Eleven Weeks and Yesterday’s Appointment
How your baby’s growing: Your fig-sized baby is now fully formed — measuring 1 1/2 inches long and weighing in at a quarter of an ounce. His skin is still transparent, allowing many of his blood vessels to show through. Some of his bones are beginning to harden, and tiny toothbuds are starting to appear under his gums. His fingers and toes have separated, and he may soon be able to open and close his fists. He’s already busy kicking and stretching, and his tiny movements are so fluid they look like water ballet. These movements will increase as his body grows and becomes more developed and functional. As his diaphragm develops, your tiny tenant may also start to get the hiccups. Because he’s still so small, though, you won’t feel any of his workouts or intrauterine gulps until sometime between weeks 16 and 20.
I was amazed that I felt Sadie at 16 weeks. Very early for a first baby, but then she was a very violent occupant.
Anyway, all is well. Morning sickness seems finally to be fading (I hope I’m not cursing myself!). I still pee about four times a night, though, which is getting really old. *shrug*
Had an appointment yesterday. All is well except for my blood pressure, which has decided to quit hanging out at borderline and go high again. I’m really grumpy about it. Every time we have to fiddle with the meds it knocks me out, and the crappy sleep has left me borderline catatonic anyway. I’ve got so freaking much to do in the next few weeks and I’m sitting here dizzy and barely able to keep my eyes open. Grrr.
I absolutely love the nurse I see in that office, though. She gets it. She totally gets it. And of course, I absolutely love the midwife I see. She even negotiated the meds increase with my PCP yesterday and left me a message about it herself. Saved me an extra trip in, a copay, and from having to undergo the grilling about what I must be doing wrong (nevermind that we increased meds several times last pregnancy and this is, so far as I can tell, absolutely normal for a hypertensive type). I guess the healthy eating thing must be paying off, though, even if my blood pressure is unimpressed, since I have yet to gain any weight at all. I’m actually down a half pound or so. With Sadie I think I gained about ten pounds in the first trimester. Amazing what some decent food and chasing a toddler around all day will do for ya.
BTW, the good food thing is all Jay. He totally took over the cooking as soon as the nausea hit, enabling me to go on eating things I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. He’s such an awesome cook.
They’re scheduling my appointment for the “big” ultrasound for middle of September, right about 17 weeks. I should find out exactly when that will be pretty soon. This is where the blood pressure thing isn’t all downside, since this is a Level II with a peri who has a very good machine (and manner...he’s fantastic) indeed. “The Cadillac of ultrasounds” is what one of the midwives called it last time, and it’s totally true. All the extra attention is because the blood pressure can cause growth problems by way of trashing the poor placenta. It’d be nicer to be normal but since I’m not I’ll take a good long look at baby as a consolation prize.
We had a chat about due date, since I couldn’t for the life of me remember what we’d settled on. All along I’ve been using 2/21, since that’s based off date of ovulation, which I happened to know since I was charting at the time (this is the date I’m using to get 11 weeks today). That’s what you get when you plug my O date into an online calculator. Add two days and you get what I figured we’d have as a due date, 2/23. You have those extra two days floating around because that’s the date from LMP (last menstrual period). What I didn’t realize since our dates matched last time is that they use Naegele’s rule, which actually makes my official due date 2/26. I’m not displeased with their date being almost a week later than my date, though. Since the child will be summarily evicted at 39 weeks, setting that 40 week mark a bit further out helps ensure that the poor thing will be fully cooked, so to speak. (As far as I can tell, 40 calendar weeks falls on the 23rd. LMP started on Thursday, the 23rd is a Thursday, see? The 26th is actually a Sunday, or 40 weeks 3 days. It seems that when you get there, though, instead of counting up they count back, so 39 weeks will translate into a week before the due date, or 39 weeks 3 days...or really, 39 weeks 5 days by my count from O. I’m assuming that they won’t do an “elective” C on a Sunday, or before 39 weeks without a specific medical indication [liability insurance, don’t you know], so we’d be looking at the 20th...which is a holiday, so we may end up even later! I wonder if we’ll have to go before that and wind up with an Aquarius, or if we’ll wind up on the due date I originally had and find ourselves proud parents of a Pisces. Anyway, confusing, isn’t it? Especially since all this speculation comes to naught if you go into labor or if something doesn’t go quite right, like happened with Sadie. She made it to 39w3d before her fluid got dangerously low. I have my fingers crossed that whenever that scheduled C happens to be is when this baby comes, but I’m not sure how much hope I have for that. My babies seem to like to keep me jumping from day 1. Heh.)
Anyway, next appointment after Labor Day. We’ll finally be far enough along to hear a heartbeat, so Jay will be coming with me. Yay!
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