{week 22} And here we are at SIX months! (According to most pregnancy websites – why is there such a discrepancy in this I wonder). This pregnancy has gone fast and slow which is so strange to think about. It seems like an eternity ago that I found out I was pregnant. And also, the last month and a half in quarantine have, in hindsight, passed pretty slowly. BUT I can’t wrap my head around having a newborn in 18-ish weeks!
Even though I didn’t have an official check-up this week, I did have a quick phone call with my midwives’ office to review my ultrasound last week. The nurse confirmed everything I was told at my scan, which was that baby was growing normally and the placenta was growing normally (as well as in a good place in the uterus). So good news all around!
I’m starting to feel some lower back pain this week which is a little annoying. It’s a great excuse to sit down during the day and put my feet up, but my belly is only going to get bigger and put more strain on my back. So, hopefully it won’t be too troublesome in the coming weeks and months.
Baby Lower definitely knows the exact time that I’ve “finished up” for the evening (the girls are in bed and the kitchen/house is cleaned up) and finally sit to relax with Aaron on the couch before bed. Aaron and I have been catching up on the past season of Grey’s Anatomy and Baby Lower has a small-ish dance party. I almost always have ice water and a small dessert at that time too which helps get baby moving. You can often see my belly moving from the little kicks which is always such a treat! And I can also feel Baby Lower moving around once I’m settling into bed (but luckily not while I am trying to sleep).
Quite a few people have asked, so I thought I would answer here: Would you have a home birth given the COVID pandemic? In short, no; I’ve never wanted a home birth and it wouldn’t be safe for me, personally.
First, neither Aaron nor I have ever wanted to have a home birth. It is pretty common in Seattle, actually, and I have great admiration for women and families who make that choice, but it isn’t something we were interested in. Partly it is because labor and delivery is messy, and I can’t fathom having everything to clean up in my home. And also, a pretty high percentage of home births end up requiring emergency trips to the hospital for delivery or immediate post-partum care. As much as I don’t love a hospital, I feel like I’d rather be where all of the medical teams are located from the get-go.
The other part of the answer is that, given my experience with shoulder dystocia when I gave birth to Daphne, I have been told that any future delivery would need to take place in a hospital setting. Basically, Daphne’s shoulder got stuck on one of my pelvic bones during delivery, and my midwife had to perform a special maneuver with Daph’s arm in order to get her unstuck and delivered safely. My labor team didn’t have any idea that this would be an issue (I really didn’t fit into the “at risk” catergories), but it’s much more likely to happen again once it’s happened once. If I were to try to deliver this baby without someone who knew how to correct this issue and the shoulder dystocia happened again, the baby and I would both be at huge risk! I definitely need to be delivering at a hospital where an OB and a NICU team are available, as was the case in Daph’s birth.
So this time around, I will more than likely have a late-pregnancy ultrasound to see if there are any signs that baby would be susceptible to shoulder dystocia. And, I have been told that at ANY sign of labor, I immediately come to the hospital.* If Daphne’s labor was any indication of how fast babies can be born, Baby Lower is going to be born pretty quickly!
And here’s my 22 week bump update with Eloise and Daphne. I feel like I am just slightly bigger than I was with the girls.
Happy 22 weeks!
M
*We also won’t have a doula present at this birth, like we did with the other two. Jennie, who was my doula, has two young children of her own and isn’t taking on doula work, so we would have had to find someone else. And then with COVID, it’s unlikely that we would be able to have a doula present at the birth, as almost all hospitals have limited laboring mothers to ONE birth partner. (Obviously that will be Aaron.)