Baby #3 – 24 Weeks
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014Oh hey, want to hear about my pregnancy?
It’s good! I am ready to officially say it’s good.
In fact, I have absolutely nothing unusual to report. Hurrah for a totally normal, boring baby!
This is the first time in a while I’ve felt able to write much about it, for fear of jinxing things. At my 19 week ultrasound the tech was a little concerned. My placenta was lower than they wanted to see and I had high fluid levels. Apparently that’s a soft marker for a lot of birth or genetic defects, so they wanted to get me in to a level 2 ultrasound soon. Unfortunately “soon” was a full 3 weeks later.
It wouldn’t have been quite such a nerve-wracking three weeks if the doctor hadn’t made a super casual, off-hand remark about how if something WAS tragically wrong we’d want to know sooner rather than later. 3 WEEKS IS NOT SOON. If she had just left out the part about the teeny, tiny chance of a fatal or life threatening problem I could have just complained about my heartburn and sore hips and never-ending morning nausea. Instead I lay in bed every night and thought about…possibilities.
I DID keep myself from Googling though. Mostly since “high fluid levels” turns up way too many results to process, let alone freak out about.
ANYWAY. At my level 2 ultrasound the tech and the special high-risk doctor both declared my baby perfectly fine. My placenta moved up and my fluid levels are only on the high level of normal, not actually high. The baby looks healthy and my screenings came back with very low chances of a genetic issue. I am extremely relieved.
I didn’t want to talk about any of this until I was sure – or as sure as you can possibly be before the baby becomes an outside baby – that things were fine. Plus also, thinking about what MIGHT be wrong reminded me of how many things COULD go wrong and what a crazy delicate thing pregnancy can be. Tomorrow I am 24 weeks, which is viability (technically). So now I am ready to complain about all the trivial stuff.
That might take FOREVER, so let’s start with the big one.
OMG MY BUTT. Not, like, the delicate unspeakable parts. All of it, from my back down to my thighs. The internet says the horrible stabbing pain is sciatica, but I had what I thought was sciatica with previous babies. This is WAY worse. This is like the difference between a paper cut and having a finger chopped off. The other thing the internet says is that the best ways to treat it are “stretching” and “resting” and “maybe some acupuncture”. I have no time for this “resting” thing and I can’t spend my days in child’s pose, so at my next OB appointment I guess I’ll be asking about alternative treatments. I feel extremely lucky I can spend a lot of time on the couch or lying down when it gets too bad, but until the children can do the grocery shopping and errand running themselves there are going to be painful days.
I’m just hoping I don’t get SPD on top of it. That’s the one where you feel like you’ve been kicked in the crotch with a steel-toed boot. Even rolling over in bed is enough to make you cry, so THAT on top of THIS would probably land me on a motorized scooter for the next 16 weeks.
And now, some blurry, generic ultrasound photos I took pictures of with my phone!
Based on no actual info besides those pictures, I’m currently predicting “girl”, since the profile looks just like Caroline. Both kids are on team girl but E is swearing it’s a boy. Oddly, I am not in the least bit tempted to find out anymore. I’m SUPER excited about waiting until the delivery room and being surprised along with everyone else.
