Week 32 and 33: Expect the Unexpected

Weeks 32 and 33

As you all know, I am no stranger to children. I am under no illusions that any part of parenthood will be easy and I'm also under no illusions that I will be able to plan how things will go. 

I guess then I shouldn't be surprised that this pregnancy has taken a complete 180 turn from the time when my doctor declared me her healthiest patient to… where I am now. In this case, I can't even blame Max. He has continued to do everything he is supposed to do as expected (hopefully this is what he will be like out of my tummy as well, please?). 

This past week I was diagnosed with Cholestasis of Pregnancy. I fortunately caught it quickly thanks to some crazy middle of the night itching I was complaining about on twitter and in my last update. It's basically a liver disease that, in my case, is brought on in pregnancy and will disappear afterwards (yay!). In the meantime, it could cause a lot of stress to Max and has been shown to increase the chance of stillbirth or preterm labor. Not yay. 

Fortunately, last week I had a Non Stress Test (checks baby movement and heart beat) and ultrasound to confirm that as of now, the baby is doing very well. I will continue to be monitored twice a week for the remainder of pregnancy, which incidentally will be MUCH shorter than I expected. In order to decrease the stillbirth risk, this will be dealt with by inducing the baby between 36-37 weeks before my liver can bother him too much (hopefully) which is in… about 16 days. AH. 

Since all of this occurred during Christmas week, there was a lot of craziness with the doctor and I just didn't feel comfortable going to Florida in the midst of this chaos. Okay, what actually happened was that I literally packed everything (actually not everything because I forgot half of what I actually needed), went to the airport and had a complete and total meltdown for over an hour before deciding not to get on the plane. Full disclosure. It was a bad day. But in the end, I think I made the right decision because I am now relaxing at the Cape and not a three hour plane ride away from my own doctor and hospital. Max has probably enjoyed enough travel for now and hopefully it's only the beginning of his many travel adventures. 

So. That's the biggest news of Week 32 and 33. Other notes include: 

- I did get a prenatal massage. It helped my back A LOT. I do not find massages to be super stress relieving, but they do seem to work wonders on my back. 

-Only a few days after fixing my back, I managed to hurt the back of my pelvis (which is basically my back/butt) and could barely walk on Christmas Eve morning. I decided to go swimming anyway (but Caroline had to bring me a towel because walking upstairs to get my own was too hard). By some stroke of luck, swimming ended up being exactly what I needed and all back, pelvic etc pain has been pretty minimal since then. I don't know how many times I can say it, I would not have survived this pregnancy without swimming. 

-Max continues to take after his dad and be a night person. He is predictably quiet in the mornings and CRAZY active in the afternoon. At my appointment last Monday they had to wake him up with an alarm clock (not joking) to get him to move so they could measure things properly. This is because it was 9 am. Lol. 

-The silver lining of being a "high risk" pregnancy is I now get a weekly ultrasound. The one on Friday was fun and even though he looks like an alien on the 3D machine, at least he looks like an alien with my nose. Score. 

-Max currently weighs 5 pounds, 6 ounces which is exactly what I weighed when I was born :) He is at the 64 percentile for weight, which I think is a perfect place to be. Hopefully he will be about 7 lbs when he is born. If all turns out well, this will be a blessing in disguise because he may have been REALLY big by February, ha. 

I may do weekly updates now, since I'll probably only have 2 or 3 more. Crazy!