13 weeks with Olivia: You down with RLP? Yeah you know me!

Naughty by Nature? Circa 1991? Anyone?

Whatever. It’s totally in my head. And don’t think I haven’t tried changing the lyrics to OPP to match RLP. It wasn’t working. Feel free to take a moment and dance along to the video. I already did.

Anyway, it appears that I have the start of RLP, or round ligament pain. This whole pregnancy I have been blessed with very minimal scares (except for the ones inside my head) and for that, I am very thankful. I’ve had no bleeding. And there has been no cramping up until a few days ago. I was in the bathroom and all of a sudden I got some very mild cramps. Like, oh my period is coming-type cramps. I couldn’t help it. Miscarriage PTSD or whatever. I froze and felt a feeling of dread before I told myself to calm the hell down. Google revealed this to be OK as long as it wasn’t severe and it wasn’t accompanied by blood. It didn’t last long, and I later found Baby’s heartbeat on the home Doppler I was borrowed from a friend.

Sunday night Chris and I were downstairs and I felt the cramping again that was slightly worse than before. It lasted about two hours and during that time, I was frantically sending messages to my pregnancy Facebook group and tried to reassure myself from the comments that this has happened to a lot of women and doesn’t always mean something is wrong. It faded for a while, but then came back when I got into bed, bad enough that I had to do some deep breathing exercises to help with the pain. Yes, I started panicking a bit. I mean, I am thirteen weeks, how could this be happening?

Luckily, Monday was my second OB visit. I brought up these concerns along with the stabbing feeling I was getting every so often down in the lady bits, concerned I had a UTI. Nope. He said the stabbing and cramping was all the start of round ligament pain. He said it may get worse, but at least now I know what to expect.

He listened for Seaweed on the Doppler and she happily kicked out a 157 heart rate which he said was “very acceptable” and said he’d see me back in four weeks.

So there you go, I guess. In and out doctor appointment and I’m not dying. I just have RLP (yeah you know me!) Ooo, and here’s a thirteen-week bump picture. Still fat, but now in that kind of “is the bottom fat roll sticking out further than the top fat roll, or is it just me?” fatness that seems to be the start of an actual baby bump.

As I’ve said, you can see all the bump photos here. And since I am saying goodbye to the first trimester, this Friday I get to make a new tab for the second trimester! OPP dance, everyone!