Baby Update

Well we had our third (a probably final) ultrasound today. No mushy-gushy, 'look at the baby!' stuff; today was strictly business, as the ultrasound tech measured about 20 little indistinguishable blobs on the screen and Matt tried to distract and entertain a somewhat irritated Karol.

Not surprisingly (to me, at least), Patrick is weighing in around five and a half pounds and "measuring ahead," which means even though we are currently at 34 weeks and 3 days, he's the size he 'should' be at 35 weeks and 2 days. Since I'm not at all a gestational diabetes risk, the tech and the doctor didn't find any harm in his size.

I, however, am PSYCHED that Patrick is measuring ahead because hopefully that means he's coming ahead of schedule, too! The adjusted due date would be January 7th. I looked up an article about this very topic on BabyCenter to see if my hopes had any justification. Here's an excerpt. I've bolded the scenarios that may apply to Patrick and me:

"Measuring large for dates means your fundal height is more than 2 centimeters larger than average for your stage of pregnancy, based on your due date. Your practitioner will probably schedule an ultrasound to find out why. Among the possible explanations are:
• Your due date is off. (The ultrasound can help your practitioner figure out your correct due date.)
• You have looser abdominal muscles than most women as a result of an earlier pregnancy.
• You have uterine fibroids.
• You're carrying twins or more.
• You have too much amniotic fluid.
• Your baby is positioned high above your pelvis, which might be the case with abreech baby or if you have a placenta previa.
• You have a bigger-than-normal baby because of gestational diabetes. This condition is known as macrosomia. You may need to be tested to rule it out.
Or you might simply be carrying a big, perfectly healthy baby."

Okay so, to me, Patrick has felt enormous for months now, so there's a very good chance he's just going to be a big baby, which is fine, I guess. Although at this point babies are putting on like a half pound a week, and at some point that jumps to a full pound a week, and if he's already at 5.5 pounds...yikes! So I'm really hoping he's an early arrival!

Also, the ultrasound tech verified that Patrick is indeed head down, also not to my surprise. I DEFINITELY felt that when it happened, and now I can barely get out of bed in the morning! Changing from a horizontal to vertical position is pretty painful, so maybe I'll just sleep sitting up from now on. That would probably help with the heartburn too!

Without further ado, here are the long awaited ultrasound pictures. Unfortunately we don't have access to the 4D ultrasound technology we did with Karol, so features are harder to see, but you can see the face of a baby trying to sleep, and you can definitely verify that he is indeed a boy.