Total length of pregnancy: 40 weeks and 5 days
Total weight gain: 48 pounds
Movement: This girl is a mover... and I knew that early on in this pregnancy. And then starting with the NST in the hospital the day of my accident, every time I had an NST or I was hooked up to monitors, Clara would go crazy. She would kick directly at the monitor like she knew exactly where it was on my belly. My last NST on 5/2/14, a routine NST since I was past my due date, the nurse came in about halfway through and asked how I was feeling. I smiled and said fine, and she said that what she was seeing on the monitor, she thought I was in active labor. But she said that the baby's movements can falsely show up as contractions. That's how much Clara was moving throughout the whole test! I had an ultrasound that day, too, where we couldn't even see anything in 1 shot because Clara was so big. And the tech said that she was moving so much more than she would have expected with how big she was and how far along I was. She's a little acrobat, somersaulting and kicking. I loved feeling her moving around, and I will never take that for granted. I was able to feel both of my girls kicking and moving about in my belly before they were born. Such an incredible feeling. At 32 weeks pregnant, an ultrasound tech confirmed that Clara was head-up. Clara must not have known which way was up or down while I was on bedrest! But don't worry, she flipped (probably more than a few times!) between then and delivery.
Sleep: The biggest annoyance was how often I had to get up at night to pee. Seriously. I would get up at least 2-3 times at night. And that is not easy when I had to have Carl wheel me to the bathroom in an office chair right after my surgery. Or when I had to use the walker to hobble (more slowly than I would have liked) to the bathroom. It wasn't very easy to get comfortable, but I always slept pretty soundly so I'm thankful for that. And since I was working from home, I was able to sleep in most days until 7am-ish. Some days, I chose to get an early start on work. But thankfully I didn't have to commute, so I really did get a lot of sleep during my last trimester.
Doctor's Appointments: At 32 weeks, I had a checkup and an ultrasound. The ultrasound was ordered when I was 28-29 weeks along because the tech thought she might have seen fluid around the baby's heart. At 32 weeks, the high-risk specialist in the practice (Dr. Ambrose) came in (which worried me at first) and took a look for himself. He said it was simply a shadow from the spine and that the baby looked healthy. Thank God. Best news we had heard in several weeks! That week, we met with Dr. Slugocki who was on call the week of my surgery and looked after me and worked with my surgeon while at the hospital for the surgery. I was on blood thinners and wanted to make sure I clearly understood the plan for that. She said that I was to be on blood thinners until I was up and walking in a boot. What this meant was I had to give myself a shot every night in my stomach. Not my favorite thing to do, for sure. In fact, I hated it. And I'm not scared of needles. Just hated it. And to think I grew up wanting to be a doctor. Anyway, I was to continue on with the Lovenox until I was 36 weeks. The reasoning was that at 36 weeks, I could feasibly go into labor. And if that happened, they would need to reverse the blood thinner. And you can't reverse Lovenox, so at that point they would switch me. When my 36 week checkup came, Dr. Butler knew I was far away from going into labor and had me continue on with the Lovenox until 37 weeks when I was in the boot. After my 32 week checkup, everything was very normal with my checkups. Just routine. In fact, Dr. Butler told me one week that my pregnancy was going very smoothly and beautifully. Seriously. I laughed about that with Carl after that. Nothing about this pregnancy, in my mind, was smooth or beautiful. At least not compared to how easy my pregnancy with Audrey was. But, from Dr. Butler's perspective, it was smooth and beautiful. Baby was healthy. I was healthy. Everything was going according to plan. She poked fun of me and my knee walker and then even more when I came walking in the office with the old-granny traditional walker. We laughed about what my delivery would look like in a cast or a boot. But thank goodness we were able to laugh about it and we had no real issues. Everything really did go smooth.
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| 34 weeks & 3 days (check out the sweet knee walker!) |
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| 36 weeks & 3 days (notice the granny walker) |
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| 38 weeks |
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| 39 weeks & 1 day |
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| 39 weeks & 4 days |
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| Left: Pregnant with Audrey at 35 weeks Right: Pregnant with Clara at 36 weeks |
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