Pregnancy
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You're crackin' me up!0
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@SheilAnneSmith that is such a cute reveal story. I don't get how you waited until bedtime, either! And so cute that he stays in bed until you fall asleep. Glad you have a doctors appointment soon! The one you posted about before sounded sooo far away.
@Kirstie155 that is cute that Chris tucks you in, too! Ahh so many cuties.
@marianlyn the third time is the charm!! That's great that you're feeling inspired to stay healthy during pregnancy and to lose the weight quickly afterward. What are you doing activity-wise during your pregnancy?0 -
@SheilAnneSmith HUGS! I'm sending positive vibes your way! (and definitely nix google) I liked how you told your husband, such a cute story!
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@SheilAnneSmith I totally get the nerves! I waited until we heard the heartbeat again at 18 weeks before we told anyone. Tell anyone whose support you would want if something went wrong. Sending lots of positive vibes hoping the worry is for nothing! And I agree with everyone else that google is not your friend, but I'm just as guilty! If you have ANY concerns, just call your doctor/midwife. That's what they are there for.
@pezhed Let's hope! I'm mostly doing the elliptical and body weight exercises. I was kicked out of my Pilates class for being pregnant (really long story) but the studio owner will let me do private sessions, so I may go back and do that as often as we can afford it. I want to swim (very slowly) once a week as I know it will feel amazing when I'm huge. What are you doing?0 -
This may be the first day the hormones bite my husband's head-off......
I'm waiting for him to get into town to help him shuttle rigs from the repair shop and am taking a long lunch break to help him out, it's 20-25 minutes to the repair shop, so I have no time but to eat in the car. I've told him several times this morning I didn't eat much for breakfast, didn't have any good snacks and am absolutely starving....i.e. come get me at 11am not noon or later so I can grab lunch....it's 11:25....he hasn't left the house and is no less that 20 minutes away. I'm not sure if I want to scream or cry or chew off my hand because I'm so hungry.
Grrrrr!!
It's totally legit to blame hormones right?! lol0 -
Nope that's a blame husband! Unless you didn't say explicitly what time he has to pick you up. Maybe he will bring you food..
You can blame hormones when you're laying in bed, crying, too hungry to sleep but too tired to find food.0 -
Yesterday was even worse, everything made me cry....happy, sad, mad....all of it. Gah, today is much better.
We decided to tell my parents on Monday. I'll be just over 6 weeks and it's our 6th anniversary. I'm ready for some moral support as we wait for the appointment on Oct 6.
Here are the onesies I made. Included with them a note that said, "Here is a little something so you can help us celebrate our 6th anniversary" and explained they have to wait to open them together! They are individually wrapped and labeled. I mailed them today and they'll arrive on Monday.
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Sheila that is too darn cute!! What a fun way of telling them! Is this going to be their first grand baby? Did they know you were trying?1
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Sheila, I just love it...what a special way to tell them! It's so sweet to do a reveal even though they are so far away!1
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It will indeed be their first grand baby! Nope, they didn't know we were trying. It should come as a pretty good surprise. They've been hinting around for a few years, especially my dad because he really wants someone to buy toys for (so he can play with them!) I had told my mom I took out an Aflac policy in January that pays out for hospital stays for a birth, but that was about the biggest hint I gave her and it's been while ago now!0
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Wow, that is going to be a fantastic surprise! Can you take video of their reactions?!0
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I couldn't do any video, but they loved it. It actually showed up Saturday instead of today and I told them to go ahead and open it then. They are thrilled! Glad to have them know so I can bug someone other than just my husband about how stupid tired I feel all the time. I guess my mom's only real symptoms were being super tired and some headaches without any nausea. I hope that symptom severity is genetic....so far, so good!
It's our 6th anniversary today, so looking forward to a nice dinner out.0 -
That doesn't sound bad at all, as far as symptoms go! Hopefully it carries on to you with your pregnancy. Happy anniversary!!0
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Happy anniversary!!0
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@SheilAnneSmith those onesies are so cute
Grandma and Grandpa will have to babysit so your sweety can try them on.
Aren't the emo hormones just so fun? Haha.0 -
Happy Anniversary! also, the onesies came out so adorable! Glad your family is so happy for you.0
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@SheilAnneSmith The onesie's are so cute, glad they loved them! Happy Belated Anniversary!!0
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Hi All! I've been gone forever....clearly I don't log on here when I'm not tracking my food so sorry about that! Congrats to all of the newly pregnant ladies!!
