34 Weeks

 Whooooooo lives in a pineapple under the sea?

This week 3BB is the size of a pineapple, or an applepine, as my almost 20 year old nephew Noah used to call them.

The pineapple has somehow become the symbol of infertility, so there are lots of pineapple things when it comes to IVF and fertility treatments. I don’t know if it is because pineapple core is supposed to aid in implantation or what.

The 34th week of my pregnancy will go down as the most memorable so far.

It started on Saturday, as I was reading my weekly updates about 3BB and the pregnancy and then when I had to pee for the tenth time that morning, I had some brown spotting when I wiped. It wasn’t just a little bit, it was equivalent to what I get right before my period starts. So needless to say, I freaked out and started sobbing.

I called the on-call doctor and she said that as long as it stayed brown (which is old blood) and didn’t turn red or didn’t get worse, it should be fine. Thankfully 3BB was unfazed and moving around like normal, which put me a little at ease. I will never be mad that she is a super active fetus.

I tried not to Google too much about it, but the main point was that it could be the start of the cervix getting ready for labor. But because it wasn’t bright red, the doctor was not concerned.

The spotting stopped a few days later, so things seem OK on that front.

It did serve as a bit of a wake-up call for me. Like I need to really get some shit done, so it forced me to sign up for the hospital tour, an infant CPR/first aid class and start packing the hospital bag. These things were all on my list, but I still had upwards of 6 weeks so I wasn’t in any rush. But the bag is mostly packed, I’ve taken the car seat out of the box and I put in an Amazon order for things I still needed.

Sammi is very excited that getting the room ready means that I’ve added more beds for her to sleep on.

As you can see I’m not remotely close to finishing the nursery, since those are paint samples and wallpaper samples still on the wall. But I at least have primed the wall where the wallpaper is supposed to go. 

Of course that wasn’t even the only memorable thing that happened this week.

I had my doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. I actually had 2 appointments, one where I met the diabetes doctor (I usually just meet with the nurse, but she wanted me to see the doc too) and then my weekly OB appointment and non-stress test.

This week 3BB was NOT having it. She failed her first test, even before she has been born! I was hooked up to the monitors for about an hour and while her heart rate was fine, she just decided not to move. Or at least when she did move, she didn’t move how they wanted and didn’t get her heart rate to accelerate. 

I tried all the tricks to get her moving – I had coffee, cold water and I kept poking her and telling her to move. None of it worked.

So they took us off the monitor and told me that they wanted to do a BPP, which is a biophysical profile through an ultrasound to watch her and make sure she was moving and that everything was OK. But they couldn’t get me in for an ultrasound until 3:30 PM. It was only just 12:30 at this point.

With time to kill, I decided to take myself to a fancy lunch at a restaurant called Beatrix. And bonus, Chicago recently started requiring all restaurant patrons to have proof of vaccine, so I felt a little better about eating indoors. Plus because this is on the hospital campus, it wasn’t that crowded. 

So we had some amazing barbacoa tacos!

They were delicious and even with all those taco shells, my glucose didn’t spike! (Which was good, since I had just gotten an A+ report from the endocrinologist about how well I was managing my diabeetus. I made sure to let 3BB know that I didn’t fail any tests, just her.)

Well that did the trick, because as soon as I showed up to the office where we get the ultrasounds, she was rolling around like a champ. The minute they put the gel on my belly, she was like “I am so passing this test!”

And she did! With flying colors! The ultrasound tech said “wow, she just did all the movements I needed to see all at once!” She also said it was the shortest BPP ultrasound she’s ever done, since our little stubborn girl was very cooperative! The doctor messaged me later to say she scored an 8 out of 8! So 3BB said I’ll show you how good I can do on tests, mom!

Honestly I wasn’t actually concerned at all. Even when she didn’t move enough on the NST. I knew she was fine, and even the nurse wasn’t concerned. And honestly, after the spotting scare, I was happy to get to see her on the ultrasound and have them measure the fluid and all the other things to make sure they were all in working order. And we got some delicious tacos out of it!

And we get to see her little alien baby face!

I’m starting to put on a few pounds, which is fine. Last week I think I had gone down to only about a 2 pound gain for the whole pregnancy (from 10 pounds gained at 16 weeks) and now I’m up to a 5 pound gain. It’s all 3BB so I’m not even worried at all. I know she’s running out of room in there. 

We will have another growth scan ultrasound in 2 weeks, at 36 weeks, just to see how she’s measuring. And the doctor I met with this week said we can start to look at when we want to induce, since we can schedule it about 10 days out, which is like the end of January! Which will be here before you know it! I’m still not ready!

#3BBOnBoard