Where is Baby Payne: 4 more months (at most....) and Fetal Echo today

Today is December 5th and so my EDD is only 4 months away. I don't know why, and I've said it before, but I don't think he's going to wait until April 5th to get here. Could be wrong, if I am that's fine too, but just a hunch.....of course I thought he was a girl too sooooo...

Today we had what's called a fetal echocardiogram. Basically just a more in depth look at his heart. No reason for concern, its just protocol for the MFM's office to do one right about now. Plus of course, its another excuse to get some pictures of the little stinker.

Why do I call him "little stinker" you ask? Well, his new game is "Kick Mommy until Daddy comes to feel". I could be sitting here all day feeling him kick and jab away and when my hand is on my belly he boxes it. The second I tell Jim to come sit by me and put his hand on my belly to feel him....he stops. Every. time. Pretty sure Jim thinks I'm making this up, haha.

So back to the echo...

All looks great as we anticipated. I had mentioned that day that I didn't know if I peed myself but the MFM said that the fluid around him is perfect level. My cervix was 3.1 which is down from the 3.5 it was four weeks ago but the ultrasound tech said if it was over 3 that I was fine so ooook! I've also been noticing some blipping in my blood pressure again.

I thought it was doing pretty good for awhile with the calcium supplements I was taking but last week or so its been acting up again. Jim and I went to dinner with his parents and towards the end of the night I started getting the most monstrous headache ever. It would go away for maybe 20 minutes but then come right back. It was so painful a few times I felt like vomiting from the pain. My IL's came in after dinner for a cup of coffee...and of course we had no Tylenol in the house.... so as soon as my IL's left our house I took my bp and went to bed to try and sleep it off. My reading wasn't bad but not awesome like it had been, it was 120/87 which is a higher diastolic (bottom number) than normal.

In the morning it was fine again and stayed pretty normal until yesterday afternoon at lunch. All I did was make some soup for lunch, bring a few hand towels upstairs and empty the bathroom garbage into a Jewel bag and a few min. later when I checked my pressure it was 129/89, yikes. So I sat down to rest a few minutes and tried again about 7 minutes later....it went up!!! Then it was 130/92 and I felt the tingles in my lips like I do when my bp gets a little higher. I checked it again another 10 minutes later and it finally started coming down starting at 125/86 which still isn't fantastic. I asked my MFM about this and she said that although around this time in pregnancy the blood pressure readings will start to be elevated they should remain stable at some point and they really shouldn't be more than 130s/80s. The only reading of concern was the 130/92 but since it was an isolated occurrence she's not worried.

As always , I'm on full alert with monitoring to make sure it doesn't reach those numbers again. For fun, since I love peeing on sticks, I bought some dipsticks from Amazon to test for protein and glucose in my urine. It was astounding to me that in a short two weeks last year I went from no symptoms whatsoever to being hospitalized. Having OB appointments where they check my urine for protein only every four weeks until 32 weeks is making me really on edge. Hopefully these sticks can give me some peace of mind at least to pair up with my bp and be on top of my health in between appointments.

Good news is....next week is 24 weeks which is a big step in the right direction for us. Not that I want a baby for Christmas at 24/25weeks but even that is a hell of a lot better than 20 weeks. I'm just hopeful he stays put and I stay in good health until Valentines Day and then at 33 weeks we can work with that.

Thomas gave us some good ones today for his 23 week glamour shots...