I'm trucking along at 31 weeks, overall still having a relatively easy and healthy pregnancy. In the past few weeks I've had some morning hot flashes, where I feel lightheaded and then get an uncontrollably uncomfortable hot flash. My doctors say its due to not eating enough protein in morning, so I'm trying to focus on that. Otherwise, just getting bigger by the day, or at least it feels that way! We have our first shower this coming Saturday, so waiting until after that to really start putting the room together or making a to-do list of everything that needs accomplished in the next 2 months.
Here is me last week, at 30+4:
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@jennamae102 I can't believe you're at 31 weeks already! Thanks for sharing the bump picture! You look great! Glad to hear your pregnancy is going smoothly and hope it continues that way 0
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@jennamae102 Thanks for checking in! You look great and I'm glad to hear things have been going well!0
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We got to see baby this morning, first time the doctor measured it was 7w+5, second time it was 8+0. So that, along with when my positive OPK was he determined we are 8+0 today, making my due date May 18th. Heart rate was 168 bpm, everything looks great and was very strong.
It makes it all a whole lot more real now, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get any actual work done today.
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@SheilAnneSmith So glad the appointment went well! Bask in the joy! 0
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@jennamae102 what a wonderful picture!! You must be so excited. 6 to 11 weeks to go!! woo!! Due month is coming up haha. Also.. the finishing in your house is really nice.
@SheilAnneSmith YAY seeing the baby!0 -
Sweet! Thanks for sharing, guys.0
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Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm about to go to my first prenatal appointment with my new midwife today in Rocky Mount. I'm excited and nervous. I'm filling out paperwork, family history, and maybe having blood drawn, and starting a schedule for the next 9 months. Maybe I'll get to find out my HCG level? I'm not sure what tests she'll run.
I'm discouraged because it's going to cost $4000 for the birth center's package of prenatal/birth classes, checkups, labor and delivery services, post natal home visits and nursing class services, etc. If I pay in full by 36 weeks, I think they offer a discount of $1100. But my health insurance is going to pay for lab tests only, probably. So, that works up to $375 a month for the next 8 months. I've been told this will be at least $1000 cheaper than going to a hospital and having to pay a $5000 out of pocket deductible. *facedesk*
I almost regret spending all that money last month on paint for the house, and a new file cabinet. But now it's even more important to fix the house before baby comes! Sorry, I just had to vent my worries to you guys. I still haven't told anyone but the hubs about baby. Gonna try to hold out until Christmas. I'm also going to have to train my replacement(s) at work, and fretting in advance over this. IF I have any employees left by then, that is. I've been extra irritable at work, and not an easy boss to work for.
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@Alioth The finances suck, I have a $5,000 out of pocket maximum on my policy and I expect I'll get mighty darn close or hit it. Watch the ultrasound costs, I am 20 weeks at Christmas but pushing them off to 21 weeks for my anomaly ultrasound so it happens after Jan 1. It's a $840 ultrasound and I want to make sure I get credit for that towards my maximum in the year baby will be born!
Our OB office does that global billing deal, but I have declined to make payments ahead of time because I'm too controlling to pay them for services they haven't rendered. It doesn't include any labs or ultrasounds, their estimated fee was around $4k. Global billing irritates me as I want to see line items for each appointment and see how it's all being billed out and covered. There is too much grey area to it in my opinion. Hospital fees for me (and baby) will be on top of the OBGYN fee as well.
Is your birth center just asking for the payment ahead of time, then going to run the billing through your insurance at the end then?
I told my boss after my 8 week appointment when I got to see baby and knew everything was going well, but I hadn't been sick thankfully and it wasn't too hard to hide. I told the group I work with daily at about 10 weeks and am just letting it spread as it spreads now.0 -
@SheilAnneSmith Holy crap! That's an expensive ultrasound! Isn't there somewhere else you could get one? I think around here, they are about $300. What is an anomaly ultrasound? That's smart to push it until later. I've lucked out with my due date that my insurance year starts in September...I think. I need to double check. Either way, I'm already resigned to having to cough up all that money. And yes, the $4k I'm looking at does not include labs or ultrasounds either, but it includes the actual birthing, so no hospital fees. Maybe you can sit down with the billing person at your doctor's office and have them do a line by line for you? My birth center gave me a two page explanation of services broken down by category and even further by item. It also included a list of possible lab costs. And no, they didn't ask for payment up front. They like a $150 reservation fee by the 2nd appointment. But they offer a $1k discount if you pay everything by week 36. They bill insurance after the birth, but have told me that insurance will reject it, which my agent confirmed.
So are your coworkers excited for you? Are they throwing you a baby shower?
