Tuesday, April 16, 2013

3 months and gaining

I reached 14 weeks into this pregnancy this past weekend and so by everyone's standards, the first trimester is over! That means that pretty much all of Sprout's systems are "created" and now need to focus on final details and growth, growth, growth! 

Speaking of growing, I've been doing my fair share. Ideally, I would have made it this far with only having gained maybe 2-3 pounds. However, when my first trimester is particularly full of nausea and indigestion, I tend to gain more and so unfortunately, 10 pounds was my actual tally this time around. Eeek! Thankfully the second trimester tends to be kinder to me and hopefully I'll have some spare energy to spend on getting more exercise and the overall weight gain will slow down for a little while. 

I was fortunate enough to be discharged from the reproductive endocrinologist's office at 11 weeks. While they were great people and very caring, I was thankful to have a break from weekly visits to the office and all the injections. Since then, I've seen my OB/GYN for my regular appointment at 12 weeks and am looking forward to returning at 16 weeks. 

My IP's are crazy-excited about discovering the sex of the baby. My OB typically schedules the anatomy scan around 20 weeks gestation, but once I did have it done around 19 weeks, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that the IP's get to find out sooner rather than later!

Finally, I'm just waiting around impatiently to start feeling Sprout wiggling around in there. Every ultrasound I've had has shown him/her shadowboxing and dancing so (s)he seems like a very active baby. I did, however, find out that I have an anterior (towards the front) placenta, which means that it acts like pillow between Sprout and I - cushioning any kicks or rolls I might otherwise feel early on. 

I did have anterior placentas with my first two children. I didn't starting feeling any movement from them until around 18-20 weeks. And it wasn't very consistent for another couple of weeks after that.  That was a great difference from my third and fourth babies, who both had posterior (in the back) placentas. I felt their movements as early as 13-14 weeks. Thankfully, I have enough experience to know not to panic because I don't feel baby in there yet. It will be hard to wait another month or so to feel him or her, but it never hurts to learn another lesson in patience!

And since I feel I'm the least photogenic person ever, I will post this photo of my 12 week belly shot, but only begrudgingly and while mostly covering my eyes and barely peeking through my fingers... 

P.S. The bloated tummy is RIDICULOUS!