Repeat after me: Do not worry

Of course when I set my alarm for 7:30 in the morning, it took me until 3:30 in the morning to get to sleep. Between the tiny baby thrash metal concert apparently going on in my abdomen, and the strange way that the room was uncomfortably warm despite the heater having been off for the last three days and my having the patio door open for an hour when I accidentally set off the fire alarm last night, I couldn't get comfortable. I ended up taking the advice that my dad has sworn by since I was a kid, and took a bubble bath.

Despite being exhausted, waking up was pretty easy, actually. I realized when I got up and started poking Matt in the face to wake him up that I'd been looking forward to this ultrasound more than I thought. Part of it was just the happiness that hey, we get a sonogram look into my organs! Awesome! Part of it was the anxiety that I've had about my blood sugars causing too much growth. I put on my lucky tee shirt.

And well, it turns out there was no need to worry about Lorelai being too big. In fact, she's measuring smaller this time than she was last time. At my last measurement ultrasound in which we were blessed with a terrifying picture, she was measuring at the 35th percentile for her age. Today she's measuring at the 13th percentile. The ultrasound tech decided to look at the flow of the umbilical cord when her measurements were calculated.

Can we talk for a moment how amazing technology is? Using the sonogram machine, the tech was able to zoom in on the umbilical cord and then highlight the blood flow in it. In one direction, the blood lit up blue. Flowing in the other direction, the blood lit up red. We were able to see this during my anatomy scan looking at the blood flow of the heart, too. It's pretty seriously cool, and something completely amazing. Just think. There is a way to see just how well the umbilical cord of a fetus is doing it's job without doing anything invasive at all. I'm still impressed.

In any event, the blood flow in the cord looked great, so that isn't what's causing the small size. The maternal fetal medicine specialist came in and looked at everything and talked with me. He said that looking at the level of fluid around the baby and the flow in the umbilical cord, as well as what he knew about my tightly controlled and logged nutrition, that the answer was likely just that Lorelai is always going to be slight in stature. They aren't going to be concerned unless she falls below the 10th percentile. Also, because I start my NSTs next week, they'll be keeping an eye on her development.

The basic theme of the talk was the doctor reminding me that I shouldn't worry, things are okay and going to be okay. And I shouldn't worry. Yet. Maybe. I really don't need to give myself anything to worry about. I don't want to go back into my next measurement ultrasound in a month worrying both that she'll be too big, like I have been, AND that she'll be too small. Stop it, Amanda!

So I'm going to distract myself this weekend by stripping and painting the little white bookshelf we're using as toy storage.

But mostly, I'm not going to worry. Hopefully.