Oh yeah. My first appointment went well. They drew blood and are running tests for all sorts of stuff. The midwife suspects I have a vitamin D deficiency based on my history. She also is testing me for Lyme disease because I tend to get tick bites in the summer. I'm doubtful that I have it, but she said it a lot of people have it and never know. I really like her, and her trainee. They really took their time and gave me a huge notebook full of stuff to read, and even a nutrition plan. I feel much calmer after going.0 -
@Alioth Unfortunately, I've gone around and around with them already trying to get a more detailed breakdown...which ended in tears, frustration and curse words! They also said they'd mail me something a few weeks ago...not surprise it hasn't arrived. I don't want to stress about it any more, so am just pretending it doesn't bug me.
Anomoly Scan is what they call the big 20 week ultrasound, where they can find out gender too. $840 is what they bill, supposedly the insurance agreements adjust it down to about $500. The 8 week ultrasound was billed at $333 and adjusted to $249. My insurance covers the first $500 of ultrasound, so it was covered at least but there is not enough left to cover the other one this year. For $99 I can go a private place 70 miles away if I'm really dying to know if we're having a boy or girl before Christmas!
Just because I'm an overthinking, what happens if insurance rejects the claim but for some reason you end up having to transfer to the hospital? Just thinking there would be a risk of having $3-4k to the birthing center and then your out-of-pocket to the insurance on top of it or would the insurance recognize that you paid that amount out-of-pocket to the birthing center?
Glad your appointment went well!! It seems like my wait until the 8 week appointment was super slow, then all of the sudden I'm 13+5 and my pants aren't fitting well and I am wondering if it's all going to happen too fast. LOL.
My co-workers are very excited, they all have grown kids or kids about to graduate high-school. I'm not sure what they'll want to do later, my husband has some cousins nearby that are retired and talking about planning something when we told them this weekend. Most of my friends and family are in Oregon though, so I'm not sure how it'll shake out...maybe one in Idaho and one in Oregon? That's what I did for our wedding receptions.
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@SheilAnneSmith Ugh. Ugh. I'm so sorry you're having this problem. This is the wall I ran into when I tried calling up the local hospitals to find out ultrasound costs and birth costs. I could not get a single person in the billing department to tell me anything. Really, healthcare needs to become more customer focused, especially since births are a hospital's huge money maker. They wouldn't even let me in to take a tour of the maternity wards so I could see what they looked like in advance.
Ooooh, that's helpful to know about the different types of ultrasounds. Thank you! I can plan around that. I'm not getting an early ultrasound though. I don't see the point of one. Maybe you should go to the private one? I totally would if I were dying to know. But maybe I'm just nutters like that.
If I get transferred to a hospital, it would be for an emergency c-section. The midwife has already asked me which hospital I'd like to go to if that happens. I might get certain items taken off the birth center bill? I guess I really need to ask! If I get a c-section, I'd probably have to pay $5k out of pocket on top of other expenses. But as far as national figures go, only up to 6% of women who go to a birth center end up getting a c-section. The c-section rate at my local hospital is about 40% due to the mindset of the head OBGYN who is notorious for preferring them. So just by avoiding that guy, I'm not likely to have one.
My next appointment is on the 12th day of Christmas! Yaaay! I actually can't wait...except they are going to do a breast exam...I hope my boobs are less sore by then. I'm glad time is flying by for you! I hope you get a double baby shower! That would be so fun!0 -
Super late to the party but @jennamae102 you look beautiful! Congratulations to all of the pregnant ladies on here!
I'm sorry I only posted one short post instead of the promised bombardment. That one post got cut short and after retyping the whole thing 4 times I gave up and didn't log in to MFP again for months. I don't even remember what the end of that post was supposed to be, but here is a wall of text to continue the story. Feel free not to read this. This is the first time I have written this anywhere so it may be long and rambly.
I did manage to work all the way until my last scheduled day. I had worked out with my boss to take vacation starting 1 week before my due date (conveniently on a Monday) and then the full 12 weeks of FMLA leave. My last day was a Friday and I had my regular pre-natal appointment at 3:00, so I just worked until I had to leave for the appointment. I remember as I leaving work that day, I stopped to say goodbye to a coworker. She asked how I was feeling and I gave my usual complaint of being so ready to be done. She guessed that I would like a few days of vacation and then for the baby to come out a few days early. I told her nope. I was done. I wouldn't care if he was born that night because he was already full term (38+4). Little did I know....
