Sooo, of course after I wrote my last post Cheeks largely went dark on me. Very little movement after breakfast outside of a few teeny rib kicks while I waited to get my labs drawn (around 5pm). I kept waiting and waiting because he normally gets active in the evenings but by the time I got in bed to do kick counts around 9:00pm he still hadn’t moved much at all, or at least not that I could feel.
Normally the way I do kick counts is that after I lie down, I wait until I feel the first kick to start counting the time. He usually moves in bunches so if I do it that way I typically get 10 movements within 15-30min, the longest so far has been about 45min. Last night I went almost 30min with zero movements after I felt the first teeny kick. This was with me poking and gently pushing down on my belly which usually makes him poke back or squirm.
Trying not to panic, I got myself a small bowl of sorbet hoping it would get him moving. He did pick it up a little bit but by the 1hr mark I had only gotten about 6-7 movements that I was sure were movements. I did feel a few fluttery-feeling things but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just gas or something.
I decided to call the urgent care line and they asked me to go into triage. Once again I felt so bad because Paul was already drifting off to sleep (and doesn’t have the luxury of not having to go to work in the morning) but he was worried and wanted to come with so off to the hospital we went.
Of course, right after I hung up the phone with the nurse I felt three little kicks and then felt him squirming a bit as we drove over. Ah well, we were already on our way so decided to continue.
Once we arrived they got me hooked up to the monitors pretty quickly and got a nice strong heartbeat. Cheeks then proceeded to flip out, kicking at the monitors and trying to squirm away (but he’s too big to get very far!). After thirty minutes the nurse came back and I told her I was feeling him quite a bit now but unfortunately she checked the strip and said he wasn’t having accelerations like they like to see.
That almost completely freaked me out but the next nurse that came in said it was fine because they were seeing good variability in the heartrate and no decels. The in-house OB decided to do a bpp just for peace of mind before sending us home and as soon as she put the ultrasound wand on my belly we saw a little baby wiggling away. She moved it to where his arms and legs were and he immediately showed off with a couple big kicks (which I didn’t feel*). Then she started measuring his fluid and while she was doing this he started breathing! It was pretty cool to see his little abdomen puffing up and down, she commented that they only needed to see it for 30 seconds but he was going to blow that out of the water. She also started laughing and said that he must just want attention because he was doing so well on the bpp. After he finished showing off his breathing she finished up measuring my fluid, it’s been between 15-19 and it was 14 last night so she was happy with that.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Cheeks is just wanting to make up for no more PR intervals by earning himself a few extra ultrasounds. Paul thinks maybe he’ll want to be an actor when he grows up since he loves being on camera so much 🙂
* I’m guessing that maybe after breakfast he moved into a position where most of his movements were being shielded by my placenta since I was only feeling very muted movements and couldn’t feel the kicks we saw on the monitor.