30 Weeks Pregnant - good news!
This is going to be a very brief post today, but in keeping with the festive season I am celebrating some good news! Not only did my latest tests come up negative for any pathologies that could have been linked to the low platelets, but my platelet levels have gone up already, and are actually back into the acceptable range!
29 Weeks Pregnant - is my baby too big to be born vaginally?
When I had my morphology ultrasound around 21 weeks, the sonographer commented that baby was measuring in the 96th percentile, and that my provider would probably want to schedule growth scans during third trimester to make sure baby wasn't getting too big. I just smiled and thanked her, but I knew that we would not be planning any growth scans based purely on this comment...
28 Weeks Pregnant - my diagnosis of gestational thrombocytopaenia and iron deficiency
If you’re asking “Thrombo...umm, what even is that??”, that’s a perfectly valid question! It’s a fancy name for “low platelets”, and no, I wasn’t familiar with the term before either! It’s a relatively common condition in pregnancy, although the diagnosis is quite subjective. In Australia, the accepted “healthy minimum” level of platelets shows up as 150 on your blood test results, so anything below that is diagnosed as thrombocytopaenia. In Italy, where I had my first baby, they calculate the minimum as 130, so the level of 145 on my latest blood test results wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow there.
27 Weeks Pregnant - heading into the third trimester!
Well, that went quickly! Here we are heading into third trimester! I am so so grateful for how well I’ve been feeling this pregnancy. My energy levels have been so good, it’s really been amazing!
I’m also really glad I was able to get into a routine at 20 weeks with daily birth prep exercises, both mental and physical. Now in third trimester I have some changes to my birth prep routine.
26 Weeks Pregnant - varicose veins
We all know about varicose veins in the legs, right? But have you ever heard of varicose veins of the vulva? Well, if I’m being suuuuper honest, me neither until I went for my 26 week check with my pelvic floor physio and she told me I have them.
25 Weeks Pregnant - the importance of preparing for postpartum as a first-time mum
I have been thinking a lot this week about my biggest regret after giving birth to my first baby. The birth was fantastic, so much more empowering than I could have imagined. Just amazing! But the postpartum? That was a big shock. I had been so focused on preparing for birth, but nobody had prepared me for what to expect postpartum. This happens to so many mums. And it’s stopping right here!!
24 Weeks Pregnant - finding balance and rhythms in life
It’s been a quiet week this week, just normal busy daily life with my husband and two little girls. There’s nothing much particularly coming up for me around pregnancy right now, though I am feeling baby move regularly and continuing with my near-daily practice of Spinning Babies exercises, breathing and “horse lips” exercises, and listening to positive birth affirmations and relaxation/visualisation audios. I didn’t have enough of these quiet weeks in my last pregnancy, so I am really enjoying it!
23 Weeks Pregnant - birth reflexes, aka, your body knows when to push!
I listen to The Great Birth Rebellion podcast regularly, and this week I listened to an episode I’d missed on birth reflexes. That was really fascinating, hearing the explanations and comparing with my experiences with my first two births.