24 week update

Well, here it is, another amazing picture of me. I believe I have had more pictures taken of me in the past 6 months than I have had in the past 10 years! But it is all for a good cause, right?!

This was taken yesterday, on Saturday, which is actually the first day of of my new week, but I really don't know what week to call this! I wanted to wait until Thursday to take my 24 week picture last week because I wanted to add what I learned at the doctor to that week. But then I kept on being late and now I am in my 25th week. Add to that the fact that I was told he is measuring at 27 1/2 weeks and that just makes this picture a crazy mess of numbers! But, for all intents and purposes, here is the 24 week picture of our huge Hoppy! The pictures were taken by Scottie and it was really cold outside - like somewhere around 40F! Owen wanted to be in the picture as well, so I also included the one where he was in it. He is such a little camera hog and loves to be photographed! But then again, if I were as cute as he is I would be too!

Okay, if we pretend that we are working with a regular baby that is 24 weeks along here this would be what is going on with him. He is about a pound and a half in weight and 8.5 inches curled up and almost 12" straightened. They say to think about an ear of corn, again with the food analogies! He was supposed to gain 4 ounces last week, but I don't think anyone told him. (Either that or he is just a serious over acheiver and went for extra credit ounces!) His blood is starting to produce white blood cells now to fight against infection and disease. His heart is so big and beating so well now that, if we had an stethescope, we would be able to hear it through a stethescope. Supposedly you can sometimes hear it if you just put your ear to my tummy, but that hasn't worked for us yet. His lungs are developing the branches that will be needed to help them work right and they are beginning to make the surfactant that will coat the inside of them to help them inflate once he is born. His chances of survival if he were born now are very high with intensive care.

He is supposed to gain 6 ounces this coming week, but that is only if he is reading the same text books that I am! This weight will mostly consist of muscle, bone mass, and the growing organs and tissues. He will be putting on "brown fat" which is the fat that babies need to help retain their body heat. He supposedly now looks like he will when he is born, just smaller and skinnier. But everything is in the right places and proportions, other than his eyes are still sealed shut, but that will change this week as they begin to open. He is also starting to "breath" the amniotic fluid to practice for when he will breath air in. He is so big now that his days of complete sumersaults are over and now he has to do slower flips and moves.

But that is all assuming that he is at 24 weeks. Which I am pretty sure that developmentally he is, just his body is the size of a 27 weeker. So, as a 27 weeker he is 14.5" and 2 pounds. His skin would be more opaque than as a 24 weeker and he would have more of the necessary brown fat. His skin wouldn't be as wrinkly as a 24 weeker, but then that makes sense, a fatter baby would fill out his skin better, right?!

So that is all the technical updates of him. We have still yet to pick a name for him. I picked up a baby name book from the DI this past week and I went through it and made a list of names I like and now Scott will go through it and make his own list. Then as we compare lists, hopefully we will be able to come up with something! But we did that when we were trying to name Garrett and even though we had some in common that we both liked, "Garrett" wasn't on either of our lists and we just came up with it after making our lists. We will just have to wait and see what happens for Hoppy!

At my doctor's appointment this past week all went well. I put on a pound and half this month, or rather, Hoppy did. My AFP test (alpha feta protien test - the one they do to test for Down's, Trisomy 18, or spina bifida) came back normal. My blood pressure was okay at the appointment and the only concern she had was the fact that I keep blacking out. She did some blood tests and I will call for the results tomorrow. But I talked to a friend of mine who had the same thing (sort of) and hers was caused when the baby leaned against a nerve for too long. I have only blacked out once since my appointment, so I don't think I will go in again next week - she had told me to come back in if it happened too often, but it doesn't concern me too much since I stay at home so much and generally have plenty of signs before to let me know that I need to go lie down.

As of today I am 25 weeks and 2 days and have 104 more days until his due date. I am at the end of my second trimester and the end of my 6th month.

~K~