First let me say I did call my doctor and left a message and I expect a callback sometime in the next hour or so.
I am about 32 weeks into pregnancy that has so far been pretty straightforward but for the past couple of days my body has been doing weird stuff. On Thursday I felt the baby turn herself head down. It was unpleasant for a few minutes while she was spinning around but once she got into a comfy position it wasn’t a problem and I know that this is about the time that fetuses (feti?) start moving into that position so I wasn’t worried. Then on Saturday I felt a quick, sharp pain in my cervix twice during the day. When I looked it up on Google I found explanations ranging from being head-butted in the cervix by your child to beginning to dilate but nothing that indicated that I should be concerned enough to call my doctor or go to the hospital. I told my husband about it and decided I would keep an eye on it between then and my doctor’s appointment that is scheduled for Wednesday.
Yesterday evening I noticed that the baby appears to have dropped. I had been carrying very high until yesterday night when I noticed that I could breathe much easier than I had been previously and that when I looked down my belly wasn’t sticking nearly as far out as it had been earlier in the day. Again I looked it up online and lots of women said their babies dropped weeks before they gave birth so I figured this was probably normal too and made a note to talk to my doctor about it at my appointment this week.
Today I’ve noticed that the sharp cervix pain is showing up with a bit more frequency and my lower back (which hadn’t bothered me until this point) is starting to hurt. I haven’t felt anything that seems like a contraction so I don’t think I am going into early labor or anything but I’m not a medical professional and I’ve never done this before so I couldn’t say for sure what is going on in there. I called my doctor but it is apparently lunch time in their office so I probably won’t hear back from anyone for about an hour and I wanted to check with other people and see if this is pretty normal for the last month/month and a half of pregnancy or if this is something I should be more concerned about. Am I pretty safe waiting to hear back from my doctor or should I be asking my boss to call an ambulance for me before too long?
It sounds normal to me, if you are full term The baby is getting into position to be born. Are you full term or close to it? If so, then woohoo! If not, then maybe a doctor should get involved.
My labor pains started in my lower abdomen, as just the faintest twinge. But everyone is different, and yours could be more in the lower back and lower abdominal area. My light pains went on for about two days before I went to the hospital, so this may be the time to take it easy and get ready for baby.
The biggest indicator that someone will have a baby in the next few days - does your nose look like it got way wider all of the sudden? Everyone I know has gotten the “nose sign” just before labor.
Good luck!
ETA - Missed the 32 weeks info. I wouldn’t jump into an ambulance without some other symptom, like vaginal bleeding or vomiting or something. But certainly talk to your doc. These may be Braxton-Hicks (false) contractions, but I don’t know what those feel like, and better safe than sorry. The doc should be able to put you on a monitor in his office to see if the uterine wall is actually contracting or not.
I would definitely talk to your doctor as it could be signs of early labor. That being said, I experienced many of those same symptoms around that same time and my little one was born right on time. It was just my body getting ready. Labor isn’t necessarily the start and go situation people sometimes think it is. I started dialating three weeks before baby arrived and she started dropping 6 weeks before she was due.
It was normal for both of my pregnancies to get those stabbing cervix pains, especially once the baby was big enough to hurt.
I got braxton-hicks contractions constantly too. The one thing that seemed to help with that was a nice orgasm. They would subside for a bit, and baby would settle down. Weird, I know.
Backache is common too, as your front gets larger and heavier.
My doctor says this sounds normal enough and that she will do a proper exam on Wednesday as scheduled to double check and make sure it isn’t something more than starting to get ready for birth. I am none too pleased with this whole painful and uncomfortable part of pregnancy and I intend to have a stern talk with the fetus when I get home about being polite when you are living in another person’s space. I assume she will respond with more headbutting but it is never to early to start discussing proper manners with your kids, right?
Yeah, this part of pregnancy sucks. Apparently your baby hasn’t read the same books you have.
For your back issues, it used to help to lay on my side on the couch, or to get down on all fours on the floor and stretch my back by arching and releasing. So, arch like a cat, then let go - rinse, repeat. Also, when you sleep on your side, try putting a pillow between your knees and hug another one so it’s wedged kind of under your stomach. I also used to have one wedged against my back, too. I know you can have pregnancy pillows that go all around you, but having separate pillows worked better for me - a body pillow was uncomfortable. It got warm at night while I was sleeping because of all the pillows, but it was awesome support.
As for the cervical pain, from about 6 weeks prior to birth, I felt like mine had become a punching bag. I couldn’t tell if I was in pain or really had to pee. It sucked when I was walking around 36 weeks or so because every step jounced the baby up and down on my cervix. Sometimes she hit back.
You are fine, third trimester is full of exciting new pain and discomfort.
My passenger flipped around the same time as yours, maybe a little earlier, and has been alternating hammer-kicking my ribs and head-butting my cervix and bladder ever since. Little asshole. Up until about a week ago I was able to reach up and feel my own cervix, which I would do whenever I was concerned I was going into early labor (ie about every week or so). Give that a shot, it might ease your mind. I got a centimeter dilated a couple weeks ago, then as of last week my cervix hid up too high to feel. Since I’m 36 weeks now I’m less concerned about him coming early and more concerned about him taking college correspondince courses while still kicking my ribs.
The first time I heard my sister in law use a four-letter word was during the third trimester of her first pregnancy, something along the lines of “they tell you about kicking, but the fuckers never talk about the elbowing, or about having your damned bladder headbutted!” She demonstrated a whole range of vocabulary we had previously never heard from that source…
My theory is that the entire, say, final 4 weeks of pregnancy is nature’s way of preparing you for labor and delivery. I DON’T CARE HOW MUCH IT HURTS, I JUST WANT THIS TO END, may have been my internal dialog for a solid month, for example.
I found out I was 7-8 weeks pregnant in the beginning of April and in a couple of days it will be October. For everyone else this time is zooming by but for me it is taking forever. I’ve had nausea, sciatica, temporary blindness, dueling boobs*, ankles that have swollen so badly I actually have stretch marks on them now, sharp pains in my cervix, and a host of other unpleasantness so I have been incredibly aware of almost every moment of this pregnancy.
*Dueling boobs is where you wake up one morning and one boob is a full cup size larger and the other hasn’t changed in size. Slowly over the course of a couple of days the second one catches up and then a few days later the first one swells up enormously again leaving the slow boob to catch back up. The first morning I noticed this I cried while envisioning a world where one breast was so large it ended up dragging on the ground and the other stayed the same size, leaving me a freak of nature with no employment opportunities except for the Coney Island Freak Show. My husband tried really hard not to laugh at me but he just couldn’t help himself with my ridiculousness.
