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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Stellar Parenting: Bribing Your Child Before He's Born

Neil passed his BPP today... with some patience and peanut M&Ms.  My fluid was great, but Neil refused to move or breathe, even though his heart rate was just fine.  He's been a wiggle worm for the last few days, but now that we needed him to perform, he froze up.  The ultrasound tech had me lie on my left side, which was supposed to encourage him to breathe, but he refused.  The ultrasound poked and shook my belly, but he refused to move or breathe.  Finally, I broke out the peanut M&Ms, and he started breathing and wiggled a bit.  The ultrasound tech thought it was pretty funny, like bribing a child during potty training.  Apparently, Neil has already mastered holding his breath until he's bribed.  I was thankful that the ultrasound tech was so patient with us/him.  She told us after he passed the test that if he hadn't cooperated they would have sent us to the hospital for a non-stress test.  She meant it as reassurance that failing the BPP isn't the end of the world, and it is reassuring; but it's also incentive to pass the BPP so that we don't have to spend time at the hospital.  I've got plenty of peanut M&Ms in my purse just in case.

We didn't learn anything new about Neil from the ultrasound.  We were so intent on making him breathe and move that we didn't look for anything else.

I lost two pounds in the last week; hopefully, Neil's still gaining.  It might have all been fluid.  I've actually had ankles again!  My blood pressure was still high: 148/89, but Dr. Reynolds wasn't concerned.  He reviewed the symptoms of preeclampsia with me and told me to go to the hospital if I had any of them.  He also felt my abdomen.  But mostly he talked to Matt about the NFL draft.  It was nice to not have alarms going off at the end of my appointment for a change.

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