35/35 Day!!

What is 35/35 you may wonder? Well, it means that I'm 35 weeks and there are 35 days left to go! However, in my case that's not really true.... I guess this is more like 35/28? That doesn't sound quite as fun as 35/35 though! Today, I "celebrated" by picking up my heparin at Walgreens and will start that next Sunday. Oh let me tell you, going from one shot a day to two shots? I'm super excited, LOL....which is why whatever side effects Metformin gives or gave me will be dealt with to avoid insulin which would put me at 3-5 shots a day instead. How did this pregnancy start looking like an IVF cycle again? Maybe that's why I keep having those dreams of a FET at 36 weeks, HAHA!! Although, if two shots a day of heparin allows me to have an epidural if or when I go into labor....so the eff be it. Seriously....I want the drugs. I'll take all the shots to have all the drugs, LOL

Anywho, this past week was the typical week....slow and boring. After our baby shower on Sunday, I had stayed up until around 10:30pm trying to organize the gifts and bring them to their proper places. A friend of mine said they made piles of what goes in each room and what a great idea that turned out to be. I sat on the floor and sorted , then when sorting was done, just carried piles to each room. Around 1030 though, although I wasn't completely finished, I decided to listen to my body which was telling me to rest. My legs and feet were soooo swollen. Of course, part of that is my silly self choosing to wear tight heeled boots all day. The other part being that I was sitting on the floor for like 4 hours too....not a whole lot of room for circulation in either situation. By morning though the swelling was gone. Normally I would have freaked out by any kind of swelling but I decided to rationalize with myself and decide I could only freak out if the swelling was still there in the morning. Thankfully, my legs looked normal, phew!

Monday morning's NST was rough. For me especially. The appointment (I don't know what I was thinking when I scheduled it) was at 8am, meaning I had to leave the house at 7am....meaning I had to wake up early enough to be out the door by 7am. OhmygodIwasSOtired!!!!   I literally went to that appointment wearing the same shirt I wore to the shower the day before, hair still curled and pinned, makeup still on, etc. I looked like a hot mess I'm sure. Thomas did his usual song and dance where he was not interested in cooperating when on the monitors but after being buzzed three times he finally gave the OB what they were looking for.

Thursday's NST....a different story. After being on the monitors for about 1hr45min, being buzzed repeatedly, he still wasn't moving as much as they wanted nor was his heart rate accelerating when he did move. The OB came into the NST room and when I saw her, I knew that wasn't a good sign. She sent me to Labor & Delivery to be put on a monitor for a longer period of time so they could tell more about what he was doing in there, so off I went to L&D.

Thankfully we took the tour end of January so I knew exactly where I was going. Only problem was....that damn "Cradle Club" mural on the wall. The second I saw that outside the entrance to the floor it hit me..... I'm going to L&D. As in....the place where babies are born. I don't want to go there today. Cue the hyperventilation and crying. I was alone (Jim had court...this was just a routine Dr. appt. today) and I was headed to L&D and there might be something wrong with my baby.

Somehow I made it down the long hallway and thankfully no one was around to see me in that state. When you get to the doors of the floor, its locked and you have to pick up the phone to get let in. I was so choked up that I could barely get my name out....I started explaining on the phone why I was there but she was expecting me so she cut me off and opened the door.

Pretty soon I was put into a L&D room, strapped to the monitors, given a TV remote and told that I'd be sitting there at least 2 hours. At that time, the OB on call would come in and review the strip from the monitor and we'd go from there. Longest.two.hours.ever.

When the OB came back two hours later he still didn't like what he was seeing. He said it wasn't alarming necessarily just not what he was looking for. He gave me the explanation that if you have a child in school and he brings home an "A" report card then you know he's doing well in school. However, if the grades haven't been posted and you haven't seen his report card yet then you can't really say for sure how well he's doing in school. Same thing with Thomas. Thomas wasn't giving us a report card so to speak. We could see he was doing something in there but couldn't be sure from his heart rate alone if he was ok, so the OB ordered what's called a Biophysical Profile test aka BPP which is just a fancy way to say an ultrasound but they look for certain things while doing the ultrasound.

