Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mum and mea podcast. Mama Maya
Speaker 1: acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this
Speaker 1: podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 2: I am pregnant.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Hello Bump. We're making pregnancy less overwhelming and
Speaker 1: more manageable. I'm Grace Rubray, pregnant for the first time,
Speaker 1: and my clothes don't fit me anymore, some of them.
Speaker 1: And I'm on a Pittman.
Speaker 2: I'm a former Olympian, mother of six little people, and
Speaker 2: I'm now training to be an obstetrician.
Speaker 1: Each episode will be holding your hand week by week
Speaker 1: through the mysterious, perplexing, and sometimes expensive miracle that is pregnancy.
Speaker 2: Week eighteen.
Speaker 1: What fruit are we?
Speaker 2: We are now a large orange. Apparently a naval orange
Speaker 2: from last week is smaller than a large orange, so
Speaker 2: we're moving on to a large orang. Okay, something that
Speaker 2: some people like in pregnancy are big.
Speaker 1: Back yes, or a sunflower suflap that's much nice, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Fourteen to fifteen centimeters so big getty, bigger, one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty to two hundred grams. So you know, we're
Speaker 2: starting to get a little bit more substantial in size.
Speaker 1: And how are they developing this week.
Speaker 2: They have eyebrows.
Speaker 1: That's weird. I know, it's very cute. Hair and fingernails.
Speaker 2: I just think that is so cute to think that that,
Speaker 2: you know, a little person in there is starting to
Speaker 2: get little tufts of hair above their eyes. They can
Speaker 2: now yawn and hiccup, but you probably won't feel the hiccupping.
Speaker 2: And they have taste buds, so they're starting to actually
Speaker 2: taste the amniotic fluid that they're drinking in. And then
Speaker 2: you know, depending on what you're eating, may actually start
Speaker 2: to like different things.
Speaker 1: Oh, I feel bad for them.
Speaker 2: Well, you're not eating very much.
Speaker 1: I'm eating a lot of a lot of carbs. Like
Speaker 1: the safe foods are bread, pasta, burritos, britos.
Speaker 2: You said you have some beef and.
Speaker 1: I haven't kicked any. It's definitely more like a goodsman
Speaker 1: comes sautee vegetables. What's good. It's actually really good. There's
Speaker 1: heaps of stuff in it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely great.
Speaker 1: I hope they like Mexican food when they like spicy,
Speaker 1: come out. What's happening to me? And what is happening
Speaker 1: to our body right now?
Speaker 2: Or your uterus is definitely pushing up more there's more
Speaker 2: arteries and blood flow, so you might feel it a
Speaker 2: little bit dizzy when you stand up occasionally, and you're
Speaker 2: probably starting to gain a bit more weight, and it'd
Speaker 2: be a bit more obvious to you on the scales.
Speaker 1: I definitely felt getting more dizzy, and it was something
Speaker 1: that really made me feel quite anxious sometimes as well,
Speaker 1: Like I'd stand up and I'd feel dizzy, and then
Speaker 1: I would keep doing like the scan to go, am,
Speaker 1: I okay, it's.
Speaker 2: Good, I'm sorry. That's great, because people just dismiss dizziness
Speaker 2: as oh, I'm just dizzy because I'm pregnant. So what
Speaker 2: else did you feel?
Speaker 1: And my heart? That's when I could feel my heart
Speaker 1: either beating faster or I could just definitely, I think
Speaker 1: overall in pregnancy, and I think it's from the theme
Speaker 1: of every single week blood yep, more blood yeap is
Speaker 1: I could feel my heart beating in a way that
Speaker 1: I've never been able to feel it before. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: I can feel it like down in my stomach, or
Speaker 1: I could definitely feel it in my chest. My pulse
Speaker 1: is a lot longer.
Speaker 2: That can be a little bit scary. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: glad that you saw it as an issue most of
Speaker 2: the time. It's not. Most of the time. It is.
Speaker 2: As we said, it's blood volume and your heart is
Speaker 2: having to work harder to pump that blood volume around.
Speaker 2: So yes, most people do describe they can feel their
Speaker 2: heart beat, sometimes for the first time in their life, like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, that's strong. Sometimes it is faster. It can
Speaker 2: go up to ten to twenty beats faster in pregnancy.
