at it, grossly hypnotized until Baby settled down enough that we started talking about how gross and freakish it was. 

What a good mom I'm going to be. 

26 weeks, 0 days - How big's the baby? Soo big!

I've been posting image after image of how big my belly is getting and comparison after comparison of what fruit Baby resembles.  I have not, however, posted any pics of what Baby looks like at this point.  Again, I use babycenter.com, so if you use that site, you've seen this before.  If not, here's what Baby supposedly looks like at 26 weeks:

Not the best of pictures, but you can see how fully formed she is.  Just needs to put on a few lbs.  How exciting!  Also, I think my tummy is starting to grow in earnest now.  I wore a pair of Amy's maternity pants to work today and they fit like the most wonderful thing in the world.  They don't fall down.  They don't cut off my air supply.  They're so incredibly comfortable that they almost feel like jammies.  Hooray for maternity clothes!! 

25 weeks, 6 days - Less than 100 days?!

Holy moses!  I can't believe I didn't notice!  We're down to 99 days until our due date!!

25 weeks, 6 days - Glucose Screening Results... sort of...

So, anyone who has been reading these postings knows that I've been a little nervous about my diabetes test (or, as they call it in the industry, my glucose screening) because I'm supposed to be at a higher risk for gestational diabetes due to the family history of Type I.  As Matt reported on Monday, I had my blood drawn for the screen and was able to call for results as early as Tuesday morning.  When I called yesterday, they told me that the results weren't in yet and that I should try again in the afternoon or the next day (which is today).  I tried yesterday at 4:15, but the office closes at 4:00, so I just missed them. No biggie.  Results would be ready this am, right?  <sigh>

The receptionist I spoke with pulled up my file and said, "Um, I have no idea what this means.  Let me talk to the doctor."  After a couple of minutes, she got back on the phone and said, "Um... so... there's a discrepancy with your results so Dr. Lashgari doesn't want me to give them to you yet.  Basically, they're still pending.  We'll call you if there's a problem."  A little flustered, I asked if I'd hear anything if there wasn't  an issue and she told me that I would not.  So I asked when I could expect to hear if there was, in fact, a problem.  She said it shouldn't be more than three days, so if I haven't heard anything from them in three days, everything is normal.  Blerg. 

I was not reassured by these results.  It does not put my mind at ease with regard to the possibility of having diabetes.  Again, I know it wouldn't be the end of the world if I do and that it would likely go away after I have the baby, but I still don't want to have it.
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Update:
The doctor called me back about 10 minutes ago.  Apparently, the "discrepancy" is that the lab screwed up and I need to retake the test.  While it doesn't put my mind at ease about having diabetes, at least it wasn't some oddly abnormal results that they wanted to have rerun.  The doctor gave me several options on what to do and I chose to just do the same test over again.  She said that it's supposed to be done between 24 and 28 weeks but, if I want, I can just do it at my next appointment.  I'll be 29 weeks then, but she said it will be fine.  She also said that in most cases, with someone of my age with my height and weight ratio, she'd just say "screw it" but she doesn't want to do that with me because of Daddy.  She repeated that I'm at increased risk due to his history.

Sooo... yeah.  I'm going to pick up the bottle of glucose drink tonight on my way home.  The Dr. also said that I can come in without an appointment if I'm starting to worry.  Since it's just having my blood drawn, I can just pop in and pop back out.  That's a nice option to have, too.  But I'll probably just wait until my next appointment.  The office isn't far away, but it's not really on my way anywhere either.  So it's back to the drawing board as far as diabetes results are concerned.  Blerg.