4 Months

4 Months old and our little squish is such a mover. She wants to crawl so badly, she can occasionally get her knees under her but can't actually coordinate them to move. She can really go on her belly though, it's not unusual for us to put her down at one end of her play space and find her on the other a minute later. While we don't see any teeth popping out yet, she's chewing on anything and everything that she can get in her mouth. Her hands, our hands, her toys, her clothes, my boob, my braided pigtails, anything she can gnaw on with those super strong gums. She can allllmost sit up on her own, you can watch her mind trying to work out gravity and the act of balance.

She really found her feet at 15 weeks and since then she hasn't wanted to let them go. She's been trying to get them for awhile but I think she had to wait for her legs to get long enough to reach around her fluffy cloth butt. She has such long legs for a little one, while she can wear a 3-6 month in pants and shirts, we've had to switch out all her jammies with feet for 6-9 months. To our absolute delight, she's started to laugh over the past month, this deep, belly giggle that just melts my heart right into a puddle.

She loves kisses from her mama, watching her kitties, grabbing her daddy's nose.

She raises her eyebrow and smiles with her mouth wide open when she roots in her sleep.

She's curious, tenacious, stubborn, full of joy and wonder.

Towards the end of three months, she started to hit the 4 month sleep regression, which seems improperly named to me since it's a permanent change in how her brain processes sleep. Prior to this, most babies experience only deep sleep, which is one of the reasons they can sleep anywhere. Around 4 months their brains begin to change and they start to experience a more adult sleep pattern - light sleep, deep sleep, light sleep - the natural sleep cycle. This leads to a whole lot of wake ups and some serious cranky babies and parents, but she doesn't seem to be too bad. There were maybe three days where she was waking up at night crying, she really values her sleep and has no more desire to be awake at 3am than we do, but she's been doing fairly well since. We really love co-sleeping with her, it's a true sanity saver for our family and I don't know how we'd get such good sleep without it. Feeling her breathe is the only way I know how to sleep now.

Happy 5th Birthday Milou!

Today is Milou's 5th birthday! She has proven to be such a wonderful big fur sister to baby A. She watches over her while she's sleeping, comes over to see what's wrong when she cries, and if A is ever on the floor, Milou has to come over to clean her feet and ears. She adores her.

I feel pretty rotten that Milou has been out of her classes for so long, we had to stop going when I got too big to move around easily and now with baby A here, we haven't been able to go back yet. I'm still not sure if it's even possible to manage her classes with a baby, but if there's any way to do it I intend to find a way to make it work. Milou is such a good girl and I know she's really missing the exercise and interaction. Hopefully I can get her back into at least one of them as a birthday gift.

Gorgeous Girl

After having our ultrasound canceled because the doctor was running behind, E and I were able to reschedule for 35 weeks 1 day. Normally the growth ultrasound isn't done until 36 weeks, but since our little peanut is bigger than average, S wanted us to have it done sooner.

I've known for a couple weeks now that baby girl his head down. She was riding high and transverse until one day I woke up with a waddle and what felt like a bowling ball in my pelvis. The second the ultrasound wand touched my belly, the doctor said "Wow! She's really all the way down there!"as if I hadn't noticed lol. So for now, she's in a vertex presentation, head down and facing my spine, ready to go.  It was tough for them to get a shot of her face but they managed to snap one for us and we haven't been able to stop looking at it.

Our gorgeous girl

The doc also noticed, as everyone has, that I seem to have a lot of amniotic fluid. I'm right at the high end of the normal range but don't have any of the issues associated with having "too much" fluid. High fluid levels can come with some pretty scary worst case scenarios like birth defects, placental abruption, premature membrane rupture and still birth. With mildly high fluid levels you might see a smaller baby who doesn't turn head down, since they have more room to move, putting them at risk for having the cord deliver before the baby and cut off their oxygen supply.

Thankfully, baby girl looks perfect and it appears that a slightly higher fluid level might just be my normal. Far from being small, she's right on track for her high growth curve. With a current weight estimate of 6lbs 9oz, the 82nd percentile, she should be about 8-9lbs at birth as predicted. And as I've already said, she's definitely head down with that big noggin' lodged against my cervix like a cork.

Just in case, we're going to have a NST at our regular appointment to keep an extra close eye on our girl and make sure everything continues to go well. We already had an NST when she took a longer than normal nap and she had perfect, textbook tracing so they don't anticipate any problems. 

12w4d - NT Scan

Today was our NT scan and I don't think I've ever enjoyed an ultrasound more. Little bean was much less bean and much more tiny, wiggly, stubborn person, I couldn't stop smiling and laughing watching them. I was holding my breath when the tech first put the wand on my belly but before I could ask if baby was okay and had a heartbeat, they started waving their arms around and squirming. They wiggled left, then right, arched their back and squirmed all around. It was beautiful.

Turning on their side, wiggling their little arms

We saw them swallowing big gulps of amniotic fluid and begin to suck their thumb. We got a peak at their brain, which is developing perfectly, and when we went to check out bean's organs, we caught them practice peeing! Their little bladder was full of amniotic fluid and they just happened to empty it right then. It was incredible to see them moving and dancing so much when they're still too small for me to feel. I can't wait to feel some of the acrobatics going on in there.

Baby on their side, showing off their tush

The whole point of this ultrasound was to perform an NT scan, a nuchal translucency scan. The NT scan measures the fluid in the tissue at the back of baby's neck to look for markers of chromosomal abnormalities. Babies with chromosomal problems often accumulate a build up of fluid in their neck which results in a larger fluid space and a bigger measurement.  To get a clear reading, the tech needed baby to look up so we could get good measurements of the back of their neck. It seems simple enough but little bean clearly had other ideas. Every time the tech got close to the right shot, baby would roll over onto their side and give the tech their butt. The tech would ask me to cough, which makes baby jump, but bean would just wiggle and squirm and show off their tush again and then I'd laugh which also makes baby jump.

Profile shot the tech was looking for

Eventually we were able to get a couple shots and baby's fluid is measuring a perfectly normal 1.3mm. Amazingly, although I'm only 12w4d today, baby is in the middle of a growth spurt and measured an impressive 7.08 cm which correlates to 13w2d! Clearly they're still an over achiever. Their heartbeat was also perfectly on track, 156 bpm. I wonder if this growth spurt is why my morning sickness came back, although they were measuring perfectly on target at my last appointment which was the day I started throwing up again.

Our next peak at baby won't be until the end of July, another long stretch without getting to see our little bean. They already look like such a perfect little person now, I can't wait to see how they've grown at 16 weeks. If anything funny shows up in my blood tests, they'll call at the end of this week but since we added on PGS and know baby has normal chromosomes, I don't anticipate any problems. Baby just needs to keep doing what they're doing and grow, grow, grow.