26 weeks pregnant

Just a little bit more than 3 months to go and I am still feeling good. It has officially become difficult to tie my shoes. I'm still about a month bigger than I was with Selena and am worried that I'll be tipping over at the end. :) Selena has started calling me "big mama" and she told me that I was "so big".

For me, my Sleep Number Bed and my knee chair have been the best products ever. We got the sleep number bed when I was 6 months pregnant with Selena and I didn't really have any trouble sleeping while pregnant with her. If my hips started hurting a bit I just went to a softer number and the pain disappeared. When

I'm not pregnant I'm not quite as big a fan because it does seem to deflate some in the middle of the night, but now that I'm pregnant again I am super satisfied. I slept with Selena on her bed/mattress on the floor (attempting potty training) a few nights ago and pretty much did not get any sleep.

The knee chair is awesome because it allows you to sit in a way (knees below hips) that promotes optimal fetal positioning which can make labor faster and easier, it helps avoid back pain, and helps avoid feeling like you are squishing the baby. I used one at work when I was pregnant with Selena and loved it. I was having bad back pain that disappeared right when I started using it, and my labor with her was fast and relatively easy. So I had to buy one for this pregnancy. Now that I am getting bigger I am going to have to start bringing it downstairs to watch TV and then back upstairs to work. Sitting on the couch is starting to be really uncomfortable.

At my previous prenatal appointment my urine had traces of protein in it, so my midwife sent it to the lab to be tested and it came back saying I had a urinary tract infection due to Group D Strep (not Group B which is common). Which was really weird and not very common. My midwife said I could try a natural remedy called D-Mannose powder or I could go and get some antibiotics from the doctor. I decided to try the D-Mannose powder and watch for symptoms and if I got any to go and get the antibiotics, and then get tested again in two weeks to see if it went away. I wanted to avoid antibiotics because taking drugs is always a little worrisome when pregnant. So I took the powder 3 to 4 times a day for 3 days and then once a day since then and I got tested and everything came back clean. So yay for me. The D-Mannose powder is a concentration of sugar found in cranberries and is supposed to grab the bacteria and flush it out, and it seemed to work.

I'm also scheduled to take the dreaded gestational diabetes glucose test next time. But she gave me very specific instructions on how to take the test to provide the greatest accuracy. With Selena I failed and it stressed me out and taking the 3 hr test was not any fun because it required fasting from 10pm till 1pm the next day and getting my arm stuck 8 times, but I did pass. She told me to fast starting at 10pm the night before the test and to eat none or very little bread, rice, or potatoes that day. She said that she has experimented telling women to fast for just a few hours before, but they ended up with a lot more false positives when they did that. I still wonder if maybe eating some eggs and cheese would be ok in the morning since those don't affect your blood sugar at all, but I'm not going to try it. I still don't want to fast, and I don't want to drink a bunch of sugar, but I guess I'll go along with it.

Once again I can say I think my midwife is the greatest because she gave me a successful and safer alternative than antibiotics, and gave me detailed info on how to make the GD test more accurate. Licensed midwives are illegal in lots of states (I am so thankful Washington isn't one of them), but honestly I feel that if anything were to go wrong with my pregnancy she would be more likely to catch it and make sure it really is a problem than if I were seeing a doctor, OB, or nurse midwife. She gives me so much more info than any of the providers I saw when pregnant with Selena and even though I am well read regarding pregnancy she tells me things I haven't heard. My appointments are an hour long so we really get to talk and I might mention something that would alert her, that in a 10 minute appointment I wouldn't have said. Also she only does 3 births a month so her patient load is a lot less than most other providers, so she has the time to continue to educate herself, and spend more time with her clients. So there is my plug for licensed midwives. :)