Baby Pee - 30-Week Appointment

Hard to believe that I'm already going to the OB every 2 weeks! This pregnancy really has just flown by, and - in true Way-Way / Mommy / uber-planner fashion - I have had a couple of mini freak outs. Cases in point:

• On Monday (the 19th, mind you), I got it in my head that I need to finish the nursery NOW. In fact, I need to finish in YESTERDAY but my turn-back-time machine seems to be in the shop. The need was so great, I decided I needed to go shopping THIS WEEKEND instead of waiting just one more week until Partners Card week (that would be the 30th ... 11 days from the freak out) to get the mattresses and furniture. Talking to Kim and Michelle got me off the ledge, though, and I decided to focus my energies elsewhere ... for now.
• Speaking of redirecting my energies, this week I've really been focusing on baby names. I feel like I'm constantly throwing out names to James, sometimes the same one 4 or 5 times just to see if he'll change his mind. Finally he finally said "why do you feel like you need the name today?" and I said something to the effect of "I feel like SOMETHING needs to happen to get ready for this baby! Do you realize I can count on my HANDS how many weeks we have left of this pregnancy, and we have NOTHING DONE!??!?!!?!?"
• The best had something to do with "I'm 30 weeks pregnant! Claire was born 8 weeks from now!!!!!!!" which seems to make no sense unless you know that Claire was born at 38 weeks. Listen to what I mean, not what I say.

Luckily for everyone around me, I have been able to contain the freakouts for the most part and hidden them from the public. My credit card, however, has not fared nearly as well. Retail therapy, right?

The appointment itself was fine. JJ's heartbeat sounds great, and he's moving around a ton. This morning, he did some crazy somersault that I'm pretty sure involved a trapeze and maybe a diving board; as long as he didn't manage to flip himself into a breach position (he's been head down every sonogram I've had) then it's fine. I'm measuring right at 30 weeks, and I managed to gain 2.5 pounds in 2.3 weeks; glad that wasn't the rate that I gained this entire pregnancy! I look as though I have strapped a very large bowling ball to the front of my body, and walking after I've been at rest for awhile is definitely a challenge.

The last thing is I mentioned how I've had a couple of instances where my heart rate seems to go up, and I have a hard time bringing it back down. I mentioned it at my last appointment, and Dr. Jaffee said I should cut out caffeine (not an issue; already done even before the pregnancy, really) and chocolate (harder but do-able for the baby). It happened a couple of other times in the two weeks since my appointment, so she went ahead and referred me to a cardiologist just to check it out. The last was last weekend where my heart rate hung out at about 120 for just under an hour -- I know watching Claire in swim lessons is a little scary, but this was extreme even for me. My doc said she thinks it's nothing and quite common during pregnancy (hormones, increased blood flow, etc) and I've had no blackouts or chest pain, but no reason not to get it checked out. Yay, insurance!

Interesting pregnancy facts from the Internet (because the first thing you do when the doctor says anything medical, like "tachyarrythmia" is look it up ... which, btw, I do not recommend looking up in Wikipedia unless I want to scare myself with things that I know have nothing to do with me right now):

Heart and Blood Flow: During pregnancy, the woman's heart must work harder because as the fetus grows, the heart must pump more blood to the uterus. By the end of pregnancy, the uterus is receiving one fifth of the woman's prepregnancy blood supply. During pregnancy, the amount of blood pumped by the heart (cardiac output) increases by 30 to 50%. As cardiac output increases, the heart rate at rest speeds up from a normal prepregnancy rate of about 70 beats per minute to 80 or 90 beats per minute. During exercise, cardiac output and heart rate increase more when a woman is pregnant than when she is not. During labor, cardiac output increases by an additional 10%. After delivery, cardiac output decreases rapidly at first, then more slowly. It returns to the prepregnancy level about 6 weeks after delivery.

Certain heart murmurs and irregularities in heart rhythm may appear because the heart is working harder. Sometimes a pregnant woman may feel these irregularities. Such changes are normal during pregnancy. However, other abnormal heart sounds and rhythms (for example, diastolic murmurs and tachyarrythmias), which occur more often in pregnant women, may require treatment.

I have my appointment on Monday, so you can come back here and check out the result, but like Dr. Jaffee says, I'm not worried at all and am pretty sure it's nothing. It's not like I was exactly an Olympic athlete before this pregnancy, after all, so it's no wonder my body is complaining a bit at everything I'm putting it through. I should probably just be grateful that I'm still able to get down to the floor to play with Claire AND get back up again, albeit slowly and completely ungracefully!

Something I've noticed for future reference (though not for me since I don't think we'll be having any more) is that the OB's office seems to run behind in the afternoons unlike in the mornings (something about babies being born or something). Plus, it's a lot harder to drop whatever I'm doing at work that day to sneak off to a doctors office; much easier to just not start anything yet at all. Note to self, shoot for morning appointments!