24 weeks (and happy V-Day!)

Today is a big milestone - 24 weeks of pregnancy. As I've mentioned before, this day is sometimes called V-Day (for "Viability Day"), because the earliest of the early micropremies CAN sometimes survive if born at this point. It isn't a certainty by any means, though. I talked about this milestone here. In the time since I wrote that post, I've learned that the little girl who I mentioned as having passed away just before 24 weeks was actually born at exactly 24 weeks of gestation. As I said, it's far from certain that a baby born this early would survive - less than 40% from the research I've done. It isn't until 27 weeks that the survival rate hits 90%, so perhaps that's a better milestone.

All that scary stuff aside, I have to remember that I haven't had any complications. My cervix looked great at my anatomy scan, and I have no reason to believe the rest of the pregnancy won't go well, too. In some ways, you HAVE to be in denial about all of the potential complications of pregnancy, or you'd psych yourself out of every having a child. Things have gone well so far, and I have to assume it's going to continue to go well.

Here's this week's picture:



I'm still feeling great. I still go to the gym five days a week, and I'm still lifting weights on four of those days. Both the midwives and the OB have said that I can continue my gym routine, so I have been (with a few modifications). I had a little bit of a rough time earlier this week, though. I don't fit in one of the glute machines anymore, so I decided to switch to lunges. It's been YEARS since I've done lunges, and I was SO SORE after doing them that first time. And, I couldn't take any Advil for it, which made it worse. I suffered through it, and I've done lunges a couple of times since. I haven't been sore again, so it just took one session of lunges for my body to get used to the new exercise.

I'm also still wearing high heels at work, which has elicited a bunch of comments. Why wouldn't I wear them still? Supposedly, your balance is thrown off during pregnancy. Anyone who knows me in real life, though, will attest to my clumsiness and complete lack of balance when I'm NOT pregnant. It hasn't really gotten worse since I've been pregnant. Besides, I have to wear boots to the office because of the snow, so I'm really only wearing them while I'm in the building. Plus, I sit at a desk all day. My pants are hemmed to the length of high heels (even my maternity pants), and I'm really really hoping I don't have to re-hem them all for flats.

All in all, things are going great!

24 week appointment

I had another regularly-scheduled doctor's appointment today, and it pretty much coincided with my 24th week of pregnancy. Everything looked good. I'm measuring right on track, and baby's heart rate was about 140 bpm. My blood pressure was good, too - 110/62. I had a bunch of questions for the midwife, and she was absolutely awesome about answering them.

I've been SO happy with our decision to go with midwives for the delivery of the baby. Their attitude about birth is exactly aligned with mine - birth is NOT an emergency in nearly all cases, so there's no reason for a ton of intervention that may not be necessary. The hospital we've chosen has a great NICU if something goes wrong, but, in the highly likely situation where things progress normally, the midwives will be able to help deliver the baby.

The other crazy thing is that it's really sinking in how far along I am in this pregnancy. I've scheduled my next appointment for about 3 weeks from now, and, after that, I start going in for biweekly appointments. Why? Because I'll be in the THIRD TRIMESTER. I can't believe how fast things are going. Our new baby boy will be here in just a few months, and I feel like there are so many things to do in the meantime. Oh well - we'll get there. Everyone does.

23 weeks and 1 day!

I've been pretty lax in posting belly pictures lately. I blame the holidays. In any case, here's the latest one that was taken today - it's at 23 weeks and 1 day.



When I see that picture, my thought is, "Wow, am I really that big?" I don't feel as big as I apparently look. I'm up about 18 pounds, which is pretty much on track. I've basically come to terms with the idea that I'm going to be gaining on the high end (35 pounds) rather than the minimum of 25 pounds. That's okay. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

I'm feeling good, for the most part. I'm comfortable when I sit and comfortable when I stand, but it's starting to get a little uncomfortable to switch between the two. Standing up after sitting for awhile can be a little painful, but not too bad. I still think I've been really lucky.

I'm still going to the gym all the time (5x a week, although it was disrupted a bit because of the holidays). I'm still lifting weights, too, although I've had to make some modifications because of my belly. I actually have found that I have a lot of energy now, which I've been using to reorganize the house and get in some long workouts. I'm not sure how long this energy is going to last.

I did have a bit of a milestone yesterday. While cooking, I dropped some food. It missed my chest and landed on my belly. That's definitely new. It's the little things, I guess...

Countdown to V-Day

Among the internet message boards, the milestone of 24 weeks of pregnancy is refered to as "V-Day," or "Viability Day." It is generally assumed that 24 weeks of gestation is the absolute earliest you could expect your child to be born and have any sort of chance of survival (although the odds are still probably less than 50/50, and a baby born that early is almost certain to have serious complications). I'm a little over 2 weeks away from that date, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

I have a friend whose daughter was born just shy of 24 weeks of gestation - I belive it was 23 weeks and 5 days or so (at that point, every single day is hugely important). After struggling for 8 days, she passed away. Her short life is always on my mind, and never more so than right now as I approach that milestone.

I think a lot of women find the first trimester to be the scariest, but I didn't. While I absolutely believe that a miscarriage is devastating, it also is (unfortunately) relatively common. It happens to a pretty large number of women. I think many women hit the end of the 1st trimester and assume smooth sailing from that point on, but I know better. Not all pregnancies that make it that far result in take-home babies.

While I would have been sad if I miscarried early on, I wasn't as attached to the baby then as I am now. Now, I'm feeling movement, and I know this baby is a boy. If something were to go wrong now, I would give birth to a BABY. The baby would probably even be alive for a very short amount of time. These next few weeks will be much scarier than the first trimester was.