Speaker 2: So either our heartwork beats harder or it beats faster
Speaker 2: to help that circulation because your cardiac outputs increase significantly.
Speaker 2: I think it's time to discuss a few of the
Speaker 2: red flags in this space though, because yes, in most cases,
Speaker 2: think about it. Your body is unfortunately prioritizing your baby
Speaker 2: over the rest of your body, and so when you're
Speaker 2: sitting down calmly, it's sending all your blood boats not
Speaker 2: all of it, but a large amount of your blood
Speaker 2: volume to your kidneys and to your uterus to support
Speaker 2: your baby. So your main organs to get prioritized over
Speaker 2: your legs and unfortunately upstairs. So when you stand up quickly,
Speaker 2: that bloodlog, oh my goodness hasn't quite caught up with
Speaker 2: me yet. I'm prioritizing this little lady off it goes
Speaker 2: and then you feel a bit dizzy. It should right
Speaker 2: itself pretty quickly though, so it should redistribute fairly quickly.
Speaker 2: This is the time I think we need to raise
Speaker 2: a few red flags because not always. It's example, a
Speaker 2: higher faster heart rate and feeling is a sign of PE.
Speaker 2: So that's the pulmonary embolism that we talked about before.
Speaker 2: So if you're having persistent tachy cardia, which is a
Speaker 2: fast heart rate, any sign of chest pain, it's a
Speaker 2: red flag. It's a straight to the emergency department if
Speaker 2: you're under twenty weeks, or to your birth unit because
Speaker 2: you need to rule that out it is life threatening.
Speaker 2: Pregnancy unveils stuff. So sometimes you might have a very
Speaker 2: healthy body, you've never been to the hospital in your life,
Speaker 2: but you don't know that you don't have an underlyzing
Speaker 2: cardiac disease. So there might be something with your valves.
Speaker 2: There might be something with the actual muscles around your heart.
Speaker 2: Because you can get things like valvular disease and cardio
Speaker 2: Mapitthian pregnancy which unfortunately become unearthed, and so if you're
Speaker 2: having those symptoms, it's just better to get them ruled out,
Speaker 2: So the situation will simply be you'll go in that
Speaker 2: pop an ECG on you, like an older person having
Speaker 2: a heart check. They'll check if there's any obvious a rhythmias.
Speaker 2: If there is, they might send you for some extra
Speaker 2: tests like an echo cardiac echo where they look at
Speaker 2: the valves and they look at the way the heart functions,
Speaker 2: or they might even put something on you like a
Speaker 2: whole to monitor, which actually tracks the way your heart
Speaker 2: works over twenty four hour hours. Now, many of the
Speaker 2: time won't capture what you're actually experiencing. Luck that you
Speaker 2: get dizzy in that first twenty four hours, so sometimes
Speaker 2: it could take a little bit of a work up here.
Speaker 2: But I think the key is to get checked in
Speaker 2: and aware if there's anything major, because the last thing
Speaker 2: you need to be is a higher risk pregnancy and
Speaker 2: feel unwell, you know, when you want to just enjoy
Speaker 2: what you're going through.
