I have had kind of a weird feeling for the past week or so. I haven't been feeling any movement really (which is not totally unusal for this part of pregnancy, except that I had felt some before), and I don't seem to have gotten much bigger - or at least I'm not noticing it. I called the midwives and Jennifer stopped by to do a quick Doppler check yesterday to make sure the heartbeat was strong. It took her awhile to find a steady, galloping little heartbeat. Her casual diagnosis is that I have an anterior placenta. Our sonogram next week will confirm. This means that rather than attaching to the uterine wall back toward the spine, as is normal, it attaches on the front of the uterus, near the belly button. This is not troublesome in pregnancy - it just makes movement harder to feel because there is a pillow between your baby and your skin, and it makes it harder to detect the heartbeat around the thickness of the placenta. So, all is well! The only thing I think of is that the likelihood of a posterior presentation ("face up") is higher with an anterior placenta - babies like to face the placenta. So, here's to hoping the baby either turns or I can make it through a posterior birth! (They are notoriously painful.)
I have had some surges of energy in the last few weeks - enough to get me back cooking almost all of our meals, making lots of granola as Jeff is working to bust his addiction to refined sugar (cereal junkie), and sweeping and mopping without wanting to fall down in a heap of exhausted breathlessness. It's a good thing.
I'm drinking two quarts of pregnancy tea, made of nettle, alfalfa, and red raspberry leaf every day. It's kind of fun. I'll post the recipe soon. I've already had a few swollen days after I eat nasty processed salty food, so I'm hoping the nettles can do their work and keep me non-puffy!
I've also gotten to that point where my heart beats harder. Do any pregnant ladies know what I'm talking about? Not faster, just harder. My midwife in my first pregnancy told me this was totally normal, as it's working to pump a greater volume of blood in the same frequency as before. It's just kind of jarring when I lay still and feel my heartbeats shaking my whole body, and visibly raising and lowering my chest and belly.
2 comments:
I can relate to your whole post - first, I started feeling this baby around 14 weeks and then the movement decreased as my placenta moved up. It's anterior and to the left - exactly the same as my last pregnancy. Only recently (around 30 weeks) has there been a lot of movement. Some days prior to that, I wouldn't feel anything at all. I knew this was normal because Liam's pregnancy was pretty quiet as well. Darn anterior placenta ;)
I'm downing the pregnancy tea as well - I love a nice hot cup of tea to wind down when I get home :) making a pitcher of it is a good idea!
My husband is also cutting out sugar right now - he's doing the paleo/whole 30 diet completely out of the blue. I try to help him a little but let's be realistic here...giving up sugar isn't happening for me anytime soon ;)
and finally, yes! My heart feels like it's going to come out of my chest just from walking up a flight of stairs.
you look so cute! now that you're feeling good, time's going to go into warp speed. watch out ;)
Thanks lady! It really calmed me down to know that the lack of movement was nothing concerning. We aren't cutting sugar all the way, just white sugar . . . except the oatmeal raisin cookies I made today - bad wife!
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