Week 31 Down

On Thursday of last week, I completed week 31. Another week down. The status of the baby has not changed, except that he has gained weight, which is exactly what we want. The friendly force feeding by family and friends must be working. According to his most recent ultrasound, the baby now weighs 1.893 Kg. Roughly.

The doctors have increased their monitoring of me to twice a week. I have asked if they have a frequent flyer program. I feel I should at least get some air miles. The first visit is usually on Monday or Tuesday. At this visit, I go in for a full ultrasound, where they measure everything and most especially look for signs of ascites (this is how it is said in Spanish, I am roughly translating), which would be the first indicator of cardiac insufficiency. Ascites is the technical term for pooling of liquid around the heart, lungs or other organs. There is no sign of it so far, which is good news. The heart has grown a tad since last week, but within acceptable limits. All four chambers of the heart are growing in proportion, which is also good news.

The second weekly visit is for a longer monitoring of the baby’s heart rate, to check for abnormalities. Our first appointment was last Thursday. For this, they hooked me up to a Doppler monitor for around thirty minutes, during which a printer transcribed the baby’s heart rate from signals it received from a monitoring belt that I wore. The output was a printout of the baby’s heart patterns. The whole contraption looked a little like the gestational version of a lie detector machine, with a needle diligently scratching away a spiky pattern of the baby’s heart rate on a piece of paper.

This weekly monitoring is pretty fun. First, because we get to hear our baby’s heart beating for thirty whole minutes and I swear, there is no more heavenly music than that. The heartbeat comes out as a sort of scratchy thumping noise that - at least to Demian’s and my ears - is jaw-droppingly riveting.

It’s also fun because I get to hold a little remote control button that I press every time I feel the baby kick. The baby kicked about once a minute, so I pressed the button about thirty times during the session. The baby’s heart rate fluctuated a lot during the monitoring, between 120 and 150 beats per minute. The doctors said this is absolutely normal. His heart rate goes up every time he kicks, which he does a lot. He is very active. For me of course, this kicking is the world's best anxiety depressant, so I am not complaining.

When the monitoring finished, the nurse came in and took a look at the printout. She said that of all the babies that afternoon, ours won the "number of kicks" contest. We were absurdly proud. And there were no abnormalities of any kind, so this kid has the heart of a champion, as a fair few of you have reminded us in our darker moments.

So far, the baby has a growing list of names that various people have assigned to him. The doctor calls him Victor, as in victorious. JD calls him Superboy. Mum calls him Diego and has for ages. Sarah baptized him a while ago with a string of about 17 intensely Spanish names. Shanti calls him The Prince. Dave and Vicky and some of the Barcelona contingent call him Harold (with offshoots like Jaroldo, Jaroldiño and Jaroldito), since they know that we would be unlikely to name him that. Iris and Rupert recently christened him Clark, as in Clark Kent, as in Superman.

Demian and I are still deliberating. Or maybe we are just keeping it a secret. But in the meantime, we love hearing everyone’s contributions. Lots of love to you all.