Speaker 1: One thing that my midwifes did check around this stage
Speaker 1: was my hemoglobin and my iron because they said, let's
Speaker 1: just make sure that you're pumping the right amount of
Speaker 1: oxygen around your body. Does that have some like can
Speaker 1: you explain how that has something to do with the
Speaker 1: dizziness or your heart changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also could be dehydrated guys. So if you've
Speaker 2: got low blood volume that day, you've just not drunk enough.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can get dizzy from that. So what is hemoglobin,
Speaker 2: so hemoglobin or your HB. So when you're looking on
Speaker 2: your blood tests, you'll see the little mark saying hemoglobin
Speaker 2: is one hundred and thirty. So that's a good, nice
Speaker 2: level of hemoglobin. And so all that is the molecules
Speaker 2: that carry the oxygen around your body. In pregnancy, it's
Speaker 2: the hemoglobin is made up of iron. So if your
Speaker 2: iron stores drop because your bubby is nicked at all,
Speaker 2: fortunately a little parasite, as we said, it's taken all
Speaker 2: your iron, your body can't rebuild that hemoglobin. And so
Speaker 2: throughout particularly labors, when we worry about obviously we worry
Speaker 2: about impregnancy if you're really tired and fatigue because of
Speaker 2: low iron and low hemoglobin. But in labor you are
Speaker 2: going to unfortunately bleed no matter what, because it's part
Speaker 2: of the process of birthing. And so therefore, if you
Speaker 2: start off low, in other words, if your hemoglobin is
Speaker 2: under one hundred and ten and your iron level is
Speaker 2: for us. It's under thirty is the level, but some
Speaker 2: women coming with irons down at through Ferreton levels of
Speaker 2: three and five, like really low, it's time to start
Speaker 2: an oral iron supplement. So signs to say yes if
Speaker 2: you've got a fast heart rate or you're feeling really dizzy,
Speaker 2: but particularly women describe feeling really tired, feeling back to
Speaker 2: like what they felt like in the early trimester, well
Speaker 2: in the first foun out they were pregnant. Get it
Speaker 2: checked even if you should have had it checked around
Speaker 2: sort of seven or eight weeks of pregnance, you're even
Speaker 2: before pregnancy anyway. But if not, get it rechecked. And
Speaker 2: particularly if you've been someone who's unfortunately had what we
Speaker 2: call aphs, which is antipatum hemorrhages. So if you have
Speaker 2: been bleeding in pregnancy, we'll go to that all that's
Speaker 2: a big topic. But if you've if you have been
Speaker 2: one of those people that could drop quite quickly.
Speaker 1: What are some things that we can do this week?
Speaker 1: What are some things to check off on the checklist
Speaker 1: that we can check off on the checklist.
Speaker 2: Well, as I said, book your morphology. It's got to
Speaker 2: be done. But I'm going to go with a mothery
Speaker 2: one here. I think it's time to start capturing belly photos,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's time to turn sideways in
Speaker 2: the mirror and take a picture because you're going to
Speaker 2: start seeing things change quite quickly now. And obviously keep
Speaker 2: adding to that playlist of music for your birth.
Speaker 1: My talk kit is about not feeling movement yet, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's other people, depending on where
Speaker 1: their percenter is, that they're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to film movement. And I know we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: placenta when we get to morphology, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: know some tips or some reassuring things from you if
Speaker 1: when people do start to feel movement and they get excited,
Speaker 1: but you're not still weeks away from that, what are
Speaker 1: some things that can reassure or I don't know, when
Speaker 1: is it most likely to start feeling this?
Speaker 2: So frustrated?
Speaker 1: Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: The whole saying around a percenter being anterior or posterior.
Speaker 2: All that means is your placenta growing on the front
Speaker 2: of your uterus, on the back of it. If it's
Speaker 2: growing at the back, you'll feel your baby's movement more.
Speaker 2: If it's growing on the front, it can actually it
Speaker 2: just does it because Bobby's kicking against the placenter and
Speaker 2: she's not big enough yet to make forceful movements you
Speaker 2: can feel, and so it's very frustrating for those women.
Speaker 2: And I have one practicey. I've had lots of them obviously,
Speaker 2: where I didn't feel baby moved till twenty seven, twenty
Speaker 2: eight weeks confidently like that was so scary and acually.
Speaker 2: I had ultrasound skills, so I was scaring myself every
Speaker 2: couple of days because I was so afraid i'd lost
Speaker 2: the baby. But I think you just need to be
Speaker 2: reassured that the chances of something going wrong at this
Speaker 2: gestation is low, and if it's going to happen, as
Speaker 2: horrible as this sounds, there's nothing we can do about
Speaker 2: it at this point, so just relax, give it a
Speaker 2: couple more weeks. There'll be times coming up in the
Speaker 2: next few years where we hassle you, the doctors and
Speaker 2: the midwives, go is your baby moving, Grace, is it moving?
Speaker 2: Is it moving? You're like, oh, stop asking me, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you if it's not right now. If you're not
Speaker 2: feeling it can be completely and utterly normal.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Hello Bump. We
Speaker 1: have so many episodes of this series filled with tips
Speaker 1: and stories from women and experts who've been through it
Speaker 1: all before.
Speaker 2: You can go back and listen to everything else Hello
Speaker 2: bub related in this podcast.
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Speaker 1: a review, or even share this episode with a friend.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Courtney Ammenhauser with audio production
Speaker 2: by Tom Lyon.
Speaker 1: We'll catch you next time.
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: This episode of Hello Bump was made in partnership with
Speaker 1: Huggies