So this week I’m at 19 weeks (which is more than half way through this process, which I find hilarious and also terrifying).

I had an appointment yesterday with an ultrasound, which my mom was able to attend, even in the rain plus traffic. Sadly, our ultrasound tech wasn’t terribly friendly, so lots of questions sort of went unanswered (“is that a foot?” – silence – ). But my mom was excited and found the whole thing pretty interesting, which was great.

Turns out Little Ember wasn’t interested in being very helpful yesterday for her anatomy scan and was turned around (transverse=lying sideways) so there was a long (and pretty uncomfortable) process of trying to get all the photos they needed for measurements. She’s also hanging out pretty low, which means that most of the fun time was spent cramming the ultrasound wand right next to my hip bone in a generally painful way for about 45 minutes.

When we met up with my doctor, she congratulated me on having not gained much weight (2lbs so far!) but said that kiddo wasn’t being as helpful today. She walked us through the majority of the photos they got, saying “man, these aren’t great” – but reassured me that everything they saw looked exactly right, just that they weren’t able to look at everything. We heard the heartbeat and measured things like legs, arms, etc and looked at major organs. She said that we’d do another scan at 28 weeks, but that overall because of my earlier DNA scans, she wasn’t worried about anything. It was just inconvenient. I told her I expected this was only the beginning of my child not doing things the way I wanted her to, and we laughed.

Only one shot even KIND OF turned out, so here she is – 9 oz of tiny person.

I had lots of questions for the doctor (on a list, thank you very much) of which she happily answered all of them. Including, of course, that whole “oh yeah also I tend to pass out and my blood pressure hits the floor and is that going to be a problem with labor?” thing. She immediately said “Epidural. Just get an epidural. No brainer.”

I will say that I was relieved at the news. A friend of mine just had her little one and said that with the epidural it wasn’t too bad at all, while I’ve felt some pressure to try to go it natural and see what I’m made of. Trying to make a decision based on something you’ve never done before is always stressful, and so having this one made for me was nice.

I also asked about this monster pregnancy pillow I’m living with. I said “oh I keep waking up on my back! What do I do?!” She smiled and shrugged. She said “none of us would be here if sleeping on your back immediately killed everyone. All of our mothers slept on their backs here and there. If there’s an issue, you’ll be uncomfortable and short of breath, and it’ll wake you up far before it’s a dire issue.” I was glad to hear that too, mentioning that I spent the majority of my time sleeping alone without anyone to say “WAKE UP! YOU’RE KILLING THE BABY!” She laughed and said “well, most husbands just snore through it anyway, so don’t worry about it.”

Also, this past weekend, I had some kidney pain – having had a couple of kidney stones in the past, I recognize this dull ache and a bad portent of things that might head my way. She smiled and shook her head. As with many other things, if you’ve got a kidney stone and you’re pregnant, you just suck it up. She did say to drink lots of water and stay away from anything with added calcium in it.

She did have me give blood for the AFP (Alpha-Fetoprotein) test to check for developmental issues, and I’ll hear back on that in the next week or two. Overall, though, she said everything looks fine and I’m cleared to keep on keeping on.