March!

 First of all, thanks for thinking of us and for for all your nice comments and notes, we really appreciate it!

I love making it to a new month still pregnant. With Olivia, there were so many months that I was still "supposed to be" pregnant and wasn't. October. November. December. January. I even kept counting in my head how many weeks I should have been just to torture myself until it got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. Those months and weeks and days were such a crappy never ending blur.

But here we are in March with only one more month change left! Granted, we'll miss out on May I hope, but as far as I'm concerned weeks 37-40 of pregnancy don't sound like much fun to me anyway, I'll happily skip them and meet our little (big) guy instead.

Speaking of the little-big guy, I think he's gone through a growth spurt since Friday. For one, I noticed yesterday in the mirror that my belly seems to be sticking out more and even the nurse practitioner thought so. (Fundal height is measuring at about 29 weeks which is actually right in line with the baby's size predicted via ultrasound.) I haven't gained any weight in the last 3 weeks which isn't really bad and isn't really great since I'm supposed to be gaining a bit now, but whatever, I'm not exactly starving either of us. (Actually I'm kind of baffled by it.) Anyway, the other reason I think he's had a growth spurt is because I can now usually SEE him moving via my belly and all of a sudden his movements are a lot stronger. I think on Friday he'll do very well for the monitoring if what I've been feeling all day long is any indication.

Speaking of the monitoring, so the deal Friday was that he was having sharp variables/ drops, which like I said, they don't *like* to see, and it wasn't so much that he was having them in general, it was just that 4 in 20 minutes is a lot and they were pretty sharp. On Monday, his only variable/drop was much smaller. *AND* normally they don't do monitoring for 27-28 weekers. For 32 weekers, after they establish a baseline they want to see his heart rate go up for 15 seconds by 15 beats per minute. They call this "reactive" but basically it means passing. (A "reactive" NST is supposed to ensure fetal well being for about 3 days.) Anything less than that is by definition "non reactive" or in teacher terms, failing. But he's at a disadvantage since he's only 28 weeks and they don't really expect to see the "15 by 15" yet, for him, they are looking more for a "10 by 10"...10 seconds/10 beats per minute acceleration in conjunction with movement. She was going to give us a new label and call it "reassuring for gestational age". BUT. He ended up moving enough that she ended up calling it "reactive" instead. And then the biophysical profile (BPP) was the same as last time, breathing but not long enough, he was too busy moving around by then for that pesky breathing crap and who needs to practice breathing anyway when you have a mom to do that for you....except this time he "passed" the BPP because the reactive NST is worth 2 points. So on Friday he had a 6/10, fail, because -2 for NST and -2 for breathing. Monday was 8/10, -2 for breathing which is still not really bad this early. She said they are going to do a full BPP every appointment until 30ish weeks or so probably because the NST's will likely be iffy with the 15 by 15 standard. And we're officially twice weekly until the very end. Thank god I'm not working because there's no way I could keep up with all of these appointments and work.

I saw the nurse practitioner and my OB yesterday, though the NP did the appointment and my OB just stopped my briefly to talk. They aren't worried about all of the variables/drops that we saw Friday and think it was probably immaturity/movement/etc. and not something that's a big deal like a cord issue or whatever. And they were especially happy with the results from Monday. And that he's measuring so big after Olivia was so tiny. They have no idea why I haven't had a repeat blood flow study and apparently there was even a high risk doctor's order for another one in one of the reports that they never did, which should have been done a long time ago. She said she was going to put another order in for it but I'm kind of over it since he's obviously growing okay and I'm not showing any signs of trouble. But, whatever. We scheduled a fun 3D ultrasound for March 28th/ 32 weeks. That will be a great way to celebrate making it that far. Those pictures sort of creep me out, to be honest, but I really suck at surprises/secrets/etc. and I can't wait to see what he looks like. I hesitated to do it for a minute when I asked if they thought it would be overkill since I'm basically having a half hour ultrasound twice a week for the BPP. (But it's not like I get to see his face or anything, we are mostly watching his abdomen for breathing.) She laughed and said nah. And I figure what's one more ultrasound at this point. So we're doing it. Hopefully. But that's forever away and I can only think one week at a time.

My blood sugar fasting numbers have been borderline high since I started testing. My ob would like it under 90, high risk ob would like it under 95, I'm usually around 93 and sometimes 97-98, etc. It's not outrageously high that they knew I needed meds right away, and I've played around with the diet and even when I follow it exactly and eat a protein before bed (protein is supposed to level blood sugar out which sucks for me because I'm not much of a fan of any foods with protein), my levels will be high...actually higher than when I don't follow the stupid diet at all. They don't want me exercising and after I went crazy this weekend "nesting" anticipating delivery at any day this week, my fasting numbers were still high. Ironically, I can eat Olive Garden (minus breadsticks and drinking water) and my blood sugar levels an hour later were *fantastic*. Like 100 when they only want them 140 or under. So, I don't understand this at all. They decided after today (fasting blood sugar level 97 for the second day in a row, and last night I tried not eating a snack or anything before bed at all) to put me on meds. Right now it's just one pill at night and we'll see how it goes. So I guess I would have failed the 3 hour and I'm glad I didn't bother to take it. I'm nervous that the baby's growth will slow down (although I don't want a 10 lb 36 weeker and I don't want his blood sugar to be messed up), my high risk ob's nurse talked about his growth being at 78% like it is a bad thing. Um, after a severely growth restricted 1 percentile baby, 78 percentile sounds fantastic to me. (But I think she was just trying to convince me that meds are a good idea even though I really didn't need to be convinced, if they had put me on meds from the start that would have been fine by me.) I'm also a little curious to see if this is going to make me start losing weight because I'm already not really gaining...they aren't really concerned with me not gaining at this point but I'm pretty sure they don't want me gaining. But anyway, we'll see. I'm actually okay with it if I even need to go on insulin shots, I'm already doing lovenox shots so it's not like it really will be anything new.

So this week means a lot of exciting stuff. For one, March! Also, the first time I've ever been in the third trimester and 7 months pregnant, only 8 weeks to go.

Anyway, here's our big growth spurt picture:

I'm kind of liking that the bigger my belly gets, the smaller it makes my butt look in comparison.