~*~ PgAL/PAIF check-in week of July 3 ~*~

[muscari]

Welcome to the PgAL and PAIF check-in!

This is a weekly check-in for those of us who are pregnant after loss and/or infertility. Feel free to jump in any time!
The check-in is a safe place to share all things that come with being PgAL and/or PAIF. Use this thread to ask questions, share your excitement/rage/worries/whatever, or to ask for support!

Please come on in and let us know how you're doing, and know you are always welcome to come back throughout the week whenever you need to!! ♥

*~*~*~*~*


PgAL Mantras
aplacetomeet.freeforums.net/thread/373/pgal-mantras

PAIF Mantras
aplacetomeet.freeforums.net/post/47020/thread


**Loss/trigger warnings are not necessary here**

*~*~*~*~*

Weekly check-in:

How far along are you?

How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)?

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week?

Do you need any thoughts or prayers?

Anything else you'd like to share?

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??
QoTW brought to you by the fact there's no such thing as baby showers here so I'm planning on stocking up on them now since I ran into a 50% off deal on pampers but have no clue how many to buy LOL!

[muscari]

Oops sorry I lost track of the days and forgot to post yesterday! We're about to leave for the hospital for our ultrasound, OB/MFM appointment and anesthesiologist appointment, so I will update lateron!

[king26]

How far along are you? 32+5

How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)? Emotionally pretty good. I go in between wanting to meet him right now and freaking out that it's so close. Physically the cankles have set in whenever I'm on my feet for more then an hour or so. Feet are super painful right now. Acid reflux has actually been better the past week.

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week? I have an appointment on Thursday, just my bi-weekly.

Do you need any thoughts or prayers? Nope I'm good

Anything else you'd like to share? DH is currently painting the nursery! He's not happy about it but he's doing it! YAY! One coat is finished so he'll either do the second coat tonight or tomorrow. I'll just be glad to have it done. Then we'll put the furniture in it and I don't even care if we sset up the crib as long as the other furniture is in there so I can fill it with his things.

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??
I have no clue. My mom is like just buy size 2 or 3 diapers, they'll be more useful and she gave me a bunch. I started doing that then thought, WTF? I'm going to need some diapers the first month or so that are smaller then that! So I've been buying them when they are on sale or I have major coupons, etc. Right now I have 2 packs of newborn diapers, around 300 size 1 diapers, and probably 300 size 2 and 500 size 3. I know this will probably not even put a dent in anything but I feel like with the newborn and size 1 diapers I'll at least have a few weeks without having to buy any.

[muscari]

king26, whoohoo for YH being in progress of painting the nursery, awesome progress!! What colorscheme did you end up going with?

[muscari]

Apologies in advance for being a debbie downer this check-in.. just having a bit of a rough time with all that's gone on these past days.

How far along are you?
33w4d

How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)?
I'm an emotional mess right now. With the scare baby gave us last week and the multiple trips to the hospital and hours and hours spent at L&D, it's been exhausting (see placetomeet.proboards.com/thread/2691/talk-pgal-updated-last-time in case you missed what happened - tis too lenghty to retype it here in the checkin lol). Then today at follow up scan they found my amniotic fluid level was low and it just adds stress on top of stress and we're just sorta .. done in. Physically I'm just exhausted, and feeling incredibly sad and easily in tears right now. I know some proper rest and a couple of days will help me feel better but today I'm just a mess and so is MH.

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week?
We had our appointment with the anesthesiologist today to discuss the epidural and narcose options in case I have to go in for surgery for my placenta after giving birth. Appointment went well and I was able to get all my questions answered and I feel much better about these things now.

Next up we had our follow up ultrasound and appointment with the OB. Originally the scan was supposed to be to check growth and placenta placement but since we had two U/S at L&D on Thu and Fri and baby had been measured twice (and is right in the middle of the growth chart at like the 48percentile, yay) they skipped the growth part. Instead they said they were going to recheck placental and cord bloodflow and my amniotic fluid levels - the latter surprised me cause before there never was any reason to get this checked out now as far as we knew?

Anyway long story short: I'm low on amniotic fluid. They go by amniotic fluid index here, where they measure fluid pockets in 4 quadrants of your ute or something? My AFI was 9.8 today with the largest pocket measuring 4cm - though tbh this is mostly abacadabra to me. But knowing this  given the scare and stress of last week once again scares the shit out of me. None of the things that usually go along with low AF is true for us though, baby shows no signs IUGR and my placenta seems to be functioning just fine etc. So another thing that they can't explain. When I checked my files I noticed that I was already lowish on fluid (AFI of 11.8) during the scan last week as well but just borderline so I guess no one mentioned it since the heart thing was much more scary and pressing.. But I kind of wish they had. Though since there seems to be nothing I can do to top if up again I'm not sure what the extra knowledge would have done for me either heh.

