30 Weeks Pregnant & a blood test grump

I went for a scan last week, followed by a consultant appointment, where I did at least manage to explain myself a bit better and got patted 😉 Marmite was looking fine on the scan too, a healthy 3lbs something and well behaved. He was proudly showing off his willy (it was actually the first thing we saw when the scan started, which was fairly funny 🙂 ) and sitting comfortably breech. I think perhaps he reads the blog 😉 His position made the measuring a bit tricky and the scanner called me back in as her measurement of his tummy was too big. Once redone, it was clearly fine, but by that time the gestational diabetes alarm bells had rung and they’d noticed I hadn’t had a glucose tolerance test done. Apparently the guidelines have changed ( 🙄 ) and my BMI of 32 means I’m now ‘in the zone’. I said no, as I had no other markers for it at all, from current baby size, to any previous baby sizes to everything else.

Then the consultant said the fateful words “can make a baby cope badly with labour” and I lost all my confidence, because of course the only single thing I do know about Freddie is he coped  badly and invisibly with labour and we don’t know why. When I asked if missed GD could have been why, she wouldn’t meet my eye.

So I agreed, reluctantly and grumpily, with an agreement for smug/righteous indigant face depending on the result. Consultant and I actually shook on it.

It was done on Monday and was, as I expected, completely fine – but not before I’d done a horrible weekend of “what if it got missed last time and he’s dead for no better reason than 2 routine blood tests”. It was not a pleasant weekend.

Still.

Marmite is settling down a bit now, though has elbowed his way back round to head down now I think, which is sending me into knotted cord/trapped cord miseries. I laughed yesterday when my back crunched and the sound reverberating through my hips made him jump 😆

It was around now that I know I was very aware that Freddie would do the odd jerky movements if I lay on my left and would slump from side to side. I know I coped with those feelings for most of the last 2-3 months. I know Marmite isn’t doing it. He makes his space very much his own, shoving bits of me out of his way. It is different. I know it is different. Whether I can summon the confidence enough in that to get me through the birth, I don’t know.

Almost 31 weeks now. The weeks of a guaranteed SCBU stay if he was born early are gradually slipping past. 4 more weeks and I’ll start to feel almost safe. Only almost. And the emotional stakes are upping; I feel I know this baby now and with that is a very real acknowledgement that he is not Freddie – and I find that terribly, wound openingly, painful.