At my appointment, my blood pressure had finally crossed the line into high risk territory. On top of that I was extra swollen and had a bad headache the last two days that wouldn't go away. Those are all signs of pre-eclampsia. I didn't have protein in the urine (thank goodness!) but my bp was still high when the doctor checked it again. After some discussion with the high risk doctor who happened to be in the clinic at the time, I was sent to the hospital to OB Triage for monitoring. It was now 4:00. I called Leo, told him to feed the pets, grab the bag and come meet me at the hospital. While there my bp did go down to elevated normal. I was having very mild contractions but nothing noteworthy. It then turned into a discussion between the doctors and Leo and I about whether to send me home and have me monitor my bp at home, have me return to OB Triage the next day for more monitoring, or induce labor since I was so close to 40 weeks. The risk of me winding up back there with elevated bp and possible pre-eclampsia and now being "real" high risk was high enough that we decided to induce. It was probably about 7:30pm at this point (poor Leo didn't get his pizza and beer for dinner). The nurse wheeled me into labor and delivery and starting get us all set up. She very nicely fed me (decent sandwich, fruit cup, chips, cookie, and juice) and then started the induction at 9:30pm.
TRIGGER WARNING. Slightly traumatic birth with positive outcome. Not intended to scare anyone but just for an outlet for me.
The induction was done using a Cook's foley (didn't know this was a thing) and miso(?). The first 15 hours went fine - got some sleep, contractions increasing but manageable, getting up and walking around every once in a while. Then they started the pitocin. Oh the many nasty things I could say about that drug. My contractions quickly became unbearable. They were soooo painful and worst of all, instead of being 5-10 minutes apart like before, they had become 1-2 minutes apart sometimes with one starting before the last one even ended. I opted for pain medication. The nitrous oxide was useless. The fentanyl (is that even the right drug? goldfish memory) helped but not much. After only an hour like this I begged for an epidural. The anesthesiologist came in, got all set up, and then had to leave for an emergency situation. FOUR HOURS LATER, she was back and I got the epidural. Ah bliss! I could still move my legs some but couldn't bear weight on them. After a while I could feel contractions a little but not even remotely like before the epidural. The only downside was that they had me turning over increasingly frequently because the baby wouldn't like a position and his heart rate would drop. It was already low. There had been a few conversations between the medical staff about his heart rate baseline being low and then having to drop it lower around hour 16. Of course with the epidural, turning over was a pain in the butt.
Unfortunately the baby's heart rate eventually dropped too low. One minute I'm trying to sleep and the next there is a flood of doctors and nurses in the room unhooking me from all of the equipment. Thankfully the head resident was making a point to calmly but quickly tell me exactly what was happening, the concern, and what they were going to do. Because of that, I felt fairly calm for myself and even the baby. The part that really upset then and still today is that Leo had been asleep on the couch/bed in the room and while all of the activity woke him up, nobody was talking to him. The next thing I know I'm being wheeled out while Leo is left behind. They are running down the hall so fast they are crashing into walls and doors while asking for my verbal consent for a c-section in case there isn't time for the paperwork. The head nurse gave me a what I think was liquid adrenaline that she told me to shoot like tequila (while my whale of a self is lying sideways and partially paralyzed). I mentioned Leo and she said that once they got me in the operating room (in the L&D ward) and stabilized, she would go talk with him. They got me in the room, hooked me up to monitors and baby's heart rate was back to normal. They decided to wait for the high risk OB to come evaluate the situation before taking me back to the room. In the meantime someone brought Leo in (I later learned they never actually told him anything, just brought him).
In a deja vu situation to deciding to induce, the high risk OB gave us the choice of returning to try to labor more and possibly have a natural delivery or have the c-section then while things were stable. The risk was that the same thing would happen again and it would be a true emergency c-section versus doing it while stable and having it not actually be an emergency situation which meant more prep and fewer risks. Given how long I had been in labor and how much they had me turning over for his heart rate, we decided it seemed unlikely I would make it to a natural delivery and to do the c-section then while stable. One of the residents had very nicely been keeping my regular OB informed (at her request), and she actually showed up in the middle of night to just be there supporting Leo and I for this. The baby was born via c-section at 1:32am after 28 hours of labor.
Of course, being the hot mess that I am, that isn't the end of the story. I wound up having a small bleed during surgery that they had trouble finding to close up. The surgery wound up taking about 2 hours and I lost twice as much blood as is normal for the operation. I also started shaking horribly. Apparently that is natural reaction both to hormones during labor/delivery and some of the meds used. The shaking was so uncomfortable that they had to raise the head of the bed slightly because I was having trouble breathing. At one point the discomfort was so bad that I desperately wanted to scream "STOP. I'm done. I'm out" and get up and leave. Of course I couldn't. I am so eternally grateful to Leo for staying with me the whole time, comforting me, telling the doctors what I was feeling when I was incapable of talking, telling me they were almost done, and holding the baby skin-to-skin in his shirt at the same time. Thankfully, when the surgery was over they were able to raise me up to a sitting position and the shaking immediately stopped. I then got to hold my sweet baby.0
