((WARNING: This is a long blog because it has taken me over two weeks to start and finish it!))
(28 - 29 - 30)
A few weeks ago I entered into the third trimester - the "Home Stretch". Since then, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I usually wake up around 2am to toss and turn for a few hours and sometimes I won’t even fall back asleep. It has been making me exhausted to say the least. My feet hurt from all the extra weight I’m carrying around and I'm experiencing shortness of breath. No matter what I do I feel like I’m not getting enough air. For the most part, I’ve been extremely blessed – no morning sickness, no heart burn – piece of cake. Everything that I’m going through is A-okay by me because I just love my little munchkin to pieces. I especially love lying around with Ed starring at my belly and poking her arms then watching her poke us back. She’s amazing.
This past Sunday we had our ninth ultrasound. Yes, I said ninth. Most people usually only get three or so, but we’ve had nine (so far)! Our first ultrasound was when I was about five weeks pregnant because I had a “threatened miscarriage” – scariest ultrasound of them all/scariest day of my life. At the time, our baby looked like a little pea. Then, a week later we had a follow up ultrasound with my doctor so she could see what the ER saw the week before (baby began to look like a tadpole this time). My doctor then sent us to a specialist for follow up work and I had my third ultrasound at ten weeks and our baby finally looked like a little human. Then, we decided that we wanted to know the sex of our little one so we bought the “Full House” package at 4D baby; which meant two ultrasounds. Our fourth ultrasound was at fifteen weeks and this is when 4D baby told us we were going to have a girl! Then, we went to our last visit with the specialist at eighteen weeks for our fifth ultrasound and the specialist confirmed that we were indeed having a girl. We decided to use our second visit (sixth ultrasound) with 4D baby at twenty-four weeks so we could take the video with us on our trip to Ohio to share it with our family, but that didn’t go as planned… baby girl was breech and had the umbilical cord in front of her face. So we got a re-do in two weeks. The re-do (seventh ultrasound) didn’t work either – she was head down and had her hands in front of her face the whole time. So we got another re-do (eighth ultrasound) with the owner, but she didn’t cooperate for her either. Despite me drinking tons of apple juice beforehand baby girl slept the whole time and had her hands in front of her face AGAIN! So what now? We got a fourth re-do – our ninth ultrasound! We weren’t complaining about all these re-dos because they were free! Our fourth re-do (ninth ultrasound), went a little better and we actually got to see some of her face. So here’s what we got to see:
baby girl covering her face, per usual:
and laughing at our failed attempts to see her:
Then she finally gave us a glimpse!...
baby girls sweet little chin:
her flipping us off while looking sweet:
her chubby cheeks:
her full lips:
her showing us she is #1:
and my favorite - her smile:
We also found out that Teddy has a full head of hair; which means she won't be bald like I was! Ok, now that you’ve seen all the cute pictures of Teddy, I need to share my fears and get them off my chest… I am currently 30 weeks and I have two MAJOR concerns on my mind:
1.) My Birthing Plan
2.) Cord Blood Banking
Okay, obviously I am scared to give birth to my baby girl and worried that it won’t be how I've imagined it. I imagine it being a natural birth with me feeling very strong and having the "I CAN DO IT" mentality, but with my doctor I'm not feeling so confident about it. Every time I try to discuss my birth plan with her and stress how important it is for me to give birth vaginally and as natural as possible guess what she does? That bitch laughs at me. Every time. When I said, "what is funny about that?" she went on to tell me not to get my hopes up because it's going to be different than I expect and more painful then I ever imagined. No Shit! I already knew that, but what I was looking for was something along these lines, "I completely understand your desire to give birth to your baby and we will do everything in our power to make that possible, while still doing what is best for the baby and you." I know that this may not go as I plan, but gosh darn it I am going to try my hardest to do it on MY terms, not how my witch of a doctor wants. To top it off, I scheduled hypnobirthing classes to better prepare myself for this glorious pain and while doing so they asked who my doctor was, paused and said "Well, that is a red flag for us. We hear horror stories about her and how she is not very supportive of birthing plans." This hit home with me as this is NOT the first time I've heard this about her and has made me an emotional wreck for days. Every time I think about it - I cry. Can't help it. It just happens. Needless to say, we are meeting with a midwife on Monday to discuss our options and get a list of doctors so that we can start interviewing them. I tried switching to my specialist when I was 18 weeks, but he could not take me. I am disappointed in myself that I waited this long to look into switching doctors again, but I feel it's better late than never. If I don't fight for this now, I WILL regret it after. At least now I'll know if I don't get to do it my way, I educated myself and will have done everything in my power to try. So I'll keep you posted on our search for a new doctor.
My second fear these days is Cord Blood Banking. I’m not sure how I feel about Cord Blood Banking, but I do feel like I’d be a horrible mom if I didn’t do it. I have two friends who have both had babies and both froze their babies cord blood so I’m feeling like it is normal to do, but we have about 2 and a half months left and Cord Blood Banking is over $2k. Yes, they do have payment plans, but with a newborn and school loans I don’t know if that’s an option for us. So my battle is… I know not everyone does this, but it seems like people around me have done it so maybe I should too (who knew there was peer pressure in pregnancy??) and if I don’t I do it I know I’ll be hard on myself. God forbid this baby or God willing another baby of mine gets a disease, what if I didn’t have the cord blood to give it that increase in survival rate. Gosh, these brochures and ads really tug on a mother’s heart string. Not sure what to do about this… All I know is it’s weighing on my mind and I have enough to worry about these days! I need to stop thinking about the “what ifs” and continue to pray that everything goes well and that this will never be needed.
This third trimester is really making me feel pregnant. I'm an emotional worry wart and exhausted for the first time. Let me just say how lucky I am that this exhaustion is just hitting me now because I don't know how my friends deal with it their entire pregnancy, they're definitely super heroes in my eyes. This week I am going to try to be positive and keep reminding myself that I have less than 10 weeks left!
To leave this blog on a happy note, I thought I'd share an outfit that has me smitten:
