31 weeks

Oops, I missed a few weeks. Well, we're now at 31 weeks (7 months today) It's a great feeling to get into the 30s and out of the 20s.

Everything is going well. Midwife is happy, I'm happy and I'm assuming baby is happy.

This week hasn't been the most fun - trying to sort out medical insurance is a nightmare. Currently they are telling me that the only way I can get my hospital charges covered by insurance is to give up on the midwife completely, and go see the group of obstetricians in my health group. No matter that I'd actually rather have a midwife for the more personal and natural care, and the lower likelihood of interventions. I've been finding out that midwives are regarded with great unease here, insurance doesn't like them because they're considered very high risk, high liability and not very medically qualified. No matter that my midwife is a certified nurse midwife, has been delivering babies for 30 years, teaches Doctors obstetrics at USC, and works with the best obstetrician in town. Anyway, rant over. Hopefully it's going to get sorted through some sort of appeal process.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks:

29 weeks

30 weeks

31 weeks

Baby shower

My baby shower is going to be on January 13, and two of my good friends are organizing it. They just sent out the invitations yesterday, they are just lovely. Here is a sample.

(We wish all our NZ family and friends could come too, but it's probably a bit far for a Sunday afternoon.)

Oh, and the link on the invitation has a couple of letters missing - if you're interested in looking at it the website is Anna and John's baby registry.

28 weeks

Yesterday was a busy day. Firstly, I had an appointment with the perinatologist to go over my clotting blood results once again, just to check I was still happy with just being on baby aspirin and didn't want to switch to heparin/lovenox injections. It's such a hard decision as there aren't any "right" answers, so I just decided to stick with the aspirin for now. The perinatologist does want me to go in for weekly "non stress tests" from now though, just to make sure that everything looks OK. And if things change, then we can reassess. I believe (although I don't know for sure) that a non stress test involves hooking up monitors to my tummy and tracking contractions (if there are any) and baby's heart rate. A good result is when the baby's heart rate increases 15 - 20bpm with movement and then goes back down. I guess I'll find out more next Thursday.

I also had an ultrasound which was fun. Baby was head down, although I'm sure he/she will move between now and birth, I'm glad he/she's practicing being in that position.

Here's a 3D ultrasound picture of baby's face with arms up. Very cute!

Then I saw my midwife, and every time I see her I like her more. Things were looking pretty good. My blood pressure was up a bit when I went in (but I had just been rushing round trying to get to appointments and get some work done in between) so she rechecked it after I lay down for a bit and it was back down to normal. My proteinuria levels were +1 (have no idea what this measurement means, next time I'll remember to ask), which is still within normal she said, but slightly elevated, so she is just watching it. No edema. And no weight gain in 2 weeks - which is my biggest accomplishment. I passed my glucose screening and my iron levels are very high. The lab forgot to run my antibody screen so I have to go back and get blood drawn again for that.

This week has been going well, although I've definitely started to become more uncomfortable. My stomach is a bit crampy and sore when I move (particularly when I try roll over in bed - John thought I was heffalumpish before, just wait until he gets back in 3 weeks!) and I think it's just everything stretching to make room for baby.

So here are lots of stats for the week:

Fundal height: 28cm
Baby's heartbeat: 145bpm (it's very consistent, been between 137 and 145 every time it's been checked!)
Baby's weight: 3lb/1359g (this is quite large! They estimate this by looking at the ratio of AC/BPD/FL/HC)
Biparetal diameter ("BPD" - the transverse width of the head at its widest): 7.54cm
Occipitofrontal diameter (the "OFD" is measured perpendicular to the BPD): 9.57cm
Head circumference ("HC"): 27.65cm
Abdominal circumference ("AC"): 23.84cm
Femur length ("FL"): leg1: 5.31cm/leg2: 6.26cm for average of 5.79cm

According to the chart that is on my ultrasound DVD, most of these measurements put baby's growth at 30 weeks+, so I guess it's not going to be a small baby. The estimated gestational age by measurement was 29w6d (at exactly 28 weeks) with a due date of 2/9/13. We'll see. I'm sure these measurements aren't really all that accurate!

Here is me for this week: