We had an appointment with our midwife this week (which actually turned out to be an appointment with a partnering midwife as ours had been called away to a birth! The partnering midwife was lovely as well). Everything is progressing normally. This baby has not been in the same place twice for any of our appointments. The baby has been breech, head down, and transverse (and the opposite side transverse). Apparently I still have copious amounts of fluid and the baby has just been swimming, which I could have already told you.
This was the first appointment where the baby's heart rate actually remained in one place. All of our other appointments had it anywhere from 130's to the 160's and back again during the monitoring. This has been mildly irritating, as I have heard that the most gender correlated test is the heart beat (as averaged over the entire pregnancy). Both boys were in the mid 130's for every appointment. This baby has been our unknown. However, this week the baby was completely even 134-135 the entire time - same as my boys. Hopefully the ensuing appointments will allow for such regularity.
The midwife told me that the third baby is always the unknown (she has 4 of her own). This made some sense as I have found it surprising that I have no good feeling as to who this person is, or whether it is a boy or a girl. I suspected girl early on from the morning sickness and a few other "old wives tales" and things that have been different than my other two pregnancies, but I have had ZERO confidence in that. With the boys, I was so absolutely sure they were boys that I did not even bother thinking seriously about girls names, and in fact had the boys' names picked out for a long time before they were born (my mother so convinced of my own convictions with Soren that she started getting things embroidered with his name! Good thing I was right!).
The last couple weeks the baby has been extremely active, though not in a pummeling sort of way like Elliot was, rather in a constant exploration kind of way, just continual little reminders that the babe is there.
Soren is insistent that he wants a baby sister and he wants to name her Bella, but he knows that "only God knows" and that it might be a baby brother, which does not seem to disappoint him. Elliot remains ever devoted to the belly. Andrew, I think, is finally admitting that he really would enjoy having a daughter someday, however, we also just watched the wedding episode of West Wing where the president has to give his daughter away, and Andrew responded that he seriously hopes this is another boy. Oh his tender heart. I think if he actually had a daughter right now he would have been crying.
We also had the joy of seeing some friends of ours recently who just had their 2nd daughter 3 months ago. The boys got to take turns holding her which has made them all the more excited for their own wee sibling to arrive.
My only pregnancy irritation thus far is allergies, which are heightened by pregnancy since everything is more loose and weepy when you are pregnant even when it is not the worst allergy season in many, many years. However, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the coming of summer will put my sneezing, nose blowing, and eye rubbing to rest so that I can actually enjoy our back yard and garden with the rest of the Scrivner men.
We are also now officially on the every two week appointment schedule to see our midwife, so I know things will speed up from here. There is a busy summer ahead of us with graduations, weddings, and birthdays, but at the end will be a new birthday and a solved mystery as to who this little alien is in my belly!
...who threatens to punch him in the face...
...actually they were going for "knuckles" and high fives.
Here's the bean wall half-strung (it is now finished)
