24 Weeks and A Trip to the Specialist

So today we have arrived at 24 weeks!  Nothing huge developmentally going on, but Baby Girl's skin is starting to get more opaque and pink, so that's exciting.  She's punching and kicking me regularly, which I don't mind one bit.  Yesterday, she was kicking so hard that I could actually see my stomach move!  That was pretty crazy.  I had some serious mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it was awesome to actually SEE how strong she's getting.  On the other hand, I felt a bit like an alien was about to come busting out of me.  Andy hasn't gotten to see that yet, but he DID get to feel her kick last Sunday!  He got fed up with waiting, so he sat me down on the couch and parked his hands on my belly for over an hour to make sure that he would be there whenever she decided to kick.  He didn't recognize it at first because he thought it was just a little muscle twitch, but eventually he felt it for real.  He was pretty excited, to put it mildly.

As far as names go, we are 99% settled on the one that we like.  However, he still doesn't want me sharing just yet in case we change our minds.  I'm not going to be able to keep it to myself for too much longer though, so I hope he gets over it soon!

Quick update on the house: things are moving along very well - and very quickly!  We got all the paperwork from the banks and have our inspection scheduled for this coming Tuesday morning.  We've submitted all the necessary paperwork to our bank for the mortgage application to be processed and will be signing papers and scheduling the appraisal on Tuesday afternoon.  I don't know when we schedule the closing, but I'm hoping for November 2nd.  After we get the keys at the closing, we are going to give ourselves until Thanksgiving to get everything moved.  Our first month's mortgage is included in our closing costs, so we're going to go ahead and pay November's rent too.  This way, November is paid up on both houses and there's no rush to get from one to the other.  We can take a week or two to clean and paint the new house before moving everything and then have a few more days to clean over here before giving the keys back.  Giving ourselves this time and space will (we hope) really reduce the stress of moving and it gives me a little bit longer to get everything packed!

Now, onto our visit with the specialist this past week.  Andy was unable to get off of work to come with me, so my mom came along, which was a BIG help.  They people there were really nice and we could tell they really knew their stuff.  Basically, after almost 2 hours of ultrasound and talking with the doctor, they've come to the conclusion that she's still too small, but there's no apparent reason why.  The doctor explained that up until the 3rd trimester, all babies grow at pretty much the same rate.  After 28 weeks, they start growing differently based on their genetic predispositions to be tall or short or whatever.  So my being short should have nothing to do with the baby's size right now.  That being said, any measurements that fall between the 10th and 90th percentile are considered in the 'normal' range for growth.  Well my baby girl is only in the 7th percentile, so she's just small enough to warrant further investigation.

They did not change my due date because developmentally speaking, she's right on track for 24 weeks.  She has all the pieces and parts that she should have at this point and they are all put together in the right order and working well.  Overall, she is proportionate, except her femurs (thigh bones) are a bit shorter than they should be for the rest of her body.  The doctor basically said that being this small at this age could mean any one of a hundred different problems (none of which have solutions, of course), but there are no secondary indicators to point to any particular one of those problems.  Even her short leg bones don't necessarily mean anything because problems that cause that usually affect the arm bones too, but they look totally normal.  So she's small, but there's really no indication as to why.  He mentioned doing an amniocentesis to check for chromosomal abnormalities or infections, but didn't think it was really necessary at this point.  Her blood flow measurements everywhere (placenta, heart, brain) were good, so there's not really a concern about a nutrient deficiency or anything like that either.

We were pretty much told that there's nothing (specific) to worry about, but they are bringing me back on October 18th to check on her growth and make sure she's still progressing normally.  I'm guessing they are probably going to want to monitor her growth throughout the rest of the pregnancy too.  Andy's going to come to the rest of these specialist appointments with me, just because they're so overwhelming.  It's hard to process all that information all at once, especially knowing that no matter what the problem would be, there's no fix for it.  It did make me feel better to hear him say that it's entirely possible that I was like this as a baby too, they just didn't know it.  The technology wasn't sophisticated enough to take such precise measurements back then.  So it could still be just the way my babies are going to develop, we just don't know that yet.

So that was our trip to the specialist.  It didn't really change anything for me, seeing as how they still don't know if there's anything wrong, but at least I got some more good pictures out of it!

This one is probably my favorite from the whole session - you can see her profile really well, including her adorable little nose!  And, if you look carefully, her lips are parted and it looks (to me) like she's smiling :-) I have also been told that it looks like she is blowing a bubble, but that's just her hand behind the other side of her head.

Here, you can see that she's getting her workout on by doing crunches!  Her face is turned away (which is why her head looks weird) but it was funny to see her flex in and out of this position, touching elbow to knee.

So this coming Thursday I go for my regular visit to my OB and then I will be headed back to the specialists on October 18th.  Even though they say nothing is necessarily 'wrong' at this point, please continue to pray for my baby girl to grow big and strong and make it above that 10th percentile!