17 Weeks 🌈
HELLO 17 WEEKS! We could be meeting this babe in 20 or so weeks and that is truly mind-boggling. Less than 5 months it seems. WOW WOW WOW. And, for your comparison pleasure, here's the last 4 (from left: Rosie, Annie, Clark, and #5) at 17 weeks...
Goodness where to start?!!?!? I'll backtrack to Thursday last week when I had my 16 week ultrasound and checkup. About Tuesday my anxiety set in in full force. It.was.awful. Truly. Almost crippling -- all I could think about was the what ifs and what they *could find* at the ultrasound. It was awful. I also had two birth moms about to pop and was convinced they would go during my appointment and that would screw things up too.
Thursday came and thankfully both birth moms were still nice and pregnant and I was able to make it to my appointment. But my anxiety truly was THROUGH THE ROOF. I don't think it's ever been this bad. I think a large part of it too is I have done a TON of loss births/sessions lately and all of those weigh so heavily on me. I decided I am going to take a big break from doing them until 2020 after this kiddo comes just to give myself a break and just snap the healthy, very alive babies until then. I actually snapped one Friday night and even though he needed a bit of NICU time he's healthy and that was SO GOOD for me.
Anyway, I got to my appointment and the tech, who has done nearly all of my scans, was there and immediately calmed my fears: this baby looked PERFECT. She said she could basically do the entire anatomy scan right now because everything looked so good. Bladder was there. Both kidneys. Head looked great. Baby measuring a smidgen ahead (17 weeks) but right on track. Heartrate was in the 160s. Huge huge HUGE sigh of relief.
I then went to meet with Dr. Jen and she echoed the same thing Nicole (the tech) said. Gosh. That felt so good to hear. I will say it took a bit still for my anxiety to come down...and it has. I feel really good now and even allowed myself to order a cute swaddle blanket over the weekend -- something I had really been putting off doing. I'm slowly allowing myself to get more and more excited and the REALITY that this baby is healthy and going to be born alive. I'm sure I won't be fully convinced of that until he/she is actually in my arms, but I'm getting there. And I'm sure a week from now my anxiety will creep up again at my 18 week appointment too, like it always does every other week, but I'm really hoping the good news from this week's scan keeps it at bay. Then, just 2.5 weeks from now I have my big 19 week anatomy scan which HOPEFULLY won't have any surprises with it!!! I think I'll set my c-section date too which will make things really real I think.
How cute is this?!??! Clark waving to his little sibling and he/she is waving back! I thought that was so cool we got a hand shot for this babe's ultrasound too!!! I love those hand pics SO MUCH.
Overall, besides my anxiety I'm feeling pretty good. Keeping super busy with snapping and all of that jazz but enjoying summer and spending time with the kiddos! I've gotten so much one-on-one time with Annie that has been so fun too.
Gosh this baby this week feels like he/she is sitting lowwwwwww. Maybe I'll have to reevaluate my gender guess for 18 weeks. haha! Welp friends, that's all I've got for week 17! Onto week 18! Adios!
