I am certainly over-due to write an update about the baby that is growing in my belly. The weeks just keep going by. But you know what that means...
Time flying by = Pregnancy flying by
And the second time around, it is certainly feeling quick. I am sure I can give Cayman quite a bit of credit for that. She keeps me on my toes! And the fact that this pregnancy will end at 8 months and not 9 months makes me almost at the half way point already!
My last OB appointment was four weeks ago. I was 12 weeks pregnant then. My mom came with me. Mike worked. We have had a slew of doctor appointments for Cayman this summer and Mike's work has graciously allowed him to come along to most of them. But that makes for some busy days when he does return to work and his strong loyalty toward his job keeps him mindful about not falling behind {just another something I love about him}.
With the appointments being located up in Ann Arbor it's not as simple as taking an extra long lunch during work to attend the doctor's appointment and then return for the rest of the day. The distance between our home and our medical care facility pretty much turns it into an all day event with the four hour round trip drive. And so we decided it was best for Mike to just go to work that day since my OB appointment was simply going to be a regular, boring pre-natal check up - weight, blood pressure, pee in a cup. Just the mundane stuff. Well besides hearing the baby's heart beat. There's nothing boring about that. And I promised Mike I would have my mom video it so he would not completely miss it.
The appointment turned out to be less boring than I expected, which ended with a phone call to Mike in my most happy, hyper voice telling him all about it! Poor man, I could hear in his tone through his excited words that he longed to be there with us. It's in those kind of moments in life when you wish just blinking an eye could bring someone instantly next to your side.
So let me tell you about the fun appointment. An unexpected ultrasound was performed. The baby seemed to be hiding lower than the doctor initially expected so the doppler ultrasound failed to pick up the heart beat. I felt calm still. The doppler never worked on me when I was pregnant with Cayman so it wasn't of great surprise to me when the doctor searched and searched and found no baby. Even with my smaller frame, my tipped uterus is too far from the surface for the doppler to pick up any baby sounds.
Things run a little differently in the high risk clinic. In my pregnancy with Cayman, before the findings of her diagnosis, the doctor never fussed over the inability to find a heart beat on the doppler. I was always sent away being told that sometimes it's normal and nothing to worry about, which was still true in my case. The lack of heart beat found through the doppler had nothing to do with Cayman's diagnosis. It just made for boring OB appointments every month. It's always a delightful experience when you get to hear that little one's heart beating.
But in the high risk clinic, they don't send you out that door until they've thoroughly checked things out. So when the doppler failed to record a heart beat, that's when the ultrasound machine was brought out.
The doctor confidently found the heart beat on the ultrasound's monitor. When I saw the black and white flickering of pixels signifying my baby's heart beating, I did breath in a little deeper and easier.
There it was, just living away and strongly beating in the 150's.
And if that wasn't enough to get my blood flowing, the rest of the scene before me sure did. Little baby was doing all sorts of jumps, leaps, and movements. It was so entertaining!
I found it to feel more reassuring to me than anything. Cayman did not move much in the womb. Maybe that had nothing to do with her ill-forming body, or perhaps it had everything to do with it. Her brain was squished under the pressure of a lot fluid inside her head. The lack of her fetal movements always felt to me like the two were related.
12 weeksI am 16 weeks pregnant now. I have been feeling baby movements here and there (started about a few weeks ago). It's sporadic though and I am uber-eager for this little one to make a routine of it! The movements of a baby in the womb are intimate, reassuring, and beautiful. And right now my desire to start doing that dance with our little one is on my mind even more than the upcoming anatomy ultrasound, which is in just two weeks.
It's hard for me to realize that the 2nd trimester ultrasound is almost upon us already. It feels like such a big milestone in a pregnancy. I'll be 18 weeks then. The doctor presented the option to schedule the ultrasound at the earliest of 16 weeks for a sooner calming of the curiosity of getting the baby's developing progress checked out. They can see everything well except the chambers of the heart so a repeat ultrasound would need to be done later when the baby is larger.
While I do love getting as many peeks at my baby that I can, Mike and I decided not to do the earlier ultrasound. Mainly for the reason that I did not even want to haggle into the phone call to the insurance company to see if they would pay for two ultrasounds in the second trimester. I have a strong love-hate relationship with them. I appreciate all that our insurance has paid for. The numbers are overwhelming to Cayman's medical care. That's the love part.
The hate has come in the countless phone calls I have made to them over the last two years getting denied claims straightened out. It must be in their job description to give people the run around first before accepting a claim.
Plus for my own heart's sake, I do not feel a strong need to do a sooner ultrasound. Eighteen weeks feels more than soon enough. If there is something there that is just not quite going well with the baby, I would rather wait a bit longer before I find out. That's not because I feel a great anxiety that something is wrong, but it is a reality I know well. I just desire to soak in all the bliss, and nothing more.
I took a belly shot this week.
16 weeks I'm getting a [little] annoyed that this so-called "bump" really just looks like an exaggerated and unflattering pooch. It's not that coveted little, "Oh look, she's pregnant!" mound. It's more of a flabby lump that makes an appearance saying, "That girl needs to get her rear to the gym and work off that baby fat!" But then that annoyance is followed by the confirmation that a bigger belly now means an even much, much bigger belly in the end. And I remember well the misery a big belly was on my sweet, enduring spine. So the day will come soon enough when my baby bump fills out those maternity shirts in a more fashionable way.
Here are some growth updates this week {from TheBump.com}:
Baby's now the size of an avocado! Watch what you say...tiny bones forming in baby's ears mean she can now pick up your voice. A few more minuscule changes: Eyebrows, lashes, and hair are starting to fill in, and taste buds are forming.
