Week 30

Your brain is busy busy busy this week. It's starting to look like a brain too, forming all the grooves and indentations. All those wrinkles allow for expansion of brain tissue in the future. Your brain is getting bigger and better and taking on tasks that had previously been taken care of by other parts of your body, such as temperature regulations. And now because you are getting better at temperature regulations, you are losing that body hair (lanugo) you've had all these months. You are also getting stronger. You could grasp my finger - you're like the Hulk!

My pregnancy brain is getting the best of me. I used to be a great multitasker, but not anymore. My focus has been all over the place and it seems like it takes me so much longer to do anything. I also haven't felt the greatest this week. I think a little bit of it is that I haven't been sleeping well. For the most part I do okay, but sometimes the middle of the night bathroom trips are rough. My back has been a bit achy and my bump is getting bigger. I didn't, however, gain any weight in the last two weeks, according to my appointment. So I'm holding strong at just my ten pounds gained.

If it's not one thing, it's something else with this pregnancy it seems, which in my opinion makes me a little crazy for still wanting more children even after Addison (a couple years away, but still). So what's the latest in this pregnancy saga? Why an umbilical hernia, of course! It was towards the beginning of my second trimester that I noticed my belly button looked weird - almost bruised. That seemed pretty strange to me, but what do I know? - I've never been pregnant before. But because I was unsure, I asked my doctor about it and she said I had an umbilical hernia.

So what is an umbilical hernia?: After you are born, your umbilical stump will fall off and the opening will get smaller. Well, for some people the opening can become enlarged under pressure, such as pregnancy. It's not harmful to me or Addison, unless a loop of my bowel is forced out and becomes trapped. Otherwise it is harmless and it actually should go back to normal after pregnancy. Which is definitely good since the only way to fix it is through surgery. It's more common than you might think during pregnancy actually. However, you can get an umbilical hernia at any point of your life.

All was fine and dandy with my umbilical hernia and bruised belly button until I noticed that it was starting to hurt. It has always been a little sensitive to the touch and when I lean against something, such as a counter. But never has it just hurt on its own. However recently, I have started experiencing pain for no reason whatsoever. It will just start hurting. Nothing too horrible, but definitely enough for me to notice and actually ask about it again.

So I did. And a look of concern crossed my doctor's face. After confirming that there has been no pain severe enough to make me double-over and telling me that if I were to have that severe of pain then I was to go straight to the ER, she decided the best course of action was to consult a surgeon. She wanted to get his opinion on if it would be the right course of action to actually do an operation, which comes with some major risks during pregnancy or if it is just something we deal with after the pregnancy if it doesn't heal properly on its own. The pain might just be a result of stretching. Often times, when surgery is performed during pregnancy for something like this, the problem will just come back after the pregnancy, so that begs the question: Is it really worth it to do anything about it at this point or do I just ride out whatever discomfort I have now and see what happens after Addison is born?

(Monday, August 27 - Sunday, September 2)