16 Weeks and 5 Days

Hello October 13th and our third prenatal. Today found me happily declaring to our midwives that I was no longer going to die of starvation or indecision. I've been able to decide things on my own for several weeks now and food is no longer an issue.

Some topics we chatted about:

My headaches have gone away after a chiro appointment (was leaning my head forward because of additional weight and my eagerness to look ahead was showing up.) But I am waking up with headaches in the middle of the night that go away by morning. It feels like when you wake up after a night of drinking feeling like you're going to have the worst headache, only to find yourself perfect come morning.

I thought maybe it was dehydration, but it didn't really make sense since my pee is never concentrated and I drink throughout the night. Lori felt it could be low blood sugar. And though I don't feel hungry, perhaps I am. But why would it resolve on it's own and why can I actually fall back asleep? Kim thought perhaps circulation. At any rate, it's not something that concerns me, just an oddity of my pregnancy.

I mentioned how busy I've been with birth center work, being a temporary nanny and having childbirth and doula clients. But it's the perfect time for all that to be happening.

I told them that I felt that my uterus is growing larger than my 16 weeks, mostly in height. Sometimes it feels at a 20 week height to me and sometimes I can't find the fundus (top of uterus) at all. But overall the width of the uterus feels right on with 16 weeks. Lori felt it and agreed that the fundus was higher, more along 18 weeks but thought that overall it was growing at a pace that was normal.

They also said that the 3 different times I thought I felt the baby move was probably the baby moving. The first time was at 15 weeks and I felt a bubble releasing inside my uterus. The next times was at 16 weeks and 2 days when I thought I felt a poke on the left side and then a few minutes later on the right side I had that same bubble feeling. Yeah baby!

I mentioned my new love of grapes and was told that grapes are a great blood builder. And isn't that perfect timing since my body is busy making lots of extra blood!!!

My pulse was 82, which is again high for me. I think as the appointment goes on I get more and more excited and this raises everything. My blood pressure was 106 over 72 or something like that. I'm going to have Dave check my vitals a few times at home just to see if it is because I get all excited talking about baby things when I'm with the midwives.

And my pee pH was 8 again. I was all excited to tell them that I figured out it was the legumes that caused a high pH last time only to remember that I ate 13 bean soup last night, so my pee was affected again. Not that it really matters, but it's certainly a curiosity to me.

Lori wasn't able to hear baby's heartbeat with the fetascope and I didn't feel it was necessary to use a Doppler. I feel confident that baby is growing and healthy and I wanted to feel myself decline the quick fix of the Doppler. It felt good to have real confidence again in my body's ability to do what it needs to do.