I had another ultrasound and check up today. My blood pressure was great: 123/80. I gained 6 pounds in 3 weeks, a little faster than I'd like but reasonable, especially since we've done a lot of travelling recently. The baby is still head-down and seems to have all his parts; they're just small. Well, not his "boy parts." Those seem to be well developed. :) Overall, he's just small, about 3.5 pounds. One "your baby this week" email I got says that he should be about 4.5 pounds. Actually, if he gains half a pound a week like he's supposed to at this stage, he'll be 7 pounds by 40 weeks, which is a fine birth weight. But he's not within the desired growth percentiles right now, so they're going to do some tests. Low weight is typically caused by a mother's smoking or high blood pressure, neither of which applies to me. So they want to make sure there's no other problem, particularly a problem with blood flow to the baby. They have no reason other than his size to think there's a problem. My placenta looks good, and what they could see of the umbilical cord also looked fine. My uterus was a little low on fluid, so I'm supposed to drink more. Travelling probably affected how much I drink, too. We could see Neil sucking, so he seemed fine.
The ultrasound tech and the nurse practitioner asked me if he's active. I told them his movements are more regular but not terribly frequent. The nurse practitioner specifically asked about nighttime movement and was very impressed that he calms down when I tell him it's bedtime. He wasn't very active during the ultrasound. Other than his sucking lips, only his feet moved a little. However, after the ultrasound I ate a granola bar in the waiting room and he did his "happy meal dance." Next time, I'll eat a granola bar during the ultrasound so we can see the dance. The nurse practitioner said I should feel him move 4 times per hour. I'm not sure he does that. Maybe if I ate a peanut butter sandwich (he gets really excited when I eat peanut butter) and then put my computer desk against my belly, I could provoke him to move more than 4 times in one hour. And I'd have to make sure I didn't talk to him, which would make him stop moving. I typically acknowledge his movements by talking to him, and I talk to him while I do housework. Perhaps if his mother would shut up long enough, he'd get some exercise.
So I've got some tests this week to prove we're OK. I was given a jug for a 24-hour urine test to check my kidney function. Unfortunately, I stocked up on groceries at Aldi on Saturday, so I'm going to have to figure out where to put my pee jug during the 24 hours of testing. Fortunately, I didn't have any away-from-home plans for Tuesday, so the test won't affect my life too much. On Wednesday morning, I'll take my urine jug to the doctor and have a blood test. Hopefully, everything will be OK. We'll also have another ultrasound next week after we get back from Missouri. Of course, I'll post more when I know more.
The nurse practitioner is very reassuring and does a good job of explaining what's going on and why. She let us know that there's no reason to worry at this point. And though Matt and I had quite a few questions for her, mostly because we like to understand things, I don't think either of us is worried. That's a good thing because worry could increase my blood pressure, and I've heard that's not good for a baby's birth weight.
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