21 weeks pregnant now and getting closer to meeting the baby all the time. I think all of a sudden my due date doesn’t feel quite as far away anymore and I’ve started to feel the urge to start buying things and organising in preparation. I think it’s something about having tipped over that halfway mark (or just an urge to go shopping, you decide!)

 

What’s going on with the baby

The baby is practising swallowing and will be swallowing a little bit of amniotic fluid every day. This means that he may be tasting the things you eat as the taste of the fluid varies from day to day depending on what you’ve eaten. How amazing is that?

 

What’s going on with me

 

 

One of the biggest worries for me in pregnancy has been cervical length. As I’ve talked about before, I had an abnormal smear test in 2013 and had the LLETZ procedure to remove pre-cancerous cells from my cervix. One of the potential complications from that treatment is that the cervix is weakened, meaning that there is a small possibility of premature labour, typically from 20-28 weeks, as a result. I had a cervical scan this week to check on the length of the cervix and look for any sign of funnelling (which can indicate weakness). I had to really push to get this done, as apparently my hospital don’t do these scans as routine anymore unless you’ve had more than 2 LLETZ procedures or a cone biopsy. But the care I had in my last pregnancy involved multiple scans before 20 weeks that did reveal that my cervix was short - at 25mm it was right on the cusp of where they would want to put in a cervical stitch. So with that worry, I requested that I have a scan this time around too, although they couldn’t schedule this until 21 weeks. But the result was better than I could have hoped for, measuring 35mm this time - the longest measurement I’ve had! So it’s been massively reassuring for me, and has stopped me worrying (for the moment anyway!)

 

I think sharing this pregnancy with Max has been one of the most exciting parts. Every morning he wants to touch my tummy and say hello to the baby. His favourite book at the moment is “There’s a House Inside My Mummy” and he’s very concerned about where the baby is going to sleep. He was keen for him to sleep in his bed and share, but seemed to accept that his brother will be in with us for a while. Although I think he misunderstood at first when I told him the baby’s bed would go alongside ours - he later told his Dad that the baby was going to sleep in the gap underneath our wardrobe!

 

Goodbye 21 weeks pregnant and hello to 22!

 

Did you catch my 20 week pregnancy update? You can read it here