Well here i am at 32 weeks pregnant! I cannot believe that i am still pregnant after having such an early premature birth with Ronan.

A lot of things have been happening including still going to my high risk clinic appointments at Monash every 2 weeks and we actually found out the reason WHY Ronan came early after a few blood tests and an AMAZING doctor who is looking after me. She is just the BEST and i couldn’t have asked for such a more gentle person to look after me throughout this pregnancy. I am very blessed that she figured out what happened within 2 weeks and no one else even tried after 2.5 years!

The best way to describe the reason for Ronan’s premature birth was that my placenta was not working properly. My blood results that were taken recently indicate that i have a “spelling mistake” in my chromosones. Basically my placenta will absorb nutrients ie: folic acid etc.. but it does not know how to distribute the nutients, so my placenta pealed away which lead to “placental abruption” due to the lack of nutrients. With the placenta pealing away this triggered on the heavy bleeding and the sponateous labour. Apparently this condition/”spelling mistake” is something that is passed on from my parents. Unless tests were done we wouldn’t know which parent it was but due to my mother & sister not having any complications with premature babies/premature birth of their own it would be interesting to find out if it was from my dad.

I had a scan last week to check that bubs was growing correctly and apparently everything is going great. He was head down, there was plenty of fluid, the cervix was closed and bubs weighed approx 1.8kgs or 1800 grams so he was growing very good. Apparently around the 31 week mark most babies weigh approx 1500 grams so he is a chubby bubby! My doctor said that he would be around 7 – 8lbs when born. What a huge difference between that number and 2.8lbs when my little premmie was born. Gosh i hope i don’t have any problems delivering naturally due to having a BIGGER baby.

Here i am at 32 weeks gestation and still going strong. I am feeling really good this pregnancy, no swelling, no backaches, no complications. It does actually feel very strange to know that i have a “normal” pregnancy! This is not something that i thought would happen and everyday i keep waking up thinking “ok when will our little boy come, is it today”. Because i am anticipating another premature baby i am sure we will have a very healthy newborn which will be totally surreal but very exciting.

I hope that my little updates give those parents of premature babies a little hope that having another baby after having a premmie can actually go to plan. It all depends on your situation of course but if you do plan on having another baby be sure to book yourself into the “high risk clinic” at your nearest hospital so you are closely monitored. For the health of you and your baby and also for peace of mind they really do watch you and monitor everything along the way.

Here is a picture of my belly at 31 weeks!