Last Saturday my husband made his stage debut as the bassist of the band known as Invisible, now in their seventh year, and the show was wonderful. I am terribly, terribly proud of him, and of all the guys. It was also really nice to get out and actually see people for the first time since early February.

Today I had my second let’s-keep-an-eye-on-your-body-for-signs-of-premature-labour ultrasound. It demonstrated that yay, my body is carrying on with the Stupendous Work it is doing in not showing signs of premature labour this time around: everything is perfectly normal. Go body! I have awesome BP, great results from my last blood test and the glucose challenge, and everything of that sort.

What is concerning my doctor is that the Owlet is very small. She’s about three weeks behind where they’d like her to be measurement-wise, and weighs about a kilo at 29 weeks, which means that out of 100 kids at this gestational age she’d only be 13th from the bottom. (If you’re wondering, the boy weighed 3lbs14oz at 31 weeks, which is also on the lower end for that point of gestational age, apparently, so I am not overly concerned about this.) My doctor is taking the facts that (a) it is a girl and (b) I am very petite into account, but even so, she’s not entirely sanguine. So my care has been transferred from the regular OB clinic to the high-risk clinic in the hospital, where they can evaluate me with machines and ultrasounds every two weeks to track the baby’s weight.

As a result of this weight issue, I have finally been officially put on what my doctor describes as Light Bed Rest. This is not the “eek things are scary” kind of bed rest, as nothing has changed from yesterday, or last week, or my last appointment two weeks ago. I am not in imminent danger of preterm labour. It’s just that if it should happen for some reason, a low birthweight baby has a worse chance of survival, and my doctor’s not taking any chances. She’d have put me on bed rest three months ago if I worked outside the home, but I don’t so she didn’t, and my work situation hasn’t altered. She has formally told me to avoid any activity that is stressful, or entails me travelling a lot in a day, or being on my feet for extended periods. I can continue to do quiet sedentary stuff like my freelance work; it’s just that instead of working at my desk in my home office I get to do it on a laptop from the couch, which is simply a step down from how we’ve been handling it all along because I already reduced physical activity three months ago at her recommendation. Now I have to avoid things like grocery shopping, and unfortunately it also means that presenting my keynote address at the Gaia conference this weekend is off the menu. You should have seen my doctor’s face when I ran that past her this morning. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” she said dryly, which was essentially very polite shorthand for, “Am I going to have to call your husband and tell him to lock you up on Saturday?”

If there was such a term as Further Reduced Activity, that’s what I’ll be doing; it’s the next step down from the Reduced Activity in which I have already been engaged. Because hey, yay me, I’ve been keeping my body from slipping into preterm labour signs, did I mention that? Huge victory there, and my doctor is very, very pleased about how I’ve been handling that. And the Light Bed Rest thing is going to be reevaluated every two weeks, although in all likelihood this is the way it’s going to be till the Owlet is born.

So there you have it. Everything is going very well, and staying even more quiet than I have been will help keep it that way. We just need to fatten the Owlet up a bit. HRH is writing me a prescription for More Ice Cream, which I think is an excellent idea.