Cooking with gas

Too cute, no? Lately, she's become fixated on shoes lately--mine, daddy's--there's nothing this gal likes better than trying on shoes and clopping around the house. This shot was taken while she was in the process of doing just that this past weekend. I do believe she's shooting me the patented Dee ass-face I'm prone to make when you do something stupid (mom--why do you insist on taking my picture now?!).

In somewhat exciting news, yesterday was a standard run-o-the-mill perinatalogist appt. The dr (not my usual doc of the two partners) was pleased with my blood sugar numbers, my BP, and everything else of concern. She asked if there was anything I wanted to talk about (wow-how rare is that?) and, while I wasn't entirely concerned, I casually mentioned that I hadn't really felt the girl moving about that day. She'd done some wiggles and niggles here and there but that was it--completely unlike her movements of the past few weeks. She was moving though and I was fine with that.

The good doc asked if I had a few minutes to get on the NST machine just to be sure. So I did...and she passed with flying colors with lots of accelerations and what not. There were a few random painless contractions that showed up but nothing to worry about. When the nurse took the NST tape in to show the dr, she soon came back and said there was one deceleration of the baby's heart that the doc didn't like the look of so they wanted to do a biophysical profile (BPP) to check my amniotic fluid. She was concerned it was too low and that may have been the reason for the decel. Panic starts my thoughts whirring in my head. 30 weeks, low fluid, delivery, NICU....

Fast forward a half-hour, and I'm in for the BPP, where it's revealed the my amniotic fluid is just fine (12.9), right where it needs to be and the baby looks great. She's estimated at 3 lbs., 13 oz., and is firmly in the 60th percentile size-wise. J never measured above the 10th percentile in any of my visits. Apparently, it's related to the GD--they tend to be bigger. Lucky me and my lucky vagina.

Also, the baby is no longer breech but she is now transverse. So it may be that she's trying to turn head down or perhaps she's just comfy laying across my body (though I don't think so as my hypothesis is that this is why her movements have been so subdued yesterday and again today).

The last nugget of wisdom I took home from my appt is that, because of the medication I'm now on for the GD, they'll want to deliver me at 38 weeks, so we're looking at February 3rd or thereabouts. Apparently, with the glyburide on board, they don't like to deliver after 38 weeks. Smaller baby, maybe? I don't really know the theory behind the practice but will ask at my next visit.

Now that we've had this potential scare with the amniotic fluid, the doc wants me to start twice weekly NSTs Christmas week. In between seeing both the OB and the peri every two weeks, I now get to add twice weekly NSTs at the peri's to the mix. My appt calendar is looking pretty full for the next 8 (!) weeks.

8 weeks until we meet this little one. I guess I need to go pre-register at the hospitals and soon, huh? (Hospitals, plural--the one local where I had J, and the one about 20 miles away with the level III NICU, just in case). And yes, I'm still worried about a speedy labor & delivery...perhaps more so now that it's getting closer. And closer.