Aiden Thomas Evans was delivered by emergency C-section at 10:46am December 10th 2004. He weighed 7lb 14oz, was 21 inches long and is in Intensive Care right now. Mama is doing just fine. Geoff posted this one and Sean will be posting more information when he comes home in the next day or two.

Okay, so I have been a slacker. I have not updated this page in awhile.

We had another appointment today. Actually we have had one every week for the last month. Everything has been going very well other than my ankles have been swelling up like balloons. This is slightly concerning my midwife because it can be an indicator of preeclampsia, but I have no other indicators (blood pressure rising, vision problems, extraordinary fatigue, chest pain) and it does go away if I am off my feet for a day.

Our baby shower was fun. We have good food (took half a cake home and then took most of it to work the next day.). Got lots of great stuff and had a generally good time. Oddly this was the first night that my ankles swelled really badly and they have continued to since (see above).

We have had two ultrasounds since I last posted. The pictures at this point aren’t great you can only see one part at a time and most are very hard to identify even if you know what you are looking at. He is growing at a consistent rate and was estimated to weigh 7.5 lbs. at the ultrasound on November 30. That means probably about an 8 lb. baby by the due date give or take a pound.

I had the flu over Thanksgiving, but that did not keep me from gaining 2.5 pounds that week. However this week I had lost that 2.5 lbs. again so I am at a total of 11 lbs. gained over my prepregnancy weight.

This weight loss prompted my midwife to do an internal exam today because she says that many women lose weight their last appointment before they go into labor. I am at 0 station, 80% effaced and a fingertip dilated. This is good since I have been having lots of painless contractions everyday and probably 8-10 that I can feel in my back along with a bit of crampiness in the abdomen. Two weeks ago when she did my Group B Strep test (which was negative) she did an internal as well. At that time I was at -1 station, cervix softened a bit and no dilation. As we were leaving she said she would see us next week if not sooner. This is the first time she has sounded as if she believed that there may not be a next weeks appointment. I am okay with this because next weeks appointment is scheduled for the day after my due date.

I think that catches up all of the slacking I have done. Hopefully the next post will be made from the hospital announcing his arrival.

We’ve prepared some documents to take to the hospital with us… two are signs, one is our birthplan, and one is a contraction tracking worksheet. They are all in PDF format. Hopefully people may find them useful.
Birth Plan
Contraction Tracking sheet
Do Not Disturb
Learning to Breastfeed

We’ve been asked more and more what the Pickle’s name will be. And the answer is, we simply don’t know at this point. We have a pretty good idea… sort of… but we aren’t going to make a final decision until we’ve met him. Some names just don’t match some people and we don’t want to give him a name that we will feel like it’s the wrong name once he’s here. So he will be the pickle until he arrives.

My blood pressure: 130/78
Baby’s Heart Rate: 138-143
Fundal Height: 33.5 cm

So far, so good. My blood pressure is staying right where it should be. The babies heartrate is where it should be and goes up when the midwife is poking at him to check it (this is what should happen). The fundal height is supposed to be 1 cm for each week of pregnancy so 33.5 cm at 34 weeks is right on track. I have gained 5 lbs from my last appointment. Five pounds in two weeks is a lot, but I was wearing jeans and tennis shoes this week and not lightweight shoes and a sleeveless knee length dress. Two weeks ago I had lost three pounds from the previous appointment so net gain in the last month is 2 pounds. Since I should average half a pound a week, I am right on track. I have gained 8 lbs. total, and have about 6 weeks to go. As of the last estimate, the baby will be about 7.5 to 8 lbs, so I am right on track.

I have had a bit more back pain, but the hip pain has disappeared. The physical therapy, especially time in the pool, seems to be helping. I have had some swelling in my ankles on and off, but no cankles. My hands a really swollen every morning, but once I am up and move them a bit the swelling goes away. This was not uncommon in the past with my arthritis anyway, so it is no great concern.

My midwife has said that I should start doing kick counts. For those of you unfamiliar with this, I will explain. Basically this is a technique that is now being used to monitor fetal activity levels and well being. You pick a time of day when the baby is normally active (All babies have times of day when they sleep and when they are active. Trying to do kick counts when a baby would normally be sleeping is just setting yourself up for undo panic.). The first time you feel a kick, you record the time and then count kicks until you have felt 10. If there are 10 kicks in 2 hours, the baby is moving appropriately. If there are less than 10 kicks in 2 hours, you should drink some juice, eat some food, or walk around and try again. If this does not improve the movement, you should contact your doctor/midwife. I have done these occasionally on my own and usually it take only about 15-20 minutes (sometimes less) to get 10 kicks. Also it is not necessarily a kick, but any movement which is good, because I have no idea how you would determine a kick versus a punch. So I will start doing these once or twice a day, probably after lunch and before bed. That is when he is most active.

We have a baby shower on Thursday and our lamaze class on Saturday and Sunday. I will try to post something about both of those events next week.

Nicole and I have both frequented PregnancyLounge.com, it had a very active user-base and was generally close knit and friendly, as well as having good information. They did have some policies that were a little annoying, such as forbidding any posting of URL’s at all because it might compeat with their advertising. But these sorts of things are understandable, as running something of this sort is hard work, and a popular site costs quite a bit of money to keep up. However, a few weeks ago, a post from the admins appeared saying anyone with a signature file with a url in it would be banned for 30 days if the signature was not removed within 24 hours. This seemed questionable to me, both for the length of the ban, and the short notice. Granted, the terms of use clearly express the ban on posting URLs but, many people who used that site, used tickers, and some of those tickers were very subtle in their inclusion of the URL.
Two days ago however, the site suddenly went to a subscription format, in which you had to pay $15 for a membership in order to post at all. This was done with no notice whatsoever. It seems as if even the moderators were not notified. The site admins claimed this was due to a problem with spammers (a problem we can all identify with), but the suddenness of it strikes me as odd. On a board like that, people develop mini-communities and form friendships. By making this change with no notice, it seems that people who communicated regularly through that board, would be forced to pay the subscription fee, or else not be able to communicate with people they’d grown close to. Nicole is starting to look at other pregnancy forums, but we are both dissapointed in the way things seem to have been handled over at Pregnancy Lounge.
Keep in mind, that these opinions are based on limited information, as the site is “unavailable at the moment while we are testing some functionality.” So I haven’t been able to find out more.

See all the pics in the photo album

I had my 32 week appointment and ultrasound to monitor growth today.

Blood pressure: 132/78
Weight: Lost 3 lbs.
Baby×?Ts heartrate: 145 bpm
Baby×?Ts weight est.: 4 lbs 2 oz
Baby×?Ts head size: ~34w 2d
Baby×?Ts overall size: ~32w 4d

The ultrasound technician said that everything looked good. The fluid levels are good. The heart, kidneys, bladder, and stomach all look good and appear to be functioning normally. I was a bit surprised that the head measured 2 weeks ahead when everything else seems to be right on track. This is a little scary to me as I have to push that head out. This better just be a strange growth pattern and not a consistent thing.

My midwife was not too concerned about the weight loss. I think it is more like I did not gain anything. I wore jeans and a sweater with tennis shoes last appointment. I wore a short, sleeveless, lightweight dress and loafers (which are lighter than the tennis shoes) this time. I think the clothing difference account for most of that 3 lbs. This puts me back to 3-4 lbs over my prepregnancy weight.

My PT seems to have helped my hip quite a bit. Well that and falling on the stairs and pounding my knees into the ground. The fall was not that hard, but I have had little or no hip and back pain since I fell on Friday. Maybe something was just a little out of place and it got jarred back into position.