1/4/2011 - The First Appointment

Written on 1/4/2011
 
Today I had my first doctor's appointment and DH came with me.  They call this a "confirmation" appointment, just to make sure that everything is looking good and to get a preliminary health history.  It's basically too early to do much else, since there's such a high risk of miscarriage this early on, although there's no reason to expect that that will happen with us.  We're trying to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing. 

But in any case, it's "confirmed!"  And they put my estimated due date at around August 24th.  It's going to be a long, hot summer! Good thing I bought a kiddie pool last summer - I have a feeling I'm going to be spending some time in that thing this summer.  

I made an appointment with the same practice that I had been going to for my annual exams.  I can't see the same doctor that I was seeing before, but that's not a big deal to me.  Today I met with the first of six doctors at the practice, and I will rotate through with all of them to get to know them all since they have a rotating on-call schedule and I could get any of them when I ultimately go into labor.  The guy today was funny and I enjoyed him a great deal.  I hope that I like all of the doctors that much. 

They also sent me to Magee for some lab work, which involved giving up a lot of blood and urine.  I hate giving blood and basically held my breath (not healthy, I know), closed my eyes and turned my head and I did ok.  I once passed out giving blood and ever since then I've been more queasy about it.  When I'm giving blood - like to the blood bank - I'm usually ok after a few minutes in and can look around and have a conversation.  But those moments before, during and immediately after they are inserting the needle are torture to me, and I hate it.

Anyway, I think the most interesting thing that I learned today is that medical professionals no longer recommend that women "need" to gain a lot of weight during pregnancy.  Basically, our doctor said that recent studies show that women can gain as little as 5 pounds and still have a healthy pregnancy AND that it's been shown that it's actually better for the mother.  Basically, he said that the mother can actually lose weight herself in these scenarios since the baby usually weighs at least 7 pounds, but that it's not really a concern since the body will always put the baby first and provide for the baby before me.  It was all really fascinating and I love to hear that, since I hate the "I'm eating for two" mantra that I've heard other women use.  They say all of this to basically let you know that you shouldn't "plan" to gain a ton of weight, and that gaining 50 pounds really isn't healthy if you can avoid it. On average, I should try to keep my weight gain at no more than 25 to 30 pounds.  Since I haven't been throwing up, that may be harder to control for me than it is for others who actually lose weight in the early months. 

So far I've been eating pretty much the same stuff as I was before, feeling great (at least as great as can be expected), and for the most part I am exercising on my normal schedule.  I'm going to continue to do that as much as I can and hopefully will be on the lower end of the weight gain spectrum.  I think that my "goal" is to gain no more than 25 pounds over the course of the next 7-8 months (wow, is it really that soon?).  It sounds like a pipe dream, but we'll see how that goes!!!