I am sitting on the couch eating the last of the giant marshmallows I bought “for s’mores”…even though I didn’t bother to buy chocolate or graham crackers. Today was my 30 week appointment for this pregnancy and – pardon my french – but shit is about to get real.

I was at Mom 2.0 Summit last weekend. It was really, really fun. Because you probably don’t blog and probably weren’t there I am not going to write a super long, super inspirational post about everything I learned and name drop all the fancy people I met.

Although excuse me if I freak out just ONE more time over my photo with Jessica Shyba. Even my mom watches The Today Show and probably knows about Jessica and her adorable kid-dog-sleeping pictures. 

Besides eating way too much and drinking nowhere near enough water and standing and walking and DANCING like a crazy person and only getting 3 hours of sleep on Saturday night, it also took a couple of long flights to Atlanta and back. After E picked me up on Sunday afternoon I was so swollen and sore I briefly considered calling the OB just to make sure I hadn’t somehow given myself pre-eclampsia.

Instead I drank a TON of water (and some Diet Coke because caffeine is a diuretic and that makes it legit) and lay on my left side and took a nap. By Monday morning I was only half as swollen and by Tuesday I could wear my shoes again. We even went for a family walk and I didn’t think I was going to die on the way home.

But today was that OB appointment and they broke some news: despite the fact that my sugars are normal (no gestational diabetes to see here folks!) and my blood pressure is still excellent and I’ve had no signs of labor and both my previous pregnancies went to at least 39 weeks and my water has never broken on its own…they Have Concerns. Concerns that mean I am going to be at the hospital a lot from now on.

Don’t get me wrong, I am VERY VERY glad my doctor is on top of things. I am glad the midwives at the practice reassured me everything looks fine. I am glad no one is freaking out and we are “just being cautious”. But I’m also not looking forward to bi-weekly non-stress tests or weekly ultrasounds to watch my fluid levels.

I’ve also lost the ability to totally block out the fact that a) I’m having a baby soonish and b) there’s always a chance something IS wrong and they just haven’t seen it on the scans or tests. The phrase “as long as it’s healthy” has never felt so much like a threat instead of just something people say because it’s something people say.

There’s obviously nothing I can do about it now. I’m in third-trimester limbo until either something happens on its own or we decide the baby would be safer out than in.

To be clear, as of right now, there is NO REASON to think the baby isn’t perfect. Well, no reason besides the unexplained high fluid levels that makes it hard for the nurse to keep the baby on the monitor for my NST and makes me look and feel ENORMOUS. But as far as anyone can tell with the baby on the inside, we’re still good.

I’d be more annoyed with the whole thing if there wasn’t any reason at all for the monitoring. But my doctor explained that in some cases – very rare cases – so rare he has never seen one in person – high fluid levels can compress the umbilical cord so baby doesn’t get enough oxygen. That is enough of a reason for me to keep my eye-rolling down to a “OK, I guess I can bring the kids and the iPad in twice a week for checks” instead of elevating it to “UGH. WHY DO I HAVE TO BE HERE???” There’s also the chance that it’s something in baby’s digestive tract or kidneys that isn’t working correctly. Or that it’s a facial or mouth deformity that can’t be detected via ultrasound.

But we DON’T KNOW, so thinking about it – or Googling it – is pointless. I say that to myself at least 20 times a minute while I’m on the internet. So basically 24,000 times a day.

I don’t want to be the person who freaks out over a healthy pregnancy, a third baby when many people struggle to have even one, someone who is ungrateful and annoying and everyone dreads running into. But I also miss my first pregnancy, when everything felt new and exciting and was so, so, SO very average and I had no idea how fragile pregnancy could be or how many things could go wrong. What To Expect might be terrifying for first time moms but it’s got NOTHING on almost 6 years of the internet.

So for approximately 10 more weeks I am going to live at the hospital being assured that no one really knows anything but they’re trying.

I will spend about 50% of that time pretending I’m not even pregnant so why would I need to buy a crib and the other 50% staring at cribs on the internet to find the perfect one for the nursery we haven’t started yet.

And also 100% of that time being punched in the lungs and/or cervix by a baby who has made so much amniotic fluid I basically have an olympic-sized swimming pool inside me.

Oh 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.

Ladies and gentleman, we have a…..

GIRL!

My bank account is already weeping.

Besides THAT awesomeness, I am happy to report the baby looks perfect. For some reason, as focused as I’ve been on the gender, I’ve been secretly freaking out about the rest of the scan to the point where I’ve been waking up regularly at 2 am to obsess about it. Maybe it’s because this pregnancy feels so different from the first one I have a hard time believing it can be “normal.” Maybe it’s because after two years in the mommy-blogging world I have a better understanding of what a questionable or poor or tragic result means. Reading about it in What To Expect just doesn’t terrify me the way seeing it spelled out in black and white and gray and red and every rainbow color of emotion on the internet does. But the tech took a zillion measurements and was very thorough and said several times everything looked perfect and normal and good.

So for the record, the “high heartbeat means it’s a girl” old wives tale proved 100% true for me. Which makes it scientifically proven. IT’S SCIENCE, PEOPLE.

p.s. Oh God now I DO have to pick a name. I think we’ll probably narrow it down to a couple and make the announcement after she’s (SHE!!!!) born. So don’t be mad when I won’t tell you what it is until then – I DON’T KNOW.

p.p.s. Once this sinks in, expect a huge freak out over everything from whether or not I need to give Baby Girl her (HER!!!!!) own nursery to how exactly one changes little girl diapers.

p.p.p.s. I think E might cry. Please tell him girls are awesome and that they DON’T always grow up and break your heart. Although I think half his disappointment is not getting to use the awesome boy name we picked out. This time.

My pregnancy amnesia is totally out of control. I showed up to my appointment today super excited to see my little jelly bean/gummy bear/sweet pea/other adorable yet oddly edible nickname for a fetus and instead I got a naked exam and a blob. How did I forget that early ultrasounds are done internally?! You’d think being probed like an alien abductee would stick with you but apparently my brain doesn’t find it necessary to hold on to that kind of information. Thanks for nothing BRAIN.

The good news is everything appears totally normal and right on track. We saw the heartbeat – ONE heartbeat – and the doctor somehow managed to measure what he says was the baby but looked like nothing to me. If the ultrasound wand hadn’t been jammed up my hoo-hah I would have been afraid he was accidentally looking at part of the peanut butter sandwich I had for breakfast. Although if a sandwich had a heartbeat that would be really weird.

Most boring ultrasound ever

Whaddaya know, I was wrong. THIS is the most boring ultrasound ever.

Turns out my super-tentative-just-a-wild-guess-who-really-knows-WHEN-I’m-due date guess was…right. Almost right. New due date: December 26th, 2010. I guess Christmas is going to be at our house this year, since I probably won’t feel much like driving 6-12 hours in the car while 40 weeks pregnant. I’m also hoping for a really punctual baby because, HELLOOOOO,  2010 tax deduction. I’m already having visions of the clock counting down the seconds to January 1st and E screaming “PUSH HARDER! DADDY NEEDS AN IPAD!”

We find out the sex on August 4th. Until then, I think I’ll call him Sandwich. Sandy, for short.