While looking at the strip, he also asked me how I was feeling that day. "Funny you should ask doc.... today I feel really awful" was my response. When I woke up that morning I was 90% sure it would be a puking day....fortunately I scarfed my English muffin quick enough that my stomach settled to the point that I didn't need to bring a Jewel bag with me in the car. I did, however, just feel really sick to my stomach all day. As I was laying in that bed on the monitors the cramps started coming back too. Well....as it turned out, I was having contractions. Ooooh boy. The OB said that he wasn't really concerned with them, especially since Thomas' heart rate wasn't dropping during the contractions but they were definitely there! He then left the room and I sat around some more waiting for the radiology tech to come up with the ultrasound machine for Thomas' BPP.

Now, during a BPP, the doctors are looking for 5 categories to be met and you get 2 points for each category that is normal:
“scored” during the BPP:

Biophysical Attribute	Normal	Abnormal
Breathing	1 breathing episode within 30 minutes	No breathing episodes within 30 minutes
Movement	2 or more movements within 30 minutes	less than 2 movements within 30 minutes
Muscle Tone	1 or more episodes of active extension/flexion of limbs, etc. (i.e. opening and closing a hand).	Slow extension/flexion of limbs, partially open fetal hand, etc
Heart Rate	2 or more episodes of reactive heart rate acceleration within 20 min	1 or more episodes of unreactive heart rate acceleration
Amniotic Fluid	1 or more adequate pockets of fluid	Either no pockets or inadequate pockets of fluid

A perfect score is either 8/8 (if all categories are normal but heart rate acceleration isn't, it cancels that one out), 8/10, or 10/10. Thomas scored an 8/8 which was a major relief. Unfortunately, my thoughts that he flipped earlier in the week were incorrect and he for sure is still a little footling breech baby, stubborn as ever! As of this weekend, I'm officially seeing a chiropractor in hopes of getting him to turn. I'm also starting to try some of the Spinning Babies inversions so we'll see if those together have the ability to convince him to move!

At any rate, soon after the ultrasound tech left the room when the BPP was done, Thomas started kicking around.The nurse finally came into the room close to 4pm and pulled the strip off the monitor again and showed me how all of a sudden Thomas was giving them the reactive strips they were looking for. She said "If he had done this at 9am at your OB's office, you wouldn't have spent the day in L&D". Great, LOL

I got to take a peek at my contractions on the monitors as well.....ahh yes, definitely different looking than the flat line I usually see.  Before I left for the day, the nurse gave me the schpeel on when to call....when they're stronger, closer together, any leaking and/or bleeding, yadda yadda. Then I went home on my merry way. What a day.

So now I'm officially paranoid that Thomas is coming early. All day Friday/Saturday I've had "phantom leaking" ....where I think I'm leaking but when I run to the bathroom nothing is there. Just another fun trait of the 3rd trimester that is similar to the 1st...the constant panty checks!

Now its Sunday..... I'm 35 weeks. I'm pretty pleased having made it this far in the pregnancy and while I'd prefer him to cook until 39 weeks as planned, I'm "ok" with the possibility of him coming early. Matter of fact, I'd almost expect that he would and would be more surprised with him staying put until 39 weeks than coming early. I just only can hope that he waits until after next weekend so that we can all celebrate his arrival at my family's shower on Sunday. After that, he can do as he pleases I suppose. St. Patrick's Day would be a nice day for his birthday!  Especially since his Grandpa is Patrick and his big brother is John Patrick....and we're Irish (clearly) I think that would be a fine day to meet little Thomas James, don't you? :)

Here I am at 35 weeks! While I had gained back 1lb of the 2.5 that I lost..... I then lost an additional 2lbs so here I am officially at the weight that I was when I got engaged five years ago. Haha. My MFM doesn't know but I'm an under achiever....she tells me she would like me to gain 15-20lbs right? Well neener neener I'll only gain max 10lbs and show you! LOL totally not the plan but hey, little too late now!

Ok enough weight talk....bump shot time....Kind of sad we don't have too many more "bump" shots left!