Baby Update

Yikes, it has been a long time since I gave a baby update, so I’ll try to sum up the last few months.

I had good, solid nausea 24-7 until I was between 16 and 17 weeks.

Then, I got sick. First it was the flu or food poisoning and I was ill for 3 days. Then I felt good for a few days (actually the first few days without morning sickness) and then got really sick with some sort of virus that morphed into a sinus infection. I didn’t get out of bed for 11 days and felt too sick to do much of anything for over two weeks. I had a lingering cough that kept me up at night over over a month.

About the time that the coughing subsided, we were scheduled for the anatomy scan. We were excited to see mister man again and decided that we felt comfortable bringing Jenna to the appointment. We explained to her what we would see and watched a YouTube video, so she didn’t have too high of expectations. Good thing because the perinatalogist zoomed through all of the checkpoints and didn’t talk to us much. I was ok with it because I was mostly interested to find out that he was healthy, but it was a bit of a bummer because he didn’t get any good pics for us (he was zoomed in and while he did save us a few pics, you can’t tell what they are). Still, Jenna enjoyed seeing her baby brother and so did we! Everything looked perfect except that the placenta was still low-lying, so they scheduled another u/s in four weeks to make sure that it raised.

Not a whole lot happened between ultrasounds (20 and 24 weeks), although I started feeling much stronger movement around 23 weeks. I had hoped this was a good sign and the placenta had moved and sure enough it did. We didn’t bring Jenna to the next u/s and wouldn’t you know it, we got an awesome peri that went very slow and showed us all the non-health related things that were interesting to us. The best part was that the baby was holding his feet by his face. It was so cute and the tipping point that finally let me relax a bit and start to enjoy this pregnancy. But, it also made me so impatient to meet him!

I guess something interesting did happen between 20 and 24 weeks – I had a kidney stone. This isn’t my first one, but it has been almost a decade. Of course the pain isn’t something you forget, but it did take me about 20 minutes to figure out that it was kidney stones. The pain started up inside my left ribcage, which is not where my kidney is normally located. I’d forgotten that things were likely quite displaced due to pregnancy. Once I realized what was happening, we headed to the ER. I went in by myself because I refused to let Jenna in the ER (Children’s Mercy doesn’t even let their oncology patients into the waiting room, we get escorted directly to a special room for immuno-compromised kids). Mom met Aaron just a few minutes later and took Jenna home with her and Aaron met me inside. Since I was only 22 weeks or so, I didn’t even think that I needed to go to Labor and Delivery, but the ER triage nurse dumped me in a wheel chair and took me there immediately. Once in L&D they checked on the baby (no distress and good heartbeat), then put my info in the system and called my OB. There were two others in the L&D triage area and they were both potentially in labor, so I guess they got first priority because it was over an hour before I got a pain killer and trust me, I was in more pain than they were (I’ve been in labor, I know!). By the time I got a pain reliever I was throwing up every 10 to 15 minutes. Good news, the pain killer helped take the pain down a notch, bad news, it didn’t take the pain away (before when I’ve had kidney stones they’ve been able to give me something that takes the pain away immediately) AND it made me throw up more often. After an hour or so they decided to admit me for the night and to change my pain med. So, we moved to a very nice room (bonus for getting kidney stones while pregnant I guess) and started me on the other pain med. It was the type that you can self dispense, but was limited to every 10 minutes. The pain decreased significantly after about 3 doses, but then I would fall asleep and the pain med would wear off, so I would wake up and have to get through 3 doses before I felt better again. It was a vicious cycle all night long, but they didn’t want to give me an oral med yet and there weren’t many other options. After shift change the next morning they agreed to try an oral med and it was great. It helped me feel better immediately and made me feel pretty euphoric. Once they could see the pain was controlled, they discharged us. I guess I’ve failed to mention that this was Mother’s Day. My mom brought Jenna home, but I was so out of it that I don’t much remember anything about the evening. :( I did end up passing the stone early the next morning and felt great and didn’t need any pain meds again!

From weeks 24 to 28 (current), I’ve felt great. LMC (Little Mister Cain) has been moving so much and is typically super active at night. I will wake up sometimes and it feels like he’s rolling around! One evening while Aaron and I were watching a movie, LMC started pushing out on my upper stomach with his foot. We could easily feel his entire foot, including toes! It was so awesome! He also likes to move right after I eat. I think he’s going to be a foodie like his dad. We went on vacation between 26 and 27 weeks. I was worried about taking a road trip at this point in pregnancy, but it wasn’t bad at all. The only thing is that on our last day, I felt him make a huge movement and it felt like his head really dropped into place. This is good and hopefully he is in a great position for delivery, but right now it just meant that I had a lot more pressure on my cervix and somehow he must be sitting on some blood vessels because as soon as I felt that movement, my feet started to swell! I’m also having a lot more difficult time breathing, so I suspect that somehow, in addition to the added pressure low, he’s pushing up into my lungs. At this point it isn’t too bad and I don’t mind a bit of discomfort if it means he’s nice and cozy.

I talked to my doctor more about induction and basically he said that he will induce at 39 weeks if my cervix is soft enough. With Jenna it wasn’t soft enough at a week passed due, but it was soft enough at 11 days, which is when I was scheduled to be induced, but went into labor on my own. Hopefully this time it will soften and we can attempt an induction if I don’t go into labor. Otherwise we will schedule a c-section sometime around my due date.

We’re still having trouble finding a name. With Jenna we didn’t even add ‘Jenna' into the running until I was a week passed due and we didn’t completely decide until after she was born. So, I guess we’re hopeful that was can agree on a name once we see him. We do at least have a (very short) list of names we both are ok with.