28 Weeks - Going Backward?

It's been an interesting start to my 28th week... Not sure what my body is doing, but I've told the baby he is not going anywhere until he is well past 34 weeks.

I went into the doctor on Wednesday of last week for my week 27 cervical check ultrasound. The baby looked great and his heart beat was at 166 bpm, a little high, but they could see he was moving around a lot as he usually does and said everything appeared great. My cervix measured at 3.30 cm in length. This is slightly shorter in length than my last ultrasound over two weeks ago when I measured at 3.50 cm in length, but still well within the normal range at above 3.0 cm. The baby has repositioned once again and his head is sitting on my cervix. He seems to prefer this position and even if he moves with head up toward my ribs he eventually moves back to his preferred head over cervix position. I was told this is normal and nothing to be concerned about.

The doctor was so pleased that over the last 3 ultrasounds I had maintained such a great cervical length that he said I could let up on bedrest a bit, obviously not running any marathons, but not have to feel like I should be finding a way to lay down every second. I even got authorization to make the one hour drive to see my youngest daughters neurologist who is in a neighboring town. Even better news since I have a ton of questions for her and didn't want to send my husband with a laundry list of things he had to ask the doctor. So he will drive and I will kick back in the passenger seat.  I was on cloud 9. Awesome News!

But then came Friday when I turned 28 weeks.

I woke in the middle of the night feeling some pressure like I was feeling early on in the pregnancy. No discharge, but I couldn't tell if it was pressure like labor pain pressure or perhaps I needed to go to the bathroom. Any pregnant woman will tell you that constipation is usually something of a constant in pregnancy, but of course when you are taking Procardia and receiving progesterone injections too it really aggravates the situation. Because of this the doctor has me take Milk of Magnesia every single day so I don't have to worry about that problem. That, of course, creates another problem itself. But when you are in labor you also feel like you have to go to the bathroom suddenly and it's often hard to distinguish what is really going on.  Luckily, I was able to go to the bathroom that morning thank goodness and felt some relief from the pressure in my abdomen. However, as I got myself and my girls ready to go out the door for an appointment that morning my stomach went very noticeablely hard and my lower back began to ache. I had been feeling the baby move up to this point and suddenly I could no longer feel him. I realized I had not yet taken my Procardia and was over an hour late with my dose. Darn it! How could I have forgotten to take it on time?

Needless to say, I cancelled my appointment and ran to lay on the couch.  One of my 5 sisters came over, as did my mom, to occupy my girls so I could rest.  My mom of course was beside herself with worry telling me that I should go to the hospital to get checked.  I chose to lay on the couch and rest because I knew that I needed to give the Procardia time to work and I knew I also needed to lay on my left side drinking lots of water, which is what they have you do at the hospital.  I worried that if I suddenly jumped in the car and walked through the hospital up to labor and delivery to be checked it was going to cause more of a problem.  Why they put labor and delivery so far away from the main entrance is beyond me.

My stomach stayed consistently hard most of the morning and early afternoon but it wasn't like contractions you could count. At some point I could also feel the baby pressing on my cervix and a strange sensation every so often like perhaps he could rupture my stitches. However, resting did help and taking my hand and applying some pressure to my abdomen caused the baby moved his position toward late afternoon on Friday which took off a lot of the pressure on cervix and then suddenly I had to go to the bathroom again and I felt fine again.

So what caused all of this?  I'm not sure. Was it just constipation symptoms? Was it lack of sleep and stress? Was it the baby's position pressing on cervix and bowels? Because of the tilt of my uterus and the placement of the placenta he is literally right there pressing on everything. Who knows? All I know is that I had a long talk with the baby and let him know I can't have him born before he is truly ready to be introduced to this world. While I understood the doctor gave me some new found freedom, I only took some time on Thursday to sort some things that had been driving me nuts, but it wasn't labor intensive. I did get a bit stressed this week because my daughter, who normally sleeps very little or not at all, chose to wake at 11:30pm on Wednesday night and I stayed with her trying to get her to go back to sleep until 5 am when she finally drifted off to sleep. She was very hyper when she woke and wanted to start her day. Needless to say, I had no sleep whatsoever that night. I didn't ask my hubby for help because he is working on his masters degree and had been up late the last few nights working on homework and has to get up for work before the sun rises. I thought I could handle it.

Today, I am just taking it easy.  My hubby took the girls to the zoo and I think it will give them all some time to be away from the pressures of worrying about the baby and just be kids. I think it will help daddy too and give mommy a break just to have a quiet house.

This coming Saturday is my baby shower and both hubby and I are very excited.  I don't want to celebrate this event in the hospital, or worse yet have to cancel because I am in labor, so it will be a relatively lazy week.  I'll keep everyone posted if anything else happens. I do have my 28 week 3D ultrasound this Thursday and am really looking forward to that as well. I will post pictures from it as soon as I have them!  If I have any other strange symptoms I will go in to be checked, but I think everything is under control for now.