Today I had my 37 week appointment with my OB except she is on holidays right now so I saw one of the other OB’s in the clinic. I have never formally met him before, but he seems really nice honestly! He asked if I had any concerns and normally I don’t except this weekend, my body was acting weird.
Friday night our furnace broke when it was -40 degrees Celcius outside so that was fun. Josh and I stayed up until 2:00 am Saturday morning waiting for the furnace repair man to come out and replace a switch, which we are so grateful to McCann Mechanical for being there 24 hours a day for people in need! It was actually the owner who was on call that evening and he tried to work with us over the phone to see if we could get it working, but that was when we all realized that it was a broken switch. The furnace would ramp itself up to turn on and then never fully turned on. So he made his way to the shop, grabbed the parts, and came and fixed everything for us! Thanks again guys! So, point being, I am not sure if it was the lack of sleep or what, but all day Saturday and Sunday I had a headache that would not go away no matter how much water I drank. I also had a weird pressure feeling in my chest and it was worrying me that my blood pressure was just high over the weekend. Preeclampsia was not something to mess around with!
Saturday when I was feeling these symptoms, I honestly thought it was just due to lack of sleep so I was pushing it aside. The weird part about getting hardly any sleep the Friday night was that my body was not craving any naps over the weekend. I mean Josh took many naps that weekend to catch up on sleep and I do not blame him since he works all week, he can’t afford to lose sleep. I was just surprised my body never wanted to nap or sleep. Sunday was when the symptoms were starting to concern me. The baby did not do it’s usual marathon run when I laid in bed Saturday night for the first 5 minutes. It was moving, but not the way it usually did. I debated about going to the hospital on Sunday to just have a check up done to make sure everything was okay, but the baby was moving just fine throughout the day. It was the headaches and the chest pressure. I knew I had this OB appointment the Monday at 9:30 am, so I decided that unless the symptoms got more intense over the day, that I would just wait; or if my feet or hands swelled up then I would go to the hospital for sure!
The OB told me if anything like that happened again, to at least call in and talk to someone about it or just show up and get monitored. Better safe than sorry and I totally agree. He measured my belly and took baby’s heart rate, but didn’t tell me what it was. He said everything was fine though. He asked me if I had discussed inductions with my OB and I said I had and I am not interested in being induced at all because I hate Pitocin. I have had 3 inductions and I am not up for another one if I can help it. He did mention though that since baby is measuring big and if baby is big, then I may want to think about scheduling an induction for my due date to make sure the baby doesn’t get too big. I have some thoughts on this though that I will discuss in a moment.
My blood pressure at this appointment was 139/76 which is borderline high. The blood pressure machine hates me I think because after I took this initial measurement, I took some calming breathes and took it again. It went down to 112/73. So either calming breathes really work to lower your blood pressure or the machine just does not like me! He did say that my blood pressure was borderline getting high, but nothing that he was concerned about since it was below 140 and the bottom number was below 90. I bet I am on the watch list now though! He also said baby was quite low in my pelvis which makes me happy! Labour could be near, or still another 3+ weeks away. I actually lost a pound between last week and this week and I’m totally okay with that! I started this pregnancy weighing more than I ever would have liked to and according to my BMI in the obese or highly obese section. So, losing a pound now should be fine not that I’m focusing on that at all. However, I guess weight gain in pregnancy can plateau near the end too and some women even lose weight as labour nears! *Fingers crossed!* I love being pregnant, but I’m also super excited to find out who this baby is and the whole “measuring big” and 20 week ultrasound stuff has just made me want to get to the end to make sure baby is okay.
Starting next week, at my appointments, they will offer to check for dilation and offer to do stretch and sweeps to help my body go into labour on it’s own and I am definitely up for that! I like knowing whether I am dilated at all or not, but I also am up for having my body go into labour on it’s own as well. Anything to avoid an induction. He also told me that if the other OB didn’t offer to do it, that he would be happy to do it for me to help me along which I thought was really nice since he has his own patients to see on top of my OB’s patients this week.
So my thoughts about big babies and whether my baby is actually big or not. In the books I have read and the research I have conducted through website and such, most of the time, when the baby is measuring big, it is due to position. Even an ultrasound cannot accurately predict the baby’s weight. The books that discuss giving birth unmedicated also discuss how OB’s tend to try to turn to induction quite quickly. I do trust the medical community with many things, but I also trust my body and am in the middle with these conflicting sides. I will not go past 41 weeks because of what happened with Jonathan, but I will push it past my due date. I will also do some things that will help induce my labour naturally, like the things discussed in this video. Your body isn’t going to go into labour from these methods if it is not ready. I would only start these though once I was 39 weeks.
Now my next appointment is next week so we will see what that holds! I promise if anything else happens with the symptoms above or if it comes back, I will call in or go in to be checked out!
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