24 weeks and ultrasound

Today is 24 weeks exactly.

Emotionally, I'm a little conflicted. Happy and excited and relieved to be this far. But also, really sad that I couldn't have made it this far with Olivia. When I got sick with her at 23+2, 24 weeks was an impossible milestone. She would have died inside me and I probably wouldn't have made it either. But still, I would have willingly died to get this far if it would have saved her. I've made peace with the fact that it wasn't actually a choice between her or me, if we hadn't delivered when we did it would have been both of us pretty quickly. But still, every milestone we reach with Lucas is a bittersweet reminder of all of the milestones we weren't able to reach Olivia. Why couldn't my pregnancy have went like this the first time? It isn't that we aren't excited and happy about our little boy, we are, but it doesn't take away from missing our baby girl so very much. Being pregnant again is so much harder than I expected it to be.

Anyway, my ultrasound was supposed to be tomorrow, but since they've called a weather state of emergency for tomorrow, and we're supposed to be getting a bunch of ice, sleet, and then a blizzard, when they called and asked if I could come in today, I said okay. Luckily, my mom's school was released early for the weather and she was able to meet me there. I have a phobia about going to ultrasounds alone now, because when I got bad news with Olivia (over and over again), it always worked out that I was alone- even in the hospital, I had just sent Joe home to get food and let the dogs out when they figured out I had HELLP. So anyway, my strategy for ultrasounds this time has been have someone with me and the bad news will stay away. I was relieved my mom could make it.

So, the ultrasound was pretty much entirely good. Baby Lucas really wasn't as active today but it was during his 1 pm naptime and I could feel him moving most of last night (ALL night even through 2-4 am) and most of this morning. (He was moving around, just not upside down and all over the place, he mostly stayed in the same position for once.) His heart rate was 150 and his shortest measurement was 25+1, his biggest measurement was 25+6 (I think that was his femur), when they averaged it together he is now about 8 days ahead, estimated weight 1 lb 13 ounces (pretty good for 24 weeks exactly), and he's in the 66% for growth. My fluid levels look good and everything else looked good. (They didn't do a blood flow study.) At one point during the ultrasound he kicked me so hard the tech felt it and my mom saw it on my belly. He was laying horizontally, looking down, with his legs stretched out all the way down. I really didn't get any good pictures this time, he was in a bad position and she gave me a couple of face shots, a not very good picture of his legs stretched out, and another "boy!" picture. Not that there's been any doubt before, but he's definitely still a boy, today's picture was very clear about that.

My mom asked the ultrasound tech a bunch of questions about the notching for me. (They aren't going to look at blood flow again for now unless his growth slows down or I start showing concerning symptoms/blood pressure acts up). It turns out it was only in one artery (as opposed to two), and was really really mild. I feel better about it since his growth has actually gotten better instead of worse. With Olivia, it was about 4 weeks from the time she first started falling behind to the time I had HELLP,  so I feel like this hopefully should guarantee us at least four more weeks.

The dizziness  is still hanging on. I didn't do my gestational diabetes test this morning because they were originally expecting the ice to start at 6 am today and I didn't want to be out on the roads in that. I'm hoping to get it done Friday and I'm going to call my doctor's office on Thursday and ask them to write another lab slip for them to test me for anemia at the same time- might as well limit my number of blood draws and I really think the dizziness is probably either just an annoying pregnancy thing or anemia and not gestational diabetes. I wouldn't be surprised if I have both GD and anemia, but I haven't found any mention of GD causing dizziness and I tried doing the GD diet and it really didn't help the dizziness at all. (But the dizziness actually went away last night after I ate steak and broccoli for dinner.) Anyway, I'm hoping that the roads will get clear enough that maybe on Friday I can get the tests done, but in the meantime I guess I'll just have to deal with dizzy afternoons. At least it doesn't seem to be bothering or hurting the baby, whatever it is.

Last but not least:
Ginormous belly at 24 weeks, I'm definitely not complaining, if huge belly= huge baby, then bring it on. I'm just glad my back doesn't really hurt, strangely it hurt a lot in the first trimester so much that I asked my high risk doctor about it (worried that the epidural with Olivia had somehow screwed up my spine because that's where it hurt), but now that I'm huge, no back pain.