Monthly Visit

I forgot to update after our monthly visit on Monday night. We met the 4th doctor in the practice at this visit. He's a nice guy, and was absolutely fascinated by my medical history. While I appreciate the care and interest, it turned what is usually a 10 or 15 minute appointment into an 82 minute appointment and dinner at almost 9pm. Most of it he wasn't even really talking, he was reading my history and making exclamations like "Wow!" or "That worked? That never works!" Yup. I know. My body is committed to helping doctors of all flavors "Practice" medicine.

To determine a trimester, when you divide the 40 weeks by 3, you get 13 1/3 weeks. So I figured somewhere in the 26-27 week range is the beginning of the 3rd trimester. Instead, this doctor said he considers the 3rd trimester after the viability date of 24ish weeks so that I'm already there. Viability, can you believe it? Of course nobody would WANT their baby to be born this early, but it's technically possible that it'd live if it was. It's much more preferable to keep the baby inside and healthy for lots of more weeks.

I also got a flu shot. I have never ever gotten one before because of my weird reactions to all types of medicines, but it was highly recommended that I do so. It's apparently better for the baby to get the medicine if I have an issue than for the baby to deal with me getting the flu if I get that. I usually get sick over the winter, but I have never been officially diagnosed with an official strand of influenza. I guess this would be a lousy year to start that trend.

In the coming weeks, I have to have a bunch of important tests done. Luckily they can run them all from one set of blood work.

The standard one is the test for gestational diabetes. I would hope not to get that, of course. But having to conform to a diet or medicine for 12 or 13 weeks would be do-able because there would be an end date in sight. (The GD goes away the second they cut the cord if you develop it.)

The other one is related to our A-/A+ blood type issues. They have to test me to see if I was sensitized to the Rh factor. That would be dangerous because it would hurt any future babies. I got the Rhogham shot after my first m/c and again during a bleeding spell early in this pregnancy. (It wasn't necessary with the second m/c because I wasn't pregnant long enough.) Those shots were supposed to protect me. Hopefully they did their job! Unfortunately, there's a chance for a false positive (positive is the bad result) because of that shot I got in the ER this time. If my body hasn't completely processed it, it would make the test come back positive even if I wasn't sensitized. That's a little frustrating.

So hopefully it all goes well!