Peeper Report: 31 weeks, 1 day

I'm now in weekly ultrasound territory, so you can expect the updates to be coming fast and furious from here to delivery day!

Dr. Peri says that Peeper is still doing great. He's estimating her weight at 3 lb 2 oz, which is in the 25th percentile, which means that she's holding her own, and continuing to grow at the rate that she should, she's just smaller that your average baby bear.

Again, he said that could be attributed to any of a number of reasons, including Shrike's genes, my history of less than 100% kidneys, the single umbilical artery, or who the hell knows.

My 24-hour urine showed that the protein level is a bit elevated (395 mg/whatever; the threshold is 300 mg/whatever) but just a bit, and we expected that to happen, and my blood pressure is okay (124/82 today) so he's really not concerned there.

He said that the protein levels that worry you are when you start getting over a gram, so that's not a big deal at this point.

They'll keep watching my blood pressure, and watching Peeper, and if we see the blood pressure go up, or the amount of amniotic fluid drop, or her growth slow down, then we'll start being concerned.

All that said, I asked him, "Now, I know you can't predict when she'll decide to be born, but are you seeing anything at this point that might indicate that you're going to want her to be born before she wants to be?"

He said everything looks great now, but with small babies, the growth often does start tapering off around "36, 37, 38 weeks" and if we see that, we'll want to go ahead and deliver.

He said that "the chances of you going to 39 or 40 weeks are less than 50%" - but then it occured to me that 40 weeks is just sort of an average, so probably anybody's chances of going that far aren't more than 50%!

So, we're not going to assume that she's coming any earlier than we expect - but we will plan to be prepared in case she does.

For example - I've decided that I definitely will vote absentee, and will probably suggest that Shrike do the same, just in case Peeper - or Dr. Peri - decides that 37 weeks looks like a good time for birthin' and we find ourselves otherwise occupied on Election Day!

The great thing, of course, is that I'm now at 31 weeks, so even if she were born today, we'd expect that she'd be just fine (after a bit of time in the NICU) and Dr. Peri said he'd feel very good about delivering any time after 36 weeks or so.

I think that's about all the specifics that I remember discussing.

As for me, I've been monitoring my blood sugar (although not quite as regularly as I ought to be) and behaving myself diet-wise better than I had been (but still probably not as well as I should) and my sugar levels have been staying where they should be, so that's all good.

I'm also still feeling quite good, for being seven months (!!!) pregnant.

I am starting to get a bit short of breath at times ("What's the matter?" "I'm pregnant and I'm moving around!") and was having a bit of sciatica (or something similar) over the weekend, but that seems to be better now.

All in all, though, I still feel relatively "normal" (other than that baby moving around in my belly all the time!) - but I do think I may finally be starting to look kind of like a pregnant lady.

(Well, a pregnant *woman* - I'm not much of a lady!)

On Monday, I'll see one of the OBs who works with Dr Brown, and then have another ultrasound. On Tuesday, I'll have the first of my weekly non-stress tests.

So, you can expect another update then, of course.

Check the next post (Wordless Wednesday) for photos!