Heart attacks, jumping jacks, and stretchy pants, oh my!

So, I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, I accept full responsibility for my (lack of) actions.  To be honest, my fourth month has been pretty uneventful until this last week (the last week of my 4th month). 

Month Number Four is a strange month.  By the end of the 3rd month, I got so used to morning sickness and other discomforts as signs that everything is going well – so, the sudden dissappearance of all symptoms is, shall we say, rather jarring.  As you may have read in my previous blogs, I’ve been feeling little tiny movements from the baby since about 13 weeks.  Well, the heart attack mentioned in the title of this blog happened last Thursday when I realized I hadn’t felt those little flutters in a while.  I called my midwife, who offered to do a quick doppler (hearing the heartbeat) to make me feel better.  I went in, and after 20 minutes of searching, she couldn’t find a heartbeat.  Being the great midwife that she is, she immediately got me an appointment to have an ultrasound the next morning.  So, after about 15 hours of sheer terror, I saw my baby’s heartbeat on an ultrasound monitor – the most precious 149 beats per minute I’ve ever been witness to.  So, needless to say, everything is just fine.  In fact, we did the ultrasound while the baby was sleeping and the prodding on my belly from the transducer made him (or her) make quite the face of disgust and kick at us.  Very funny – and I doubt I’ll ever be that thrilled to see my baby annoyed again. 

As for jumping jacks – that refers to two things:

1.  I can’t do them any more due to the incessant growing of my belly and the fact that I can hardly bend over and touch my toes without feeling like I’ve just done 900 jumping jacks. 

2.  Today, September 28th, I had the surprising joy of processing a donor at work, and in the midst of it, getting a one-two punch from my baby.  That’s more activity than I’ve ever felt at once, and much stronger too!  I about cried with excitement, and then promptly realized that I needed to jot down the results of the automated blood pressure I was taking at the time. 

Meanwhile, every single day, I wake up (thank goodness…), only to find that my waist has gotten bigger than the day before (hence the “stretchy pants”).  About two nights a week, I wake up multiple times at night to change position because my hips ache – on days it’s the worst, I’ve actually succumbed to a subtle “waddle” – like today even!  Sigh… a little earlier than I expected. 

Anyway, here I am, at 17 weeks and 3 days, (nearly 5 months), getting to know new “symptoms” of pregnancy, learning new depths of fear and terror, as well as the joy of feeling happy kicks from within.  Next on the agenda – the “big ultrasound”, the one that lasts more than an hour and will likely tell us “what kind” of kid we’re having.    Take care, everyone, and thanks for your prayers!