26 Weeks

Prenatal

I had a prenatal appointment on Monday, and no news is good news! My blood pressure was good at 118/68, baby’s heart rate was around 148-158, and weight gain is still totally under control, somewhere between 10 and 13lbs depending on the scale. Next appointment is in three weeks, and then I think they’ll be every two weeks? Probably depends on how that appointment goes.

I’ll do my glucose test at my next appointment, but they don’t do the gross drink – they just have you eat some extra carbs 2 hours before your appointment and then they do a finger-prick test.

My followup ultrasound to check for the presence of a placental lobe will be around 36 or 37 weeks. So WAY closer to the end than I was expecting.

Carseat

We dug out Wesley’s old infant carseat from my parents’ basement and thankfully it’s still within dates (carseats expire!) so that’s one expense we can avoid this time around. It’s absolutely FILTHY though – covered in sawdust and grime, so I’ll be washing it really, really thoroughly.

Birthing Class

Our Bradley birthing class is nice. It goes much more in-depth into each stage of the labor process than the class we took with Wesley did, so I feel like both Daniel and I have a way better idea of what I might say/do during each stage of labor and how he can support me through it.

It also focuses a lot on optimal baby positioning (something my midwives with Wesley never mentioned) so I’m supposed to tailor-sit all the time, and I’m not supposed to recline at a 45 degree angle because it’ll encourage the baby to be posterior. The not-reclining thing is really hard for me! I usually just give up and lay all the way down on my side to avoid it.

Nesting

I’m slowly starting to accumulate baby clothes and supplies. We didn’t use cloth wipes with Wesley and I don’t even know why – partly it seemed stupid to pay money for flannel squares, but in that vein it was also stupid to spend oodles of dollars on throw-away wipes! I think mostly we kept using the disposable wipes because that’s what we’d been using. This time, I purchased some GroVia cloth wipes and a new BumGenius diaper (the “Jules” one) because the print was adorable. I’ve never tried the organic “Elemental” diapers before so I’m curious how it’ll compare to the microfiber ones. The GroVia wipes got really good reviews so we’ll see how those go as well.

I also picked up some essential oil blends for each stage of labor. Feel free to think I’m a nut – I’ve also got somebody lined up to encapsulate my placenta for me, which is way nuttier than massage oils – but I’m basically willing to try anything non-invasive to help me through a natural birth. My labor with Wesley was weird and augmented and I didn’t really try very many coping techniques before everything went downhill, so if essential oils might help me, I’ll totally try them out.

I’m feeling a really strong urge to get ALL THE THINGS READY for labor/delivery/baby even though I haven’t even hit 30 weeks yet. I don’t really feel like I “nested” with Wesley but man, with this baby I feel like everything needs to have A PLAN at least and it’s making me anxious that I have no plan for a lot of things. We’ll need some kind of dresser for the baby’s clothes and we’ll have to figure out a spot for her diapers. Somebody will have to take care of Wesley during the birth. I still don’t have a doula and I’m not sure if I should be panicking about that or not.

I keep thinking I HAVE TO GO BUY SOME NEWBORN DIAPERS and I SHOULD GET A NEW NURSING BRA and MAYBE I NEED A BIRTH POOL then I remember I probably still have, like, four months left to go and I can buy them at any point during that time. But my brain thinks I need to have them NOW, just in case.

Comparison

I’m still shocked at how much better I feel physically this time around. No fat feet! That started at 24 weeks last time. No pubis symphysis pain preventing me from putting on pants or escaping a theoretical house fire! That started at like week 17 and didn’t improve at all until about week 25. I wrote here that I felt pretty good, but looking back, I already had a lot more things going wrong physically than I do right now. (Also, apparently week 26 is when I start freaking out about nesting and baby stuff. Good to know.)

4 Comments >

Foot In Mouth

A couple of weeks ago, I was at work when a resident and his caregiver came in to have me make some photocopies. When I stood up to walk to the copy machine, the caregiver, L, remarked, “Oh! You’re expecting!” I responded cheerfully that I was.

She then did a double-take and said, “So— wow. When are you due?” in a tone of voice that suggested she expected the answer to be “tomorrow.”

I told her early May, and I wish that I had been able to film her response. She looked incredibly shocked, and spluttered, “MAY? Oh. WOW. You’re— you’re, uh, really out there.” And then, without me saying anything, she continued:

“And you’re sure it’s just one?”

I kind of cocked my head at her but responded politely that I was sure it was just one. L continued with the “Wow… May, huh? You’re… huh…”

At that point, I’d finished the copies and sat down again. L stood there, still saying stuff, and I was smiling sweetly at her, hoping she’d get the hint and stop. And then my brain short-circuited and I started trying to smooth over the awkwardness by saying that this is my second baby and it’s really common to show more with your second. As I was saying it, my brain was like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING” because I am way smaller with this baby than I was with Wesley. I don’t even know.

L finally got over her shock well enough to take her photocopies and leave, but I was butthurt about the interaction for a few days afterward. I had expected to get the “are you sure it’s not twins?” comment when I was pregnant with Wesley and had gained 40lbs by this point, but not with this baby! I was still feeling great about not needing maternity clothes yet, and then this lady spent several minutes trying to convince me that I was some kind of blimp.

Here’s a picture of me from that day, at 22 weeks 5 days pregnant:

Here’s me at 22 weeks with Wesley:

I felt like asking her if she’d ever been pregnant, but since I was at work (and will have to interact with her in the future) I decided to just let it go and seethe quietly at my desk.

I’m still just blown away that she felt it was an appropriate topic of conversation. Appropriate topics might have been “is this your first?” or “do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” or some variation on that theme. Not, “you’re so huge you must be having twins” or really ANYTHING commenting on the size of my body other than “you have such a cute bump!”

Good grief.

6 Comments >