Photography, Pregnancy

33 weeks and counting.

To celebrate my 33 week mark on Friday, I went to the doctor. As I mentioned in my Wordless Wednesday post this last week, I’ve been trying to relax a lot since I’ve had a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions and some major pressure from the baby’s head pressing down (I’ll spare you the details- LOL). To keep it short, I’ve been feeling extremely uncomfortable and have had a lot of soreness, shortness of breath, and the regular BH contractions have necessitated laying down (or at least sitting down) as much as possible. After a particularly crappy-feeling afternoon on Thursday, I decided that I should head to the doctor’s before they close for the weekend. Just in case the BH contractions were more than they appeared.

Thankfully, one dilation exam and ultrasound later, I learned that I am NOT in preterm labor! But, I wasn’t just imagining things either — they did send me over to the hospital for a non-stress test to check out my contractions and monitor the baby. I was pretty bored at first, but I actually enjoyed the NST because it was a reason for me to relax – I even napped through it for a bit, lulled to sleep by the sound of the baby’s perfect heartbeat coming from the monitor. Good news is the baby is A-OK, but I did have a couple of contractions (nothing regular), so the doctor is being cautious and has ordered me to limited activity – no walking or exercising (like I do that anyway… LOL), and I need to relax as much as possible and drink plenty of water.

Of course, it’s a little hard sometimes to “rest” when you have an active 3 year old who constantly wants to play and is very demanding of your attention… but fortunately he’s in school during the week, and we do have some downtime during the day on weekends. And I have wonderful friends who I love spending time with that come and help me out when my parents or Adrian are unavailable – which really means the world to me!

I couldn’t resist documenting my little adventure to the hospital, so here’s a photo of my NST printout to make this post picture-perfect.

non-stress test for pregnancy

The only thing driving me nuts right now about my “limited activity” status is that we just had some renovations done at home – we swapped my home office with the kids’ room – so I will have the smaller room to work in, and the kids get to share a bigger room…. and since I haven’t been feeling well, I haven’t been able to do what I need to do to get the room ready, AND my house is a complete mess from the carpet installation and other work we’ve had done this week. Good thing I still have some time left until the baby is due so that we can finish things up.

I still can’t believe how different this pregnancy is from when I was pregnant with Zachary four years ago! Aside from some swelling and ending up with really low iron, I had a great pregnancy with no issues. I even shot a wedding at 36 weeks, which I couldn’t comprehend doing right now, and I’m glad I made it through my final 2 weddings at 29 and 30 weeks when I shot them last month. This pregnancy has been soooo different compared to my last one. It really shows that every pregnancy is unique and you can’t ever truly plan 100%!

1 thought on “33 weeks and counting.

  1. I hope you’re feeling better, mama! I had forgotten all about the uncomfortableness and discomfort, but reading your post brought it all back! It’s all good memories, though, so I’m happy to relive them. I’m so excited for you and can’t wait to hear all about your birth. I can’t believe the last time I saw you, Jett was only a few weeks old. Glad to see you’re having a healthy pregnancy – stay well!!

Leave a Reply to Kel Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *