Fetal Echo

We had a fetal echo done on the baby's heart today. It was recommended after our last scan and the OB said it'd be a good idea since we had to do the rescue ICSI. Since I'm almost at 24 weeks now, if something didn't look right they could start trying to figure out how to fix it. Luckily everything looked ok. I was more stressed about it than I wanted to be. Mostly because if something showed up on this particular scan, it was making me feel as though it was our fault. We knew going in that ICSI had a higher incidence of birth defects, so if one showed up I'd feel selfish for causing it in our desire to have a baby. So now that we've passed the a/s and the f/e without any red flags popping up, I'm feeling a little better.

Physical Therapy

More than a month ago, my old sciatica issues began creeping up in my left hip, but muscle, & leg. Back in college, I bent down to get laundry one day and threw out my back. (See? Laundry is dangerous, people!) It was random and out of the blue, but they checked me and said it was not doing to permanently injure me. After working on some stretches for a couple months, I got it to subside. I always figured it'd show back up in pregnancy, especially since it's a common pregnancy symptom for people who even haven't had it previously.

At my last appointment, I asked about what kinds of stretches/exercises I could do safely with being on pelvic rest. Answer? Not much. As the baby has growth spurts, so does my spotting, so I'm being more careful these days than I have been in the last month or so. (I never got all the way to NOT careful, but I stopped walking on eggshells!) So today started my "supervised" stretching and hopefully we'll find a solution.

I'm going to PT a couple times a week for a few weeks to see what kind of progress we can make. Tonight's session was mostly diagnostic. We checked my hips and leg length first. At least since my fibro diagnosis, and possibly since before then, my left leg has been shorter than my right leg due to my hips being crooked. We were thinking that maybe since connective tissue relaxes in pregnancy, my hips could be normal and my orthotic & lift would be over-correcting. For better or worse, I'm still crooked so my orthotics are still A-OK. My front tendons are super out of wack. One is right under the surface and one is more than an inch further in. That's certainly not helping! We did a few isometric stretches where I only moved a leg a centimeter or two with the therapist providing the tension. Then she did massaging in a certain direction to release some pressure.

While I was sore when I got home, it's a good sore instead of a bad sore. Hopefully this works!!