4 down, 20+ to go.....

I have more than 20 different hospital appointments in the next 11 weeks - all related to being a pregnant diabetic. The hospital has a scheme with biweekly doctors appointments until week 32, then weekly appointments. On top of that, there are midwife appointments, numerous ultrasounds - from now on I'll have at least 2 per month to judge the baby's weight - eye screenings and appointments with my pump nurse. They sure pay a lot of attention to you and your baby! :-)

Today I had 4 appointments scheduled, which fortunately was cut to three because the gestation outpatient clinic's diabetes nurse could see that I already had a separate appointment with my regular pump nurse scheduled in three weeks time. Hence, today's program was an ultrasound, a combined OB and endo appointment (this is actually a really good construction to prevent information getting lost or doctors having opposing opinions about treatment goal etc.), and a midwife appointment.

The ultrasound revealed that the baby is following the standard weight curve, although lying approximately 10% below - I guess I'm not too surprised by that, because there haven't really been any consistent high BGs for it to feast upon. At the last ultrasound, checking for disabilities, a month ago, the technician couldn't get a clear sight of the baby's gender. This time, we had both a doctor and an ultrasound technician giving it a go, and although the baby challenged them greatly by lying with the umbilical cord between its legs being squeezed tightly together, the ultrasound technician finally announced that she felt relatively sure that it would be a baby girl :-) Maybe our little one is just a tomboy like her mom, who used to find playing soccer with the boys more fun than playing with Barbie dolls ;-)

The appointment with the docs was pretty quick as there were no new lab results or anything to discuss or adjust.

The midwife appointment was the one that we'd looked most forward to, to be able to ask some of the questions we had about the course of labour induction. We've previously been told that by principle, all pregnant diabetics will be induced at week 38, unless there are complications that would indicated the necessity of premature birth. I've felt a bit provoked by this (I don't know how better to describe the ambivalent feelings I have around this). Obviously I may feel completely ready to get it over with at that time, but I'm also quite sure that if I feel good and if there are absolutely no indications of issues with weight or anything else for the baby, then I'd definitively prefer to let her stay in there a bit longer for both of us to be more ready for birth. We discussed it with the midwife today, and was happy to know that even though induction at 38+0 is custom - and put out in a way that make it sound like it's not up for any debate at all - then we do have a choice to object to this and argue with the doctors. At any point, no induction date will be suggested until after the week 36 ultrasound and appointments, so there will be plenty of time to think about it and decide what we feel best about.

All in all, today's 3 hours at the hospital felt like a good trade for the information we received :-)