17 weeks

After almost two weeks on bedrest, I am back to being vertical with the rest of the world.  I'm back at work now (and it's been oh-so exciting) and feeling good, for the most part.  I'm still bleeding, but my doctors don't seem to be too concerned about it even though they never figured out what caused it all to begin with.  The bleeding gets a little worse after each work shift, so I try to make sure to rest and relax on my first day off and that seems to help out.  My co-workers don't let me carry anything heavier than a patient's chart anymore so I don't strain myself.

One of the things that hasn't really improved during this trimester is my food aversions.  I've always hated picky eaters, but this baby is turning me into one.  I have aversions to meat, especially cuts of meat.  I seem to do okay with ground beef or shredded chicken (specifically in Albertos chicken burritos from San Diego), but anything else makes me gag just thinking about.  I haven't been able to eat seafood either, and crabbing season just started.  *sniff*  I've been getting my protein needs from peanut butter sandwiches, various nuts, tofu, cheese, and milk.  For someone who is lactose intolerant, it's been odd that I've been craving tall glasses of cold (lactose-free) milk.  Michael's been great in making meals that cater to Baby B's latest whims.  I'm so appreciative of everything he's done for me so far with this pregnancy.  I try not to turn into the "mean pregnant lady" that he seems to run into with other pregnant women at his workplace.

In non-baby news, I think we 

have a jungle of creatures living in the greenbelt behind our house.  We always hear a chorus of bird chirps and songs coming from various feathered friends we see around the house, from the woodpecker that pokes holes into the dead tree in our neighbor's backyard to the little finch we've named "Tweet" who made itself into our house one afternoon when we left the door open and took a nap.  (Tweet was found on top of our fridge, but apparently he danced on top of the