nugget: thirty-five weeks

Pregnancy Highlights

How Far Along: 35 weeks 

Size of Baby: about the size of a coconut

Total Weight Gain:  26lbs and starting to feel swollen.

Maternity Clothes: some of the maternity shirts are hardly covering the bottom of my belly.  I know she's dropped some and I am definitely rounding out a bit...

Gender: GIRLIE

Movement: oh yeah, thank goodness she moves like a bowling ball! I don't mind her movements one bit!

Sleep: my sciatic nerve is acting up again and I having trouble sleeping.

What I Miss: sleep!!!

Cravings: I go through spurts of being really hungry and then not being able to eat at all because I can't possibly fit anything else inside me.  It's really weird.

Best Moment this Week:  getting to come home and seeing our little girl on the ultrasound screen.

Blood Pressure:  We had a little scare this week which landed me in L&D. I took my blood pressure Tuesday morning and it was borderline high at almost 140/90. Took it again a few hours later and it was high still. So I called my doctor and he said to come in ASAP. When I got to my office, the doctor and nurse were waiting for me and took my blood pressure immediately.  It was 157/91...CRAP!  They sent me to L&D right away. When I got there ten minutes later, my blood pressure was lower at 140/96, but still higher than what it should be. The nurse came in and switched up my probes, plopped me on my side and my bp went down to 120/86 and eventually 120s/70s. 

So basically something is up. My urine and blood tests have come back clean all week, but as of Friday, my fluid levels were VERY low... like almost land me in the hospital low.  And oddly enough, my blood pressure was fine.  So my Perinatologist did a intensive ultrasound, NST and biophysical profile just to see what's up.  She's growing great, but with my blood pressures jumping all around and very little fluid he said that's basically the start of placental failure... so for now moderate bed rest is in the cards and I need to see if hydrating like crazy can reverse the low fluid.  I am still giving myself lovenox shots to lower the risk of clotting.   35 weeks is a heck of a lot better place to be in than 30 weeks, for sure, but she would still most likely need NICU time if she were born now.  So... I am going even slower than I was before, which is hard because I already felt like a complete blah.  Now I am going to be a sloshy, water-filled incubator.  Every day counts!

and on a side note, baby girl was SO cute during the scans.  She had her fingers curled up and was playing with her mouth.  She kept trying to push her face up against the ultrasound probe.  The doctor didn't focus on getting photos of her face though... he was obviously checking out things like my placenta, her blood flow, her growth, fluid levels and all that other important stuff.