34 Weeks!

As of today, I am 34 weeks and 5 days!  I can't believe how close it is getting.  I went to the doctor on Monday and they told me that my stomach was measuring small, so they wanted to do an ultrasound and check on her.  They scheduled the ultrasound for two weeks from Monday.  I asked the doctor what they wanted to check on and they said they want to make sure that she is getting enough nutrients to grow, and make sure that there isn't any placenta problems that's causing her to not get enough nutrients.  That made me pretty worried.  The main reason I felt worried is I thought maybe it was my fault she wasn't getting enough nutrients and that's why she was small.  I thought maybe I wasn't eating enough or eating healthy enough.  It was bothering me all day on Monday and Jacob was worried about it too so he suggested that maybe I could ask if I could reschedule the ultrasound for earlier so we wouldn't have to be worried for two weeks.  So later that afternoon I had to go back into the doctor's office to pick up the papers the nurses were filling out for Jacob and I to take leaves of absences from work.  While I was there, I asked the receptionist if I could reschedule the appointment for earlier.  She checked with the doctor and he said that was fine.  So we rescheduled the ultrasound for today, which is Thursday.  I went in this afternoon and.......

her measurements look great!! It was a big relief to be able to see her and know that she is healthy.  The reason my stomach is measuring small is because I'm holding her so high and inside.  I knew this already; I can definitely feel her bothering my rib cage and making me short of breath all the time because she is up so high.  It was just a relief to find out that is the reason why my stomach is measuring small, and not because Marli is un-healthy.  She is breech right now though, so they're going to do another ultrasound in about a week and a half to see if she has flipped yet, and if not, we're going to talk about options.

It was so interesting to me though to find out that she is breech.  Three times in the past two weeks, I have felt terrible pain in my stomach.  Each time, it has felt like my whole stomach has tightened up and the pain has been so bad I have had to sit down.  It's lasted only about 3 minutes each time it has happened.  I thought maybe they were Braxton Hicks contractions, but I wasn't too worried about it. So today when I found out she was breech, I asked if you can feel when the baby flips from one position to the other.  The doctor said that yes, a lot of times people say they can feel it and it is painful when the baby flips.  And so I was like OOOHHH.  It makes complete sense.  The first time she flipped was 2 weeks ago.  She flipped from head down to head up and that was when my rib cage started really feeling uncomfortable because her head was up by my ribs.  And also, I stopped having to go to the bathroom so much.  We just thought it was because she had moved up, but it was because her head wasn't down by my bladder anymore.  And then I felt the second pain on Tuesday morning.  And so on Tuesday and Wednesday, I was going to the bathroom a lot more frequently and had to wake up both nights to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  We thought it was just because she was moving back down, but it was because her head was back down by my bladder! And then I felt the third pain this morning, and now she's back to being breech!  Mystery solved.

I told the doctor that whole story and he said it made sense and hopefully since she is so mobile, she'll turn back to head-down in time for me to deliver her.  Hopefully this post wasn't too boring because it was so long haha.

-Tracey

Why Do We Get Sick?

Preschool has started again.  It's super fun for me.  We have a really good class of children this semester.  I think I will be posting a lot of funny stories on here!  So here is funny story #1 from this fall:

The college students that I am in charge of have to "preassess" the children on a topic they want to teach on.  For example, two of the girls decided to teach on doctors so they gave the rest of the teachers in the classroom questions about doctors to ask the children to help them decide how much the children already know about doctors.  So I was eating snack next to one little boy and I asked him why we get sick.  Without missing a beat, he responded with "You get sick when you eat poop!"  Haha!! I was at a loss for words when he said that, that is definitely not what I expected him to say! Haha.  So I said "Yes, eating poop would make you sick."  He then told me about how his dog eats his own poop all the time and then he pukes it back up.  I asked him what else makes you sick and he said "Um, I don't know."  Haha!!