27 Weeks

How am I feeling? Physically, fairly good.  I'm definitely feeling more and more pregnant, but still have moments of forgetting how pregnant I am.  For instance, I jogged down the street with Baby Girl yesterday and when I was done was shocked at the tightness that I was feeling.  I also will walk at a quicker pace, but then realize how out of breath I am and how much my ankles hurt.  My reflux is mainly in check and I've been able to even enjoy some salsa and tomato-based foods.  I did try to drink a Diet Coke last Sunday and had a REALLY rough evening.  No more of that until after Baby Boy arrives!

Emotionally, I'm worried about bonding with Baby Boy.  Now that I know his positioning and have heard his heartbeat again, I feel a bit more connected to him, but I just find myself wondering how I can possibly love him as much as his sister.  I'm sure it will all be okay once he's here--just anxious about it for now.

I'm also having trouble with my weight gain, which I'll discuss below.

Weight thoughts: I've been weighing myself sporadically at home and had headed to the doctor feeling fairly optimistic and hoping for a weight gain of about 3 pounds.  Unfortunately, what I got was a weight gain of 9 pounds!  That means I'm up 27 pounds since my 7 week appointment--not what I was hoping for.  I thought something was wrong and expressed that to my doctor and she agreed that it was unlikely that I'd gained that much.  I've been a lot more careful about my portion sizes because of the reflux, so I'd assumed my weight gain would be minimal.  However, when I weighed myself this morning at home, the scale reflected the same weight gain.  In fact, I now weigh the same as I did when I delivered Baby Girl, which is also the same weight I was when I got married.  And it's only going up from here.

I'm really upset about this.  I know it's not the end of the world, but I had thought I was doing really well.  I'm now going to cut out some of the peanut butter I've been eating (it's been an easy protein for me so I've been having it twice a day--once on toast in the morning and also in the afternoon with an apple) and hope to start getting out for more walks.  I'm obviously not going to starve myself or obsess *too* much, but it's painful to see another large weight gain.


Doctor appointments?  I just had one yesterday, which is why I waited to post (I'll technically turn 28 weeks on Saturday).  My appointment was at 1:45 p.m., so I finished my glucose drink at 12:55 and told the receptionist when I arrived.  At 1:55 they still hadn't called me back, so I approached the receptionist and she immediately knew why I was there.  She ran and got someone to draw my blood and we did the glucose screening.  My number was 103 and they wanted it at 134 or below--what a load off my mind!  I went back to the waiting room to wait for awhile longer, then the nurse took us back to a room.  She took my weight, urine, and blood pressure (crazy low for me--98/54, I think, because I hadn't had much food since breakfast in anticipation of my glucose screening), then left us alone again.  I'm lucky The Hubby brought our iPad to the appointment because we didn't actually see the doctor until after 2:45.

Dr. S was apologetic about being late and then asked how baby's movement is.  I told her about my suspicion that he might have turned to head down, but then that he might be transverse again, so she checked my stomach and confirmed that he was at an angle--his feet/bum toward my right shoulder and his head toward my left hip.  She immediately found the heartbeat (154 bpm) and reassured me that he has plenty of time to turn.  We talked about my candidacy for a VBAC (she thinks I'm a really good candidate) and my reflux issues.  She suggested I try some Mylanta if I think I'm going to have something that might really upset my stomach on top of the Zantac that I'll continue to take twice per day.

Movement?  Oh goodness, yes.  As of Wednesday the 25th, I was very sure that Baby Boy was transverse.  I was feeling kicks and hits on both of my sides at the same time.  Then Thursday night (the 26th) I had a lot of steady pressure and for the next 4 days or so only felt fairly light movement down very low.  I thought maybe he'd turned to a head-down position.  Then on Tuesday the 31st I started feeling movement on both sides again.  Since our doctor appointment yesterday, I've been very aware of what I'm feeling.  I'm feeling LOTS of kicks under my right breast and some more rolling-type movement in the middle of my stomach (likely either a shoulder or his butt).  I'm also getting some movement on my lower left side and some light movement down very low (which I would assume would be a hand).

Baby preparation? We've been working hard at getting better habits in regards to keeping our house clean (more on that very soon) and have also been organizing our basement so we can create a 2nd living room with more toy storage down there.  But we haven't touched the nursery recently.  We're shipping Baby Girl off to my parents' house this weekend for my mom's birthday, so maybe we'll work more in the nursery then.