Only two more weeks to V-day. That isn't enough of a milestone, though. Every day counts. I have another friend whose baby was born at 29 weeks or so, and, while he was in the NICU for quite awhile, he's fine now. Maybe that should be the next milestone for me.

Kick counts

For many years (way before we ever considered having a baby), I've been reading all sorts of articles related to pregnancy and babies. Now, I have several books on the subject that I've been reading to learn more about what's going on and what I should expect.

One of the books that I've been reading recently had a section on kick counts. I'd heard of these before, but it wasn't until I read this book that I learned how they were actually done. Essentially, kick counts are a way to try to understand if your baby is in distress. In the 3rd trimester (usually around 28 weeks or something like that), you start performing these kick counts. What you do is time how long it takes for your baby to make 10 separate movements.

In the example in the book I read, there were several examples of a hypothetical woman's kick counts. The examples ranged something like 30-60 minutes for a complete kick count (that is, it took that amount of time for the woman to notice 10 movements from her baby).

A couple of nights ago, I decided to try to do a kick count. I don't need to do it yet (many people aren't feeling movement at this point at all, and, if they are, it's often inconsistent). While lying in bed before I went to sleep, I counted 10 separate movements.

I didn't actually use a stopwatch or anything, but it took less than 5 minutes for me to feel 10 movements. At most. It was probably more like 2 minutes. It was unbelievable. Given how early I am, that's pretty crazy.

We're in trouble - this is going to be an active kid. I'm looking forward to it. :-)

Expectant mother parking

Earlier this week, I traveled to Minneapolis on business, and I traveled with a colleague. Before our return flight, we had quite a bit of time to kill, so we went to the Mall of America. It's right near the airport, and it gave us something fun to do rather than hanging out at the airport all evening.

As you'd imagine, the parking lot was quite full, but then my colleague pointed out that we should look for expectant mother's parking. In case you aren't familiar with these spots, it's become a recent trend for stores to designate a few spots near the front for expectant mothers and mothers with young children.

My colleague was right. There were several open spots available right at the front of the lot. My colleague was absolutely thrilled - I think I made her week.

That may have been one of the cooler side benefits of being pregnant. Close parking.

19 weeks

I'm almost halfway! Yesterday, I hit 19 weeks of pregnancy. I can't believe how fast it's going! Here's the picture:



You hear a lot about how pregnant women "pop" all of a sudden. That is, they go to bed one night looking un-pregnant, and then wake up the next day with a belly. I'm not sure that's happened for me, although I'm starting to really show, I think. I just think my change has been pretty gradual.

I actually had a milestone related to that at work last week: A semi-stranger asked me when I'm due. Granted, he sits across the hall from me, so he was clearly noticing that I was getting bigger and had switched to maternity clothes. It was still pretty cool, though. I was getting big enough that he felt comfortable asking. Or, maybe he was just obtuse.

Feeling the baby, for real this time

I've commented that I thought I've been feeling the baby for a couple of weeks now. Recently, I've had a new milestone - feeling kicks from the outside.

As I said before, my milestones here are still pretty early. A lot of people (most people, in fact) don't feel external kicks until 20 weeks more more. On two separate occasions, though, I've noticed that the baby was particularly active. When I put my hand on my belly and kept it there for a bit, I got a little poke. Definitely a kick.

Getting kicks is kind of weird. I hear a lot about how "magical" it is, but I'm not sure about that. It's really weird to think that there's another THING living in there. While it's obviously something that we wanted and planned for, it's still a little strange now that it's actually happening. I'm still in denial that I'm pregnant sometimes, but getting poked and prodded by the baby definitely brings it back to the front of my mind.

It all feels pretty surreal still. Maybe it will sink in more after our ultrasound next week, but I doubt it. I have a feeling it will get more real once the baby starts kicking my ribs and / or bladder, but I think it won't really sink in at all until the baby is actually here. Heck, it might not even sink in then. In some ways, it's still weird to me that I'm old enough to have a full time job and a husband - I still feel 8 years old sometimes. Knowing that I'm old enough to be a mommy is really just outside of my comprehension sometimes.

We have a doula!

Today, we hit another milestone in our baby journey - we signed our contract with our doula. For those of you that aren't familiar with what a doula is, you can read more about them here. Essentially, I think of a doula as a labor coach. She'll come to our house when I'm in early labor, will come with me to the hospital, and she'll stay with me the entire time until after the baby is born. It's really important for me to have someone there the entire time. While we're delivering with a midwife (which will likely mean that we'd get more one-on-one care than if we'd been with an OB), even a midwife can't guarantee that she'll be there the whole time.

Plus, the doula will be a bit of an advocate for us. There are lots of stories of area hospitals doing things like breaking your water without your permission. I'm absolutely not okay with that, and a doula will help make sure my wishes are followed as much as possible. While I don't have illusions that everything will go exactly to plan, I have certain things that I'd really like to see respected. A doula can help with that.

Finally, a doula will help be a labor coach. I'm very interested in an unmedicated child birth, and a doula is a great way to help us get there. She's organized childbirth classes to help prepare us, and she'll help encourage me to go through the birth without pain medication. She's very understanding that things may not go as planned, but she's also very encouraging of me trying to have the unmedicated birth that I want.

I'm very excited.

Another milestone today

Today, when I got dressed, I couldn't button my work pants. Okay, so I could have TECHNICALLY buttoned them, but it would have been might uncomfortable. I wore my belly band for the first time yesterday because I thought my pants were going to end up being uncomfortable by the end of the day, but I wore the band today because I didn't really have a choice.

This pregnancy is going fast! I have a feeling the next 18+ years are going to go even faster.