31 weeks and counting

Today is the last day of my 31st week of pregnancy. Assuming this will all end no later than 37 weeks, I've got 6 weeks, or 42 days left after today.

According to some websites I've been reading, E3 should now be starting to make surfactant in the lungs, which will allow him to breathe. Its still very early days, but we are getting there. If I can just get to 32 weeks, I will feel a lot more confident.

I saw the endocrinologist today. She said I was doing really well with managing my gestational diabetes, which was great considering I can't do any exercise. She has told me to drop down to morning blood glucose measures every third day and just measure twice after meals each day, instead of three times. If the levels start to rise, I will go back to the four measures a day.

I asked would it get harder to control my blood glucose as the pregnancy progresses. She said its hard to tell what will happen, but it is certainly possible as the hormone levels rise.

She also weighed me and said I had gained no more than 200-400g or so. She said often women lose some weight once they start a strict gestational diabetes diet, rather than eating freely. According to my own scales, I have dropped back but not much.

She also said it would be perfectly reasonable not to gain any more weight from now on. The baby will continue to grow and put on fat but she said I would have laid down most of my fat stores during the second trimester. That's when the rapid weight gains really happen. That's in line with what I saw happening to my weight too. She said its not unusual for weight to stay the same or even drop back in the last 3 weeks or so.

I must have conveyed that I was concerned about having the baby soon, because she tried to reassure me that all would be ok. But actually I came away feeling more worried about just how serious the situation is. She reassured me that RPA would be able to look after our baby very well in the NICU if it were born now.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. My next milestone is 32 weeks, when we move from the very premature group to just the premature group.