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March 26, 2005
March Midwife's Appointment
A week full of baby stuff this time, what with class on Tuesday and a midwife's appointment on Wednesday. Soon every day will be ruled by a baby I guess...
Wednesday's appointment was a bit more filled and less stilted than last month's appointment. In part also because we had the birthing classes to discuss with her, but also because now we seem to be starting to ramp up towards the discussions about how we want our labour and birth to progress with her, when to contact her, etc.
The usual bases were covered: weight gain, which was a good 4 kilos or so, after barely any over the initial 20 weeks (maybe a kilo or two), and a little bit of a shock, though 4 weeks ago I was still barely showing, and now there's a much more substantial belly, in comparison at least. Blood pressure was measured, and I failed to pay attention to what that was. She didn't comment on it, so I doubt it was anything to worry about, it's been pretty consistent and normal at all the previous visits. The baby's heartbeat measured in at a steady 145 bpm which was also good. My belly measured about 25 centimeters from pubic bone to fundus (top of the uterus), which is also as it should. I find it amusing that you can pretty much measure a centimeter for every week of pregnancy.
After next month's visit at 28 weeks I think we'll be switching to in-home visits, and they'll be every 2 weeks rather than every month.
With the aid of the books I have now, and the birthing classes we've been taking, as well as birth plan websites for a rough guide, I'm going to try to cobble together a birthplan for our next visit, though there's no hurry obviously. Sakina, our midwife, has already made note of certain preferences in my file, but once the birthplan is made, she'll just refer to that.
Sakina also gave me a prescription to go do the glucose bloodtest around the 28 week mark. This test is to check for gestational diabetes. I asked if there was anything you could really do to avoid getting gestational diabetes, such as watch your diet, and she mentioned that more than anything to do with diet, it's mostly to do with the effect various hormones are having on your system, so nothing you can really influence, even though eating healthy is always recommended of course.
At some point in the near future I think PreZ and I will already be ordering our birthing pool. We seem to be having a knack for organising such things early... the boy scouts obviously had the right idea with 'be prepared', and having seen too many couples at our birth prep class who seem to be doing a lot of the organising (and stressing) in the final straight, we like to have most of that stuff done long before anything eventful starts happening. Sakina pointed out that there had been two couples whose home water births she had attended where such things as finding out that the hose didn't fit on the faucet actually happened when labour set in... things worked out well and both couples still managed to have the water birth they wanted, but we'd like to avoid this kind of stuff. Having the pool on time, and having it early enough just to give filling and emptying it a trial run will be nice, and bring some peace of mind to both PreZ and myself.
Posted on 12:21 AM to: Pregnancy