Doctor appointment: 26 weeks

Happy 2010! I have officially been pregnant for the last three years...well, during a period of the last three years anyway! On Sunday (Sunday, January 3rd) I reached my 26th week of pregnancy. Mostly when I think about it, things have gone rather quickly. Even so, April feels like an eternity away sometimes. Three months until we meet our baby. Three months is a long wait. Then I look at my belly and three months seems unreal. How can I be this big and still have so much longer to go? When we met with my doctor yesterday (Tuesday, January 5th), I couldn’t resist telling him I thought he must have done something wrong. Surely he missed that I was having twins! Dr. Chow laughed and assured me that there was no way he missed one and could guarantee that I was only having one baby. “This time,” he added with a shady grin.

My appointment was fairly straight forward. We heard our baby’s heart beating perfectly. I received my glucose water for my diabetic screening at my next appointment with a nurse practitioner. I’ve had a couple more migraines lately, but there was no major concern about those, or headaches in general, with my blood pressure being normal. I measured right on track. My doctor placed special emphasis on this point since I told him, "Everyone thinks I’m huge!" Rest assured everyone (he told me to tell you all), my size is perfectly normal. By the look of my stomach though, I can’t really blame anyone for thinking I’m larger than average. Heck, my own husband has looked at my belly and said, “That’s full-term!” more than a couple times.

And let me tell you something else: it wasn’t a good idea to tell Jeff how much I weighed. I was feeling pretty darn good about my five pound weight gain at this appointment. I received the eight pound shock during the last one, so I guess I was assuming I'd receive similar news this time. And with the holidays, I thought for sure I had gained ten. So when five pounds was the increment, I was kind of pleased. When I met up with Jeff again after my weigh in, I told him I gained five pounds. Then (obviously without really thinking) I said, “I weigh XXX.” Big mistake.

“What? No. Are you serious? Oh my gosh! You’re going to start giving me a run for my money! That’s more than you weighed at the end of your entire pregnancy last time, isn’t it?!” Even his smiling while asking didn’t make me feel better. Maybe that made it worse. “NO! I weighed more than that with Mirabella! I gained like 38 pounds with her (maybe it was 39).” And he still thought I weighed less at the end last time than I do now---I don’t know if I was bothered, or if I was actually flattered that he thought I only weighed XXX when I got pregnant with Mirabella!

Bottom line: don’t state your total pregnancy weight to your husband. There is just no reason to. You will be going about your business, packing on the pounds and not worrying much about it really. Amniotic fluid? Two pounds. Increased blood volume? Go ahead and throw on four. Make out with a few McMuffins...weekly? Tack a couple more on. You wanna look at a cookie? That’ll cost you. You know it’s temporary (or so you hope), so who really cares what the scale says? Well...your husband does. Not that he is going to go around telling people you are a fat lard, and not that he necessarily thinks you are a fat lard, but he’s thinking about that number. Yeah, that one. The one the scale said. He’s trying to wrap his head around that number. He’s in disbelief; could you really be that number? The worst part is that I probably could have convinced him I weighed 125 right now and he wouldn’t have known otherwise! But now he knows I weigh XXX and now I’m going to have to buy more cauliflower and crap. My stupid mouth.