Well, it has been an eventful week! On Thursday morning, Abbey, our elderly dog, woke me up for her usual early morning walk. As she was descending the hardwood stairs her feet slipped out from under her and down she went all the way to the wall. As the words, "Oh noooo...." were coming out of my mouth, down I went right behind her. A total of 13 stairs. I have never fallen down the stairs like that in my life! Abbey bounced right back up but I sat there stunned for a second doing a mental scan of my body to see if I was okay and I thought of baby. I walked Abbey, fed her, administered her morning pills, and waited until my OB's office opened. As soon as it did, I called and was advised to go to the hospital for a stat ultrasound followed by a same-day appointment with my OB. My OB worried that I might have torn the placenta. And here I'm thinking shaken baby syndrome or a tiny broken leg. I was put on the ultrasound schedule for 2:00 and instead of waiting and worrying I decided to go to work and see a few patients. At the ultrasound we learned baby is just find and the placenta isn't torn, however, it is too close to my cervix. As my uterus continues to grow hopefully that will put more distance between the cervix and placenta. If not, I'll need to have a c-section. In the meantime I'm on pelvic rest... for the third time. As the ultrasound technician was scanning baby, she asked if we wanted to know the sex... "Yes!" we said in unison. So....
WE'RE HAVING A GIRL!!!
Evan's hunch was right and mine was wrong. I'm sharing a profile shot from that ultrasound below. You can see baby's right hand up by her face. We also have shots proving her sex but I won't ever be posting pictures of my daughter's genitals on the internet.
During our visit with the OB we also got some results back from the lab work I had done the week before. Everything is within normal ranges except one protein - Inhibin-A - which is abnormally high. This has been linked with delayed growth, pre-term birth, and pre-eclampsia. For this reason, and the placenta issue, I'll be monitored more closely from here on out (i.e. more frequent appointments and ultrasounds), and I may eventually need to be put on bed rest. Keep your fingers crossed for us. As much as this plants a tiny seed of worry, there are so many worse things that could have gone wrong that didn't, and for that I am grateful.
In related news, my OB also wrote a letter saying I should reduce my work hours to 30 hours/week due to pregnancy complications. I plan to have that conversation with my manager this week. Stay tuned for that outcome. I'm leaving out a lot of detail involving FMLA, human resources, and my union because it will be a blip on the radar in the end. The health of our baby and me are far more important than any bureaucratic red tape.
I'm looking at the ultrasound picture of our little girl again and thinking, "she's so cute!" We're giddy fools in the ultrasound room when we see our little one up there on the big screen saying, "Awwww, she's so cute! Oh she kicked, that's so cute! That's her hand by her face? So cute!" When really she's this fuzzy staticky white outline of a baby.
OH! I almost forgot the other exciting news: I have been feeling her kick the past three days!!! I was laying in bed and all of a sudden I felt a little tap tap... tap just below my belly button. I read it would feel like butterfly flutters or popping popcorn, but it feels stronger than that for me. It feels like someone is tapping their finger on my belly from the inside. When I told Evan later he leaned over and started singing You Are My Sunshine into my belly... and baby started kicking like crazy! Maybe she is getting to know Daddy's voice!
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