Appointments, appointments!

Today was a day of doctor's appointments!

I started off the morning early by driving across town to our hospital for my first meeting with the dietitian/nutritionist up on the Maternal Fetal Medicine ward at 830am. By the time they updated all my information it was about 845 when I got to sit down with her and go over my typical daily eating habits, she went over a booklet of information with me regarding gestational diabetes and a handy pamphlet of what foods to eat and such and then we made a basic outline of what times I would be having my meals/snacks and how much carbs I can eat at each, as I am mainly counting my carbs as things high in them tend to be high in sugars as well.

Then she gave me a blood sugar glucose monitor kit so I can monitor my levels 4 times a day - my fast level when I first wake up and then an hour after each meal. Basically I prick my finger to get a drop of blood out and then hold it next to this strip that goes in the monitor and it tells me my number or whatever. There's a chart too that tells me what my level should be at different times for fasting and after meals.

Doesn't seem too bad, but man! Even after insurance the strips are still a bit expensive, as she called in a prescription to get me set up with a 30 day supply of the strips and needles and I picked them up already.

At 930am they took me down the hall for an ultrasound, which turned out to be another anatomy scan like the one we had back in October, however this time they were specifically measuring parts of him to check his growth. It appears he has a big head, as that seemed to be measuring a few weeks bigger than he is, and a few other body parts were just slightly ahead of his gestational age when it came to growth. According the ultrasound, based on his measurements it's showing him to be about 31weeks, 4-5 days while his gestational age is actually 30weeks, 1 day old - so he's measuring about a week and a half bigger than he should be. They said he's within 2 weeks though so that's fine and with me monitoring my glucose, if I'm able to work on keeping that down that should help slow down his growth some. The estimated due date the ultrasound was figuring was February 9th, so I guess that means he could be here around then if not closer to his actual due date of February 20th. He also currently weighs just under 4lbs, at 3lbs 14oz.

We did get some decent 3D shots this time around though!

He did shift positions like we thought he did the other night, as his head is now down near my bladder (which explains why I have to pee at least every 2 hours now!) with his face towards my right hip. He's kinda curved around my left side with his back facing us and his feet are curved up towards my belly button.

Face with hand in mouth and foot/leg coming towards face.

Speaking of feet... Jay has discovered them and seemed quite fasciniated by them during our ultrasound today as he spent a good bit of it with one hand in his mouth and his other playing with his feet! lol... at one point we even saw him kick himself in his face! lol... The ultrasound tech also caught him in the act of bumping my left pelvic bone, as I mentioned to her he seems to like hitting that quite a bit despite me finding it a little painful - right after I said that she was like "Oh look! We just caught him in the act of it too!" It was too funny!

He was quite active today but we were able to get him to quit playing with his feet just long enough to get a few quick shots of his face - he didn't like her nudging him with the ultrasound too much though at first, as he gave us a little angry scowl for interrupting playtime with his feet! lol... He has chubby little cheeks like his daddy did when he was a baby though!

"No more pictures, please!"

 I had a few hours to kill until my regular check-up at the OB/GYN office so I met up with my mom before visiting hubby as they were in the same vicinity (hubby was at Verizon but in the middle of putting away a shipment when I called and mom was on the other side of the parking lot having coffee with friends at Panera). Unfortunately, looking through Panera's nutrition guide, they had nothing that met my 15carb max allowed for a mid-morning snack (everything was AT LEAST 50g of carbs if not more) so I just had water with a lemon in it. I'm going to have to search online and look up nutrition facts for all the places we regularly go so I know ahead of time what I can eat, etc.

After visiting with both mom and hubby, I swung home for a quick lunch before heading across town for our regular check-up at 145pm (it was originally at 11am but I had them push it back a bit just so I wasn't cutting it too close with my appointments at the hospital this morning). By then the hospital had sent over all my information from this morning and we briefly went over that. They did say Jay is still measuring big but reiterated that if I'm monitoring my glucose now that should help get him to slow down his growth a little bit. They also are starting me on weekly appointments now to monitor his growth and then starting at 34weeks they'll be having me come in twice a week since with the gestational diabetes I'm technically classified as high risk.

Also, the scale at my clinic and the scale in the dietitian/nutritionist's office have about a 10lb difference as the dietitian/nutritionist weighed me being 5lbs less than I was at my check-up at the clinic 2 weeks ago, while the clinic's scale had me 5lbs heavier than I was 2 weeks prior! I didn't think a few hours and lunch would make THAT big of a difference... regardless though, at my clinic they said my weight was fine and everything pregnancy-wise seems to be in the normal range (despite Jay's slightly bigger size right now).

Until next week!