Hard to believe I’m already 29 weeks pregnant!  It feels like the time has gone much more quickly this time, probably because I’ve got a now 6 year old to keep up with!

According to all of the baby apps, baby girl is now the size of a butternut squash.  I’m feeling a LOT bigger this time, but I think that’s because she seems to like laying sideways (transverse).  The joys of having multiple pregnancies….more room for baby to move around.  According to my midwife, I don’t need to worry too much about position until 36 weeks, so fingers crossed that she switches to head down by then!

Comparison to last pregnancy…

Things that are the same:

• hyperemesis: I spent most of the first two trimesters throwing up.  There’s no nice way to say it.  I ended up losing over 20 pounds in the first trimester, and I’m still down 16 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight.  Fortunately, baby is growing just fine.
• thyroid management: I get blood drawn every 4 weeks for my thyroid labs.  Thyroid hormone demand goes up a ton in the first trimester and requires extra monitoring during the whole pregnancy and a few months after.  Despite having a very high TSH (9.34) level at 12 weeks, baby was fine and we got the levels back where they needed to be.
• cravings (or lack thereof): I don’t have cravings much during pregnancy.  Mostly, I just have a huge list of foods I’d like to avoid if at all possible.

Things that are different:

• hyperemesis treatment: with E, I used zofran and phenergan to try to manage the nausea and vomiting, but they were not incredibly effective. Zofran didn’t get rid of all the symptoms, and phenergan made me too tired to drive or function during the day.  This time, I’m on Diclegis.  It’s FDA approved specifically for hyperemesis.  It’s been a huge help in actually getting calories in my body.
• lab tests: as a mother of “advanced maternal age” this pregnancy, I had the option to do the cell-free fetal DNA testing.  It’s amazing how much technology has advanced in 6 years! My midwife uses Counsyl, although there are many other companies doing it.  And we got to find out that baby is a girl at 13 weeks!
• exhaustion: if I thought I was tired the first time, I had no idea what it would be like with a kindergartener!  It’s a lot harder to nap whenever I can fit them in, especially because E gave up napping awhile ago.

With 11 weeks left, we still have a lot to do.  We got rid of a lot of baby things when moving from Virginia to California, so we have to get furniture and a nursery ready.  We have some clothes, but still need to fill in some gaps (why do I have no 3-6 month sleepers?).  In good news, we have a bassinet, so it’s not the end of the world if we don’t have a crib right away.