28 Weeks

Thursday was my 28 week appointment for Beana.  It was a pretty busy day.  I had to return a 24 hour urine collection, do my 1-hour glucose test and some other blood work, see the midwife, do another level II ultrasound and see the MFM doc.  All of this on the 11 month anniversary of the day that her big sister made her perfectly silent entrance into the world....


The midwife that I saw on Thursday is the one who delivered Gracie.  I am quite comfortable with her, and I am able to have pretty frank conversation with her at this point.  This is the first appointment that Jeff has missed, and she asked how he has been doing.  More or less, he's still a train wreck...simply waiting for the other shoe to fall.  We talked about how we weren't really ready emotionally for this pregnancy, which is a pretty accurate summation.  Unfortunately, we waited so long to start our family that we don't have much time to wait at this point if we still want to have three living children....so forward we trudge, ready or not.  I can only hope and pray that this baby brings a tiny speck of hope, peace and healing for us. 



Everything is looking great as this point.  Here are some details:

• Fasting blood glucose was perfect; 1 hour glucose results not in before I left, but not expected to show anything surprising.
• Iron levels are fantastic
• No protein detected in my urine dip in the office and protein in the 24 hour collection was in the normal range
• Remainder of the blood work looked good - this included kidney panels, liver panels and some other random stuff that they look at a little later in pregnancy.
• Blood pressure is still good
• Belly measurements were exactly where they should be for 28 weeks
• Beana's heart rate was measured at 140 in the morning and 138 in the afternoon.
• Estimated weight of the Bean was 2 lbs, 11 oz.  This means she has doubled in size from her last estimate 4 weeks ago (1 lb, 5 oz.).  This estimated weight puts her in the 61st percentile for growth/weight.  Although it's just an estimate, it's very exciting stuff for us since she was in the 39th percentile a month ago!!!!
• Blood flow through the umbilical cord was "excellent", size and health of the placenta appeared to be "excellent" and the volume of amniotic fluid was "excellent".  Cord flow and placental size/health are again big things for us at this point.

We have been going back and forth between two due dates; it was decided that 9/23 will be our official estimated due date.  We will have another midwife appointment on Friday morning, July 16th, at which point we will finalize the plan for non-stress testing and ultrasounds beginning at 32 weeks.  We will be taking Bean on her first trip to NYC after this appointment.  :-)    Our next appointment with the Maternal Fetal Medicine docs is Thursday, July 29th.

I have been trying to discuss names with the hubby, but he's not overly interested in names at this point.  Part of that waiting for the other shoe to fall thing, I think.  I have thrown probably 300-350 names at him, and gotten 'maybe' for only 8 names...so this baby might be a year old before we can call her anything other than Beana.  Nothing else new to report at this stage of the game....for now, no news is good news.