The Pregnancy Files

We're expecting baby number three!! You who know me on Facebook already know about our baby who is due sometime in mid-to-late November. After our surprise pregnancy last year which ended almost as soon as I'd found out, when I found out about this baby, I was nervous. I almost steeled my heart because I was afraid to get attached. I was afraid to get excited. And I guess that still remains to a small degree. I tested with five pregnancy tests over a six-day time-frame because I wanted to see if the lines got darker. With the last loss, they didn't. Knowing that I had progression going on, that helped give me some hope that maybe things would be ok.

Almost immediately I began having nasty lower back pain. I went to the ER, fearing the worst. They did beta hcg panel and did an internal ultrasound. I was only four weeks along at the time, and I told the doctor that, but he must have misunderstood what I was saying, because he told me that because nothing was on the ultrasound (and you WON'T see anything at four weeks), and my hcg was only 439 (I think that was the number), I was likely to miscarry. But they gave me some antibiotics because they also suspected UTI. I was a basket-case. We had told no one--no friends, no family--because of the possibility that we'd suffer another loss, so hubby and I had no one to talk to but each other. I cried, and he prayed, and we were just generally miserable for three days, when I had a follow-up hcg panel, which revealed a very nice doubling hcg. The doctor also suspected an intrauterine pregnancy, so I was thrilled. A week later, we had an ultrasound which revealed baby was measuring 5 weeks, 6 days, with a heartbeat of 95. Because of the lower heartbeat (which is often very normal at that time), I was in a panic again. I checked google, and found that most women measuring around that time had babies whose heartbeats were higher, but there were some that measured just like our baby did. Still, I wasn't settled.

It wasn't until my ten week appointment that I saw the baby again on ultrasound. It was moving and kicking and waving its little hands. The heartbeat was a nice 164. I finally felt like things were going to be ok and I calmed down.

We finally announced it to everyone at that point.

A week and a half later, I was back at the OB office with that nasty back pain again. I saw the baby on ultrasound again because it was still a little too early to hear on the doppler, and the heartbeat was 174. I was diagnosed with lumbar issues and issued a prescription for a custom-made lumbar support belt. I'll be stylin' now!! :P

I've hit fourteen weeks now, and I'm feeling a lot of movement. I bought a cheapy Angelsounds doppler that I use once a week (on the weeks I don't have an appointment) just to hear the heartbeat. It's a lot of fun to hear it, and even though I can feel it kicking, it's also fun to hear the boom-boom of the kicks against the doppler and the chug-chug of the heartbeat. It's been in the mid-140s lately, so it has calmed down from the original 160-170 heartbeat that it had early on. At first I thought that maybe I'd have another high-wired child like my first son (his heartbeat was always in the upper 150s-160s), but now this one seems to be trending like my second son did. Yay for laid-back babies!!! One can hope, right? ;)

I plan on regularly updating as the pregnancy progresses. I've never documented a pregnancy before like this, so it will be a lot of fun.