Belly Bump

The belly bump is growing. Friends at work have now told me that I officially look pregnant. Fortunately, I'm not to the point yet of having people I don't know walk up and touch my belly. Although, this weekend I had a guy at the mall tell me he hopes my baby comes healthy and soon. I didn't think I look that pregnant yet, but apparently he thought so...

Here are a few pictures Eric took of the belly this morning.

Picking a Hospital

We've been busy touring hospitals in an attempt to choose a hospital for our delivery. We're lucky to have the option of delivering at any one of three good Twin Cities hospitals: Abbott, St. Johns and Regions. We have now toured all three and selected Regions. The hospital philosophy on deliveries matched well with what we had been thinking and our favorite midwife at the practice delivers babies at Regions. I will be encouraged to walk around during labor, take a bath if that sounds helpful, and I will have the option to have something besides ice chips if I get thirsty. Regions also happens to be the closest hospital to our house and we can take city streets the whole way. The trip is less than 10 minutes from door to door. Unfortunately, friends and family will have to pay for parking in the Regions Hospital ramp if they choose to visit. If by some odd chance the Regions Hospital Birth Center is full when I go into labor, we may be redirected to St. Johns (our second choice hospital). So now that we've selected a hospital, we've signed ourselves up for several classes: Childbirth Preparation, Breastfeeding Your Baby, Infant CPR, and New Baby - New Parent. We'll have a busy October and early November with classes 1-2 nights per week.

Gestational Diabetes Free

Good news from the clinic after my most recent appointment... I passed the gestational diabetes screening test. I had quite a bit of anxiety about taking the screening test because so many friends had told me how awful it was drinking the glucose drink. In addition, I was worried that I would not pass because people of Asian descent are more likely to have gestational diabetes and being one quarter Japanese I was sure I was doomed.

Well, the screening test is not as bad as so many women say it is... You are asked to drink the equivalent of about one can of very flat pop within approximately 5 minutes (or as fast as possible). The glucose drink was very sweet and though it was fruit punch flavored, it was not very appealing. Fortunately, I was able to fight it down within the requested time and none of it came back up. An hour later, the lab tech drew my blood and tested the glucose level.

The great thing about electronic medical records is that the patient has access to test results within hours. No more waiting around the phone to hear the results from the clinic. You can just look them up online. So that evening, I popped into my online records and saw that I had squeaked by just under the high end of the normal range. I was happy to know that there was need for me to return to the clinic for the three hour oral glucose tolerance test.

At the clinic, we also collected the usual data: my weight, blood pressure, baby's heart rate, and the belly measurement. I now weight more than I have ever weighed before. The baby's heart rate was about 150 beats per minute, which is right on, and we're measuring about a week behind. The midwife wasn't worried about the measurement though. She thought he would have a growth spurt pretty soon and catch back up to the expected size. If for some reason, we continue to measure behind we may have an additional ultrasound in the future to make sure everything is still on track. But we're not to the point of needing that yet. We also learned that our little guys is breech right now, meaning that his head is up and his feet are down. We're hoping he decides to turn pretty soon, but he still has some time before we reach 40 weeks. So everything is good for now and we'll be back to the midwife on September 17th.