Almost Halfway
By kate on October 14th, 2005
I’ve almost finished my 20th week, meaning I’m about halfway through my pregnancy. This is a great milestone to reach, because it feels substantial.
We had our monthly midwife appointment on Wednesday, and there’s not much to report. All tests so far (ultrasound, blood, urine) have come back normal and healthy. Most of the appointment was spent just talking to the midwife about how I’m doing, and getting some questions answered. I’m really enjoying the midwifery model of care so far – the appointments feel like we have plenty of time to cover anything we want to discuss, as well as for her to ask me about specific things and do an exam. We like both the midwifes in the practice we chose, and so the appointments kind of feel like chatting with a friend (albeit a very experienced and knowledgeable friend).
The one lingering question, about the unusually small size of Zippy, was not answered yet. It seems that all the bad scenarios (malnourishment, disease, defect) have been mostly ruled out because of the positive results of the tests. For example, if my placenta had been too small, that could be causing Zippy to be malnourished and small (but that’s not the case). There are two likely scenarios: Zippy is a week younger than we thought, or she’s just small by nature.
It’s not a big deal to us at this point, although if it’s the former, that will affect the due date (making it about March 12th). Tracy, the midwife, explained that it’s actually pretty important to know the age of the fetus, because of the strict limits of midwifery. Midwifes can only practice in statistically “normal” births that occur from 37 weeks to 42 weeks. Suppose I’m getting to the end of what we think is the 42nd week. It’d be good to know if it was actually the 41st week (giving us another week before having to have a hospital birth).
To that end, a second ultrasound was recommended for us, so we’ll be getting it in about two weeks. I’m looking forward to another glimpse of Zippy in action.
Filed under: pregnancy
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One Response to “Almost Halfway”
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October 17th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
One particularly swell idea would be just to leave the ultrasound hooked up all the time so that you could have a ZippyCam.