28 Weeks & 3 Days

This past week, like all of the others, was extremely busy.  Lots of things happened but I just haven't had time to blog about any of them.  We were in Richmond from Friday night through last night - seeing old friends, spending time with my entire family, celebrating birthdays for Brian, Karen & Sierra and shopping for a new car.  

It was an awesome weekend and we had a great time, but now I am exhausted and really need some sleep.  I am also having terrible upper back pain today.  I think it is because I sat at my desk at work too much today.  I need to see about getting a different chair or taking a pillow to work so that I have more support on my upper back while I am working on my computer.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Like I said, a lot of things happened last week that I want to blog about.  Most importantly was the ultrasound that I had on Thursday.  This was a follow up to my mid-point ultrasound where the doctor saw that Jacob's kidneys were a bit enlarged.  They wanted me to come back last week so they could look at him again to see how they were doing.  Unfortunately, this most recent scan didn't show any improvement in regards to his kidneys.  The doctor did say that they have not become any more enlarged, but they are still appearing larger than they should be.  She is still not super concerned because she said that they were able to see urine in his bladder and there is plenty of fluid surrounding him.  They would, however, like me to come back in 4 weeks and do another ultrasound. I am fine with this, of course, but it seems like every time they do another scan, they seem to find something else that could be "wrong".

This time, when the technician measured Jacob's head and his body, she said, "wow, he is a big baby".  As she and the doctor both stated, ultrasound is definitely not 100% accurate, but they are a bit concerned with his size at this point.  From what they measured on the scan, they are estimating his weight at approximately 3 lbs, 5 oz.  That is about a pound heavier than he should be at this time!!  Of course, this concerned both Keith and me and we wanted to know what could be causing him to be so big. The doctor said that there are many different factors that can lead to "large" babies - the most common one being that the mother has developed gestational diabetes. Others could be simple genetics - if both parents are more on the "large size" then the baby could be too or sometimes babies grow a lot in the beginning and then taper off and become "normal" size babies by the end of the pregnancy.

As of Thursday, when I had my ultrasound, I had not yet had my glucose screening test (which is a test for gestational diabetes).  Most women have their test between 24 and 28 weeks and I was scheduled to have mine on Friday after my regular monthly pre-natal exam.  The doctor said that knowing the results of this test would help to narrow down the reason for Jacob's weight being so much more than it should be.  I was really nervous about getting the results of the glucose screening test back because I REALLY don't want to have to deal with diabetes while I am pregnant.  I have not known anyone who had it, but it just seems like it could make the last few months of my pregnancy even harder, especially from a diet standpoint.

Since this post is getting long - and I have a lot more things to talk about and I am getting super tired - I will continue this in a different post....tomorrow!