As far as we can tell I've not been leaking amniotic fluid though there's been several instances recently that I had "accidents" where I just assumed it was pee but now I'm just not sure?? I did the (tmi) sniffing my undies thing but neither did it smell like pee nor sweetish like I thought AF was supposed to smell like so I dunno?! They debated having me come in for another U/S next week but in the end set the appointment for 2 weeks from now. With the message that I can ALWAYS call whenever I feel worried or if think I am leaking etc.. then I can come in for monitoring. I'm going to try hard to keep the crazy at bay and not go down the rabbit hole (I'm staying away from google for instance) but honestly don't think I will make it through the next 2 weeks in once piece.. But we'll see.

Do you need any thoughts or prayers?
I would really appreciate T&P for my little girl to stay put and stay healthy and happy for some longer.

Anything else you'd like to share?
Ahh, I had finally found some peace in not having been able to do much on the nursery and other baby prep these past weeks, but am now slightly panicking. What if baby comes early!?? Then how are we going to get things done?? I think it's gotten to MH some as well as he suddenly started working through some of the stuff that is cluttering the nursery-to-be this afternoon. Sadly he's working a ton of extra shifts those next 2 weeks, but I've decided to just ask for some help of friends with certain things to help us tackle things a bit more easily. And well if baby does come early, I guess she won't be coming home right away anyway so we'll just deal with things as they go... right?

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??
I ran into a 50% off special at our local grocery store for pampers and ended up ordering 3 packs of newborn/2-5kg size 1s and 5 packs of size 2/3-6kg. Going by my mums  and sisters guestimate of how many diapers we go through a day this should last us around 7 weeks lol? Crazy! But by then I hope/think they'll run another special again at some store so we'll stock up on more then.

[king26]

Jul 3, 2017 14:00:16 GMT -6 muscari said:

king26 , whoohoo for YH being in progress of painting the nursery, awesome progress!! What colorscheme did you end up going with?

We are painting it a light grey so we can keep it that color forever LOL.   I think it'll go well with our space theme.

[muscari]

king26, sounds like a plan! We were debating adding in some color-color but I think we'll just end up painting it a neutral creme, like the rest of the rooms (boring huh ;-)) and add in color by way of curtains, a nice rug, bedding etc and other accessories.

[cali]

king26, hooray for progress on the nursery. I'm sure you'll feel so much better when you can start putting his things in their proper place. We went with light gray walls too and I love it!

muscari, ((hugs)) I'm sorry you've had such a rough week! I think the only thing you can do is take it one day at a time, trust in your doctors, and don't ever hesitate to call if you suspect anything is off. I know it's hard to stay calm with all you've got going on but try not to stress about the baby's room too much. I stressed so much about it and in reality once we got started it came together quickly. And baby doesn't even really need it for the first few months. Just focus on taking it easy and taking good care of yourself. I hope baby girl stays put for a little while yet.

[cali]

How far along are you?
32w4d

How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)?
Physically I'm starting to get larger and more uncomfortable. Emotionally, I'm doing ok today. But that answer fluctuates all the time.

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week?
I had an OB appt and growth us on Friday. Baby girl looked good. She was measuring a week ahead at 4lb14oz and in the 66th percentile which is so great because I've been borderline hypertensive this whole pregnancy so they were worried about iugr but no sign of that. They are still having me start weekly appointments with NSTs at 34 weeks though just to keep a close eye on things, which I'm grateful for. So my next appointment is a week from Wednesday for my first NST.

Do you need any thoughts or prayers?
Not at the moment, thank you.

Anything else you'd like to share?
I think I've already said it all above!

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??

We had a diaper raffle at my shower, so I got quite a few from that but they were all different sizes and oddly only one small pack of newborn size. I wanted to be sure I had enough newborn size for the first couple weeks. So I bought 3 big packs of newborn ones, which is about 400 or so newborn size. I think that's all I'm going to get until she gets here since we don't know how big she'll be or how long she'll be in newborn so I don't want to overbuy. If we start running low and she still fits them well I plan to just order more from Amazon Prime or send MH to Costco.

[addymac]

How far along are you? 33+3


How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)? physically like crap. im exhausted almost all the time, the swelling in my ankles and feet are making them hurt so much, my hands are swollen so I can't wear my wedding rings, and I feel like a large tub of lard. my hips are not happy either.

emotionally - meh. I'm okay. Thursday night/ friday morning at work was so busy, I didnt get to sit down, eat, pee, or drink between 0130 - 0630 because of an admission I got (super sick twins at 29weeks) and my coworkers were so unhelpful, it was ridiculous. I literally doubled over in pain at one point b/c a contraction was legit painful and I was having more than 4/hr around 5am, so of course I freaked out. I ran over to L&D after my shift ended, the contractions had stopped by that point but my belly felt so weird and I was just so stressed. they monitored me for about half an hr and said no contractions anymore but I had "uterine irritability", so take it easy and drink lots of fluids. I went home and drank a bunch of water and relaxed on the couch, took it easy the rest of the day, but it freaked me out. I told my DR what happened at today's appointment and he was like, "well as long as nothing happened the rest of the weekend, I won't check your cervix but call me whenever something like this happens again, i want you to have a low threshold to call me." He thought it was weird the L&D at my hospital didn't check my cervix. IDK!! I was panicked but then was agonizing all weekend over kick counts. so yeah. I'm okay now, but i was really thrown for a loop on Friday morning and got worried about how heavy of an assignment work will give me the next few weeks.

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week? no, i'm okay

Do you need any thoughts or prayers? I'm okay. Let's just make sure all these babies stay inside and stop scaring their mommies!!

Anything else you'd like to share? I already word vom'd up there heh

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??
So, I have no idea. Right now we haven't purchased any. We only have diapers I've received from sample boxes and what not, so we have a few, but I honestly don't even know what size they are. I think we need to start getting serious about preparing for this kid!

[king26]

muscari, I'm all for neutral colors because you can keep them forever and just add color from the bedding/curtains/etc. I'm sorry it's been a rough week for you and baby. Hang in there...6 more weeks!
cali, That was my issue with diapers at the shower too, most were size 2 and 3. I'm good on size 1 but I worry we won't have enough newborn sized but if he's a bigger baby he may not even fit into newborn diapers. I'm glad they are starting your weekly appointments early. My weekly appointments start at 35 weeks.
addymac, I am right there with you on the swollen ankles. I went to Walmart 2 weeks ago and bought 2 pairs of memory foam flip flops in a size larger then I usually wear because my feet are so swollen. They cost me $10 each and have been the best purchase so far. I'm sorry your weekend was stressful and your coworkers sucked.

[elliecat17]

addymac i'm so sorry that your co-workers were not supportive at all. Given where you work you would think that keeping babies out of the unit would be the goal, which means making sure mommies to be get to drink and pee at least! I'm glad everything is alright at this point though and that your DR is so supportive. I'm sorry you are feeling so large. Can you wear your rings on a chain? Or go buy something nice but cheap (cubic zarconia) to wear for now if you want to keep wearing a ring?

muscari Just for your peace of mind amniotic fluid levels top out and then start dropping at 33 weeks. Also know that if they get too worried while you personally cannot increase you AFI, there are ways the hospital can (adding in normal saline) if it becomes a huge concern for them, but then I believe they put you on bed rest. I'm sorry you are feeling so stressed and worried. Try to take it as easy as you can, getting friends in to help with the nursery stuff may be a really great relief for you. (HUGS)

cali yay for a great check up!

king26 yay for nursery progress!!! I cannot wait to see the pictures when you finish!

[elliecat17]

How far along are you? 33wks exactly!!!

How are you feeling (physically/emotionally)?
Physically my inner thighs/groin at sore. I think that everything is relaxing and it's not helping if I sit or stand in one position for too long. Also I think baby is dropping lower, because sometimes I can feel it's head grinding into my pelvic bone.
Emotionally trying not to feel overwhelmed and stressed by everything still left to do for baby!

Any appointments or milestones coming up this week? Check up tomorrow!!

Do you need any thoughts or prayers? Nope!

Anything else you'd like to share?
Something super cute. We had H's sister and her 4 kids and his parents over last night for our annual BBQ and fireworks. Well her daughter was poking her mom's belly saying "do I feel a baby in there?" SIL said no you want to feel a baby go see Elle. Niece turns to me and says how can you feel a baby INSIDE?! So I showed her. She thought it was the greatest thing ever. I just wish baby had decided to kick back at that point because I think she would have loved it.

QoTW: So how many packs of diapers are you going to stock up on before birth??
We are cloth diapering, so I have 24 newborn, 24 infant (up to 15-20 lbs), and 36 larger sized ones. However I do know a rule of thumb is at least 12 diapers a day when they are really little. As they grow they move more to a routine, and you can drop to less unless they are sick.

[muscari]

So sorry ladies I didn't come back to the thread to comment earlier this week!

cali, wonderful to read your appointment went well and baby is doing great, despite the worry about IUGR due to being borderline hypertensive. Never hurts to get some extra check-ups though, so I'm glad they still will keep a close eye on you!

addymac, I'm so sorry that work is so hard on you, I can't imagine working such long hours while 30+ weeks pregnant. I'm with Ellie on thinking how strange your collegues were so daft .. given the nature of your work you'd expect differently! I remember on time we were at the NICU to do an eeg, I was like 25wks orso and the nurses were urging me to please sit down cause they wanted baby to stay put and really didn't think I should stand up that long. And how scary to get such painful contractions - glad you had yourself checked out. When will your leave start? I hope those next weeks will be gentler on you.

elliecat17 What a sweet story about your niece! Awwww. My niece and nephew are also pretty interested in "baby in aunties belly" heh, so cute. I think baby here is dropping as well, such an odd (and sometimes rather painful!) experience. I hope your check up earlier this week went well!

[yellowcat]

Sorry I am late and I am mobile so can't tag. I was traveling and my messed up hips make everything harder.

I am almost 37 weeks and my doctor thinks this one is coming early which is fine with me!