That explains a lot

Yesterday I had my now once every two weeks appointment with my doctor. First let me say I really like my doctor, actually the practice I go to has 3 OB's each of whom I've met and liked though the one I saw yesterday is probably my favorite.

Anyways, after doing the standard measuring of my belly we discovered I'm measuring two weeks ahead! For those that don't know, once you get to a certain point your doc will measure your belly each visit from top to bottom vertically, ideally the measurement in centimeters should match the number of weeks you are ex: 28 weeks = 28 cm. Well I'm 30 weeks measuring 32cm. The doctor is not concerned, he said 2 weeks in either direction is fine, if it's more than 2 then they will usually do an ultrasound to see what's going on.

So it's not like I will deliver 2 weeks early or that the baby is really big, necessarily. It could just be that I have a lot of fluid in there right now, or the way he's positioned could be making my belly stick out more. But at least it was confirmation that I am in fact a bit bigger than I really should be, which I already suspected. But as the doc pointed out, I'm petite, not much room for the baby to spread out in there so I'm bound to look a bit bigger.

I also learned that what I thought was the baby just poking his head or tush out a bit is really a braxton hicks contraction. For a while now I've been getting these two hard spots on my belly throughout the day, one on the leftside of my belly button which I thought might be his head or shoulder and one on the right side under my ribs which I thought might be his butt.

While measuring my tummy I noticed the hard spots and asked my doc if he could determine what body parts they were. He confirmed the one on my right was probably in fact his butt but that the baby's head is already head down where it should be and the other hard spot isn't his head but in fact my uterus having a braxton hick contraction, he could literally feel the contraction happening. He said that since they aren't painful I don't need to be concerned. If they start to get painful and happen more than 6 times in an hour I need to call them. So for weeks now I've been having these contractions and not even knowing it!

Everything else at the appointment went really well and when I go back in two weeks I'll be getting a Flu shot (which I normally don't do) and the Pertussis vaccine which will help protect the baby since he won't be able to get one himself until he's a bit older, but the antibodies he gets from me should protect him until that point which is good because that can be very deadly for newborns. Sidenote- my mom remembers having Pertussis (aka whooping cough) as a child and said it was horrible and she can't imagine a newborn having it. Ah the joys of having a baby during the winter when everyone gets sick.