hCG+

Saturday, July 01, 2006

The Daily Hiccup

Now the hiccups are daily; sometimes more than once. This morning at about 5 I could actually feel the hicking from the outside. The midwife said that since I'm feeling all the hicking down by my cervix, it's likely the baby has already turned upside-down.

I had my glucose challenge last prenatal visit. Apparently I over-researched it, since I thought I was supposed to not eat for six hours beforehand (as everything online seems to state). However, it turns out they don't do that at this place, so I made myself crabby and tired all day for no good reason. I thought she didn't instruct me to starve myself beforehand...

It turns out the midwife doesn't know the sex of the baby after all. She was simply calling it "she" as something to call it, since her own youngest is a girl. She even showed me the report from the ultrasound, which has a blank space next to "genitalia." So nobody really knows except the ultrasound technician! Of course, now I know what to look for on the ultrasound ("three lines" vs. "turtle"), and can't help racking my memory to imagine which it looked like more. The strategic modest placement of the umbilicus/fig leaf, however, throws me off.

I am now 152 pounds, only 2.5 (approximately) of which is baby. I'm not sure where it all is! I really don't feel massive (well, other than the belly area), although this is exactly 40 pounds more than what I used to weigh back when I wanted so much to gain a few pounds.

My hips hurt every night now--not horribly, but achily, so that I wake up frequently and want to lie on my back or front, but can't. And I have these Toni-Braxton contractions--er, Braxton-Hicks contractions--most evenings and at other random times, like getting up from my desk or when peeing. Also if I'm wearing something that presses on my lower belly too much, or even sometimes when the baby is bumping my cervix a lot.

Sometimes I know there's going to be a contraction before it happens, because they're usually accompanied by an odd tummy sensation like free-fall (or like dread, depending on the context). I think I have an inkling now what kind of feeling labor contractions will be, though certainly the degree is quite different.

I am looking forward to going shopping for our stock of Fuzzi Bunz (that link is to a store that is actually nearby: I want to play with them before buying!) Especially after viewing cost comparisons between cloth and disposable diapers (not even to mention the 2,000 pounds of diapers not going into landfills). They even have high resale value on eBay! I did consider getting them on eBay initially, but decided I wanted at least a base inventory of new ones. The new ones only cost a couple of dollars more, anyway.

If the baby was born right now, it'd have a 90% chance of survival. (!!)

2 Comments:

  • I had assumed that contractions would be something like the couple of really awful periods I've had that made me double over in pain and ache.

    Yaaagh! It's getting so close!

    By Blogger argotnaut, at 11:04 PM  

  • That was my exact assumption as well. But this does seem different. More clenchy, less crampy.

    Now I think that part of that crampiness (which, by the way, used to make me pass out sometimes at least for a second or two) was at least partly intestinal. There often seemed to be some kind of lower digestive involvement, and often diarrhea.

    At least when I wasn't on the pill, that is.

    By Blogger liz, at 1:26 PM  

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