Not What I Expected To Be (but still pretty damn good)

Whew, has this been quite a week! I'm happy every week when Friday comes, but this week it seems especially wonderful because this week, particularly the last two days, have been fairly hellish.

First, here's my 29-Weeks Belly Shot:


I'm in disbelief every week that I've gotten this far along; that I'm adult enough to be creating a family; that in just about 2 1/2 months I'll have a baby of my very own that I've wanted for so long.

However, all of this bringing a baby in to the world stuff is not as easy as I expected. I really thought I'd be all calm, earth-mother, taking it all in a stride. I've been fairly the opposite: an anxious mess, worrying about every weird new symptom that has come about, worrying about whether I can really do this, and being generally very uncomfortable, especially lately. Don't get me wrong, there are many times when I love being pregnant, especially when I'm sitting comfortably and the baby's kicking. Or when someone notices I'm pregnant and I get to talk about the baby.

This week has been one of the worst anxiety- and comfort-wise. I had my glucose screening on Tuesday, which wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, but then I got the news back that my glucose levels were a little high (7 points above the cut-off for normal), and so I have to go back in for the three-hour glucose test next week. I'm really not looking forward to this; carb-loading for three days, fasting for 12 hours, and then having my blood drawn 4 times in 3 hours, the last three times after I've had to drink the Glucola again. Last time my sugar dropped and I felt sick after about 2 1/2 hours, so this should be fun.

I also have low iron levels in my blood, so I'm adding an iron supplement to my daily vitamin regimen. Which isn't such a big deal, but let's just say that I haven't had to deal with one of the most common, uncomfortable pregnancy symptoms, but my chances are going up with the iron supplements. Woohoo!

In addition to these two things, I've also been in quite a lot of pain since last Thursday evening. I have a constant dull ache along my right side, especially around my lowest rib on that side. It gets worse as the day wears on and even worse if that day is spent sitting in my office chair. The doctor was a little worried at first about preecamplsia, as upper right abdominal pain is one of the symptoms, but I don't have any other signs - my blood pressure is normal, no protein showing up in my urine, etc.

Just to double check everything was all right, they had me do 30 minutes of monitoring at the office, which I know some women complain about (and I might if they do it during my labor), but I absolutely loved yesterday. I got to sit and listen to my baby's strong, regular heartbeat for half an hour, and it's the sweetest sound in the world to me. I also got to hear her kick the monitor quite regularly after the first 15 minutes; apparently she got tired of being pressed on in the same place for so long. She passed the non-stress test with flying colors, so that along with the other normal test results, makes the doctor figure I just somehow wrenched something or it's my body carrying the baby weight all out front. Which means I get to wear this for the rest of the pregnancy:


I don't know if you can really see it well in the picture, but it's a Prenatal Cradle, meant to support my growing girth in order to relieve abdominal and back strain. They prescribed this to me a while ago, but I had put off getting it, preferring, apparently, to suffer through it. This past week, though, the pain has been fairly unbearable so I caved. I'm kind of excited about having this to wear so I can get some exercise (walks longer than about 100 feet) which has been unbearable since about 20 weeks. It's going to take some getting used to for wearing at other times. It's not the most comfortable thing I've ever worn, but it's not horrible either.

Next week at this time I'll be 3/4 of the way done with this pregnancy, and despite all of my complaining above, I think I'll miss it a lot. More than that, though, I can't wait to meet my baby girl. It's so exciting I can hardly stand it. And completely worth being the frantic pregnant woman I've turned out to be.