My Sugar House Life: Twenty-six weeks

Twenty-six weeks has been a week of worry. You may remember two weeks ago, I had my twenty-four week ultrasound and was thrilled to find out that Ziggy's head and heart were visible and structurally sound. Victory!

I should have just been happy and went on my merry way. I didn't receive a call or email from my doctor with any further concerns. But stupid me starting reading my test results more thoroughly. I love the transparency in medicine nowadays and how I have "My Health Chart" at the U, which allows me to view my entire medical history any time I want. But sometimes ignorance is bliss, ESPECIALLY when there is not a darn thing I can do to make something better.

Anyway, I start looking closer at my ultrasound details and noticed one line at the bottom, "Size is concordant with clinical or menstrual data, although the head and abdominal sizes are at the lower limits of normal." Hmmm.... lower limits of normal. I didn't like the sound of that. So I dug into the test results and saw "AC 17.6 cm 22.5 wk (20.4-24.6) Hadlock AC 11%" and "HC 20.9 cm 23.0 wk (21.5-24.5) Hadlock HC 10%". I'm no doctor, but if I had to guess, I think that means the abdominal circumference is in the 11th percentile and the head circumference is in the 10th percentile, which seems really, really small.

So here is what I immediately start thinking:

My baby is a week or two younger than we think.
I am giving birth to a tiny little peanut
My baby is not getting proper nutrition because my womb is inadequate (again)
My baby has abnormalities that make her too small

I start talking to some of my people, namely, Robert, Mom, Amy, Christine, Lenore, Kinza, and Heather. As I am typing this I'm wondering why I didn't call my two nurse friends, Kristen and Natalie. Because I'm a dummy. Here are some of the things they said that made me feel better:

(From Amy) We ovulate late in our family. When I was testing my ovulation to get pregnant, I ovulated as late as Day 22. That is a full eight days later than the average woman. Because of that, we really don't know what day I conceived therefore it is reasonable to assume the baby is a week or so younger than what my last menstrual period would indicate.
(From Robert) We shouldn't worry because all of the baby is measuring small. Structurally her anatomy looks perfect and her head and abdomen are both measuring between 10-11%. If something were wrong, she would have a big body and tiny head or vice versa. She's just a small, perfect baby.
(From Lenore) Betty measured small at her mid-pregnancy ultrasound too. Nothing to worry too much about.

In case you were wondering, I did call my doctor's office as well, and they couldn't tell me anything. Basically they said it could just be a small baby, it could mean the due date is off, and it could be a sign of something worse. I'll just need to get another ultrasound in four weeks for an interval growth test to make sure the baby is growing okay. Luckily since I didn't notice the note about her weight being on the lower limit of normal for two weeks, I only need to worry for two weeks before the ultrasound.

So basically right when I stop worrying about Ziggy's heart and head, I get to worry about her size and growth. The joys of motherhood!

On a more positive note, here are some pictures from the last week. Aidan started tennis, Robert and I flew to LA for a wedding, and my street had a game night where like 30 people showed up. It was great. I only have pictures from the wedding though. :)