I am 21 Weeks Pregnant!
This week went by so incredibly fast. Not much went on pregnancy symptoms wise, I've actually been feeling pretty great with a few speed bumps at night and in the evenings. I had my Anatomy Scan this week which was pretty nerve wracking and emotional, as well as my routine monthly check up. If you are new to my blog, you can catch up on my pregnancy journey with baby number two by watching my Pregnancy Vlogs Playlist for weekly pregnancy updates, products I've purchased, and weekly bump shots.
Pregnancy symptoms for this week are mainly to do with sleeping at night. My sciatic nerve pain is still going strong, but thankfully hasn't gotten to be extremely painful yet. It's more of a nagging ache in my lower back and in the center of my left butt cheek that seems to start in the afternoons after I've been on my feet all day. My restless leg syndrome (RLS) has gotten worse this week and seems to be getting stronger each week which is no surprise. My pregnancy insomnia has already started and I've been having a really hard time falling asleep at night. For the past three nights it's taken me until 2:30AM to fall asleep. Looks like I'm going to be getting a lot of reading done from here on out because I can't just lay there and wish myself to sleep, that only seems to make my other symptoms worse at the same time. Getting comfortable when it's time to go to sleep has been a bit of a challenge as well. My belly has been feeling heavier so laying on my back is out of the question, and laying completely on my sides doesn't seem to help either. The only way I can get somewhat comfortable is to oddly enough lay sort of on my stomach. I can't lay completely on my stomach, so I sort of lay in-between my left side and stomach if that makes sense.
I had my anatomy scan this week, and it was a pretty emotional day. During the first part of the scan the ultrasound tech checked my cervix, which is nice and long, as well as my placenta. I do in fact has an anterior placenta, which I figured I had if you watched my 20 Weeks Pregnancy Update last week. Based on the scan, baby's anatomy looks great, but she's measuring on average about two weeks small. The tech spent a good amount of time on the brain, and that is fully formed thankfully. She also spent a lot of time checking babies heart to make sure it was fully formed and functioning properly. We were able to see clearly all four chambers, and her heart rate was beating steadily at 139 BPM. Baby started out laying in a transverse position, and by the end of the scan was breach, so she's very active. Towards the end of the scan after noticing that she was measuring small, the ultrasound tech checked the blood flow and oxygen levels in the umbilical cord and in baby's brain. Both looked fine and were doing their jobs. The doctor told me that since the anatomy looks good, that there's no need to worry at the moment about baby's size, and that in six weeks I will have an additional scan to check her growth and remeasure.
Even though the doctor told me everything looked fine, it still made me sad and nervous to hear that my baby was measuring small. I ended up having a little melt down that evening about it and decided to give the doctor a call again the next morning for extra reassurance. I was able to speak with my doctors medical assistant who went over my scan with me. She said that anatomically my baby looks great, and that she's measuring on average two weeks small. She assured me that if the ultrasound tech was concerned about anything going on with my baby anatomically, health wise, or if she suspected any sort of abnormality, that they would have done more testing and requested I do blood work. After hearing that, I felt much better and more at peace about it. I've been doing research about babies measuring small at their 20 week anatomy scans, and surprising almost everything I've read has been positive!
If you want to hear more, find out my current weight gain, get a look at my 21 Week Baby Bump, and find out Baby Girl's Name, be sure to watch my 21 Week Pregnancy video and subscribe to my channel to be notified every time I upload a new video!
