The Amell Family Blog

Pregnancy is never easy. Every one experiences it differently. Some have lots of symptoms and some have very few. Overall, I would consider myself somewhere in the middle with symptoms. With my first pregnancy, I was sick from the day I missed my period all the way until I miscarried at exactly 12 weeks pregnant. When I say sick, I mean throwing up throughout the day, but I was still able to keep food and water down if I ate strategically. Then I became pregnant with Joshua the next month after miscarrying and was just as sick, so essentially, I was really sick for practically 12 months straight. When I compare that pregnancy to this pregnancy, where I never actually got sick, I just felt nauseous a lot, I’d say I’ve come a long way! There is one pregnancy symptom that I do find awful, but thank goodness I’ve only experienced it near the end. The stretching of everything! The stretching that you feel is just awful and unfortunately, I get bigger with each pregnancy 🙁 I still have 2 months to go as of today (Dec 24) and I am not sure how much more my stomach can stretch! The stretching of your pelvic joints sucks as well! Talk about some nerve pain jolts every time I get up, but I’m not complaining. I love being pregnant!

With each birth being different and each birth teaching me something new, I am preparing more for this birth than any other birth. I have read a few books about giving birth unmedicated with the least amount of intervention as possible. The two main books that I have found of value are Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and Hypnobirthing The Mongan Method. I have not purchased any birth classes. Instead I am searching for all of the free material I can find to help me on this journey. I focus on watching videos about breathing techniques, labour positions, hypnobirthing, relaxation techniques, and natural birth vlogs. In my research I have found a lot of my questions being answered within these books and the information. One of my main questions was: “how can a cow seem to give birth with almost ease, but we humans freak out?” The answer is that we’ve lost our instinctual birthing capabilities. The fetal ejection reflex is actually how Jordanna was born. Yes, I had an epidural, but I didn’t actually push her out. My body did all the work. Essentially, the concept of hypnobirthing and instinctual birthing is to achieve deep levels of relaxation and allow your body to do the work. Get out of its way! So for the next 8 weeks, plus or minus a couple weeks, I will be practicing and preparing for labour through deep relaxation, visualization, and breathing exercises. I will let you know how it goes after baby is here because who knows what will happen in the heat of the moment! I will also link the free material I have used to prepare myself, whether that’s YouTube videos or website resources.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about how this pregnancy is going. My nausea was okay this time, but I was extremely tired. At my first prenatal doctor’s appointment, I had registered a high blood pressure. I also want to note here that I had Jordanna with me and while they were checking my blood pressure, the nurse had left the door open and Jordanna was trying to escape. When the nurse came in and saw the results, she repeated the test, but this time Jordanna was flipping all over the floor and I was scared she was going to hit her head on the floor. My doctor’s office contacted my OB/GYN since I had been induced at 39 weeks with Joseph because of high blood pressure/hypertension. They wanted to see if she wanted to start me on blood pressure medication. I then received a call to meet with my OB/GYN for an appointment the following month which is where she took over my care. In between these two appointments, my doctor’s office retook my blood pressure and it was completely fine on the 5 tests they did back to back. All of my blood pressures at my OB’s office have been within the normal/optimal range for the past 6 weeks and high-normal before then. So, I think it was just a fluke the one day that it read high. My 12 week ultrasound was great with no concerns. I passed my glucose test. I began this pregnancy weighing more than I would have liked to, so I have been paying more attention to my activity levels and ensuring I eat healthy. For the past few weeks I have been following a free prenatal exercise guide by GlowBody PT which has been so much fun!

The part that I am quite nervous about though comes when I had my 20 week ultrasound scan. The scan went well and there seemed to be no concerns. Then about a week after my scan, I received a call from my OB/GYN’s office. There is one measurement that came back as “alarming”. The measurement where they measure the fluid at the back of the baby’s neck had read as 6.6mm and the cutoff for “normal” was 6mm. The doctor told me this could mean the baby would have Down syndrome or another type of genetic disorder. Do we want to go for genetic testing? I said yes to sending the referral and then proceeded to cry for the next 5 days. What did I do wrong? The answer is nothing. Sometimes these things happen and after talking with Josh about it, I felt so much better. We don’t believe in abortion, so that wasn’t my stress. I felt like I had done something wrong to cause this. Josh reminded me that sometimes God sends special children down to special families and no matter what, we would love the gift He gave us. I am currently about 8 weeks away from meeting our baby. No idea if it’s a boy or girl and I have no idea about the health of the baby. The hospital that performs the genetic tests never called me to book an appointment. I had called my OB’s office to ask them to send the referral again and I still never received a call. I told my OB this who confirmed that they had indeed sent the referrals, but at this point, I had felt so much anxiety awaiting the phone call from the genetics office that I was just not willing to put myself through that any longer. No matter what the results were, this baby was ours. Sure it would be nice to prepare ahead of time if the baby does have Down Syndrome or another genetic disorder, but I can also just do research after the baby is born if that is indeed the case. The baby will be loved no matter what!

So this is where I am at in this pregnancy with Baby Amell. We don’t know if it’s a girl or boy. We don’t know if baby is healthy or not, but I am doing my best to mentally prepare for an unmedicated birth with the least amount of interventions as possible. I am working hard to physically prepare my body for labour with exercise and flexibility training and eating healthy. At my last appointment, my stomach was measuring big so we will see what the update is on that on my next appointment! I will post updates in new blogs in the Pregnancy Blog section of the website.

listen to the blog post here!

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