As it turns out, stress really does do some crazy things to your body. We have had a pretty stressful month, although I hate to even say that because everything has turned out perfectly and things are fine. But in the moment, we had some pretty crazy things going on.
We’ve had some crazy job stuff going on with me – some uncertainty and unknowns. I am confident and feel peaceful it will work out perfectly, but job stress is just not fun at all. During some big announcements, Annabelle got hand, foot, and mouth disease! Oh my gosh. You know the germ freak in me was totally upset about this. I had pretty much rid my house of chemically based cleaners and promptly went out and bought some bleach and Lysol – I just couldn’t trust that vinegar was going to do the trick.
Plus, Annabelle, as you might have guessed if you know her, didn’t handle this illness the way some do. Some of my friends said things like their son didn’t even really seem to act any differently than normal. That wasn’t the case for miss Belle, the poor thing. She was absolutely miserable. I tried sleeping with her, rubbing her feet all night, anything to help her. David and I took shifts. It was only a few days, but those days and nights will haunt me for a while. She was so sad and my heart was broken seeing her that way. So I had to be away from work while some crazy work changes were happening and be home with my sick little one. She is all cured now, but gosh it was a long week.
Did I mention the day we found out she had this, we had taken her crib down and set up her big girl room and big girl bed. We tried to get the crib back together quickly because obviously she couldn’t sleep in her big girl bed in that condition.
And then I think the work stress, having the heater in our rental go out, having one of our heaters in our home go out, and not to mention the fun busy-ness of baby showers for my sister, a baby shower for me, and just the overall excitement in our families right now finally started catching up with me.
On to the pregnancy update now that you see a little backstory.
I am 37 weeks! Throughout this pregnancy I’ve had some dizzy spells/passing out. I talked to my doctor about it and she ruled out stress (surprisingly enough) and thought maybe I wasn’t eating enough or wasn’t eating the right things. I focused on eating more protein for a couple of weeks and trying to eat more. I still haven’t been feeling great or have much of an appetite, so this was a little bit difficult. When two weeks passed and the spells weren’t going away, I went back and she was concerned. Also in the last two months, the sweet little girl has been measuring about one week behind what she should be. Our doctor hasn’t been concerned by this since she was still consistently growing, even if just a little bit smaller.
I had a spell at work and freaked out enough of my coworkers that I moved an appointment up to that day so I could talk to my doctor before hitting the road the next morning to go to a hospital an hour away. She was concerned at the appointment about my heart and more concerned that our little girl was measuring at 33 weeks when I was over 36 – the exact same as she had been measuring two weeks before which was already behind. So we scheduled a sonogram and got to see our beautiful, perfect, chunky baby girl who just happens to be measuring perfectly! Almost to the day of her due date. She is perfect and just stretched out enough to maybe make me be measuring off. I haven’t gained weight for a while, but that doesn’t seem concerning. I think I’ve gained about 23 pounds overall.
Here’s what we learned about our littlest one:
- She weighs an estimated 6 pounds 3 ounces
- Her little feet are so high in my ribs that the tech could only see one heal of one foot! She said that she’s never seen something like that and thought I must be in pain. I told her yes, just slightly and tried not to roll my eyes.
- She is very low and head down. My doctor had commented on how low her head was already.
- She is definitely still a girl.
- She had her hands up by her little, perfect face
- She has tons of hair! We got to see it halo-like floating around her head.
- She has perfect chubby cheeks – so kissable!
- She has full, beautiful lips and a double chin
- She’s a mover! Every appointment people comment on this. It’s true. I feel her moving around in there all the time and she visibly shifts my stomach
- She is still estimated to make her arrival sometime mid-December
It’s funny that all of a sudden all the stress and anxiety leaves when you see your little girl on that screen. I instantly became hungry and slept a little bit sounder (minus the contractions that wake me at least four or five times a night and are powerful enough to make me think “this is really it!” and then fizzle out by morning).
Thanks for reading this absurdly long post, but I wanted to be sure I recorded some of this for later on. I love reading my pregnancy posts from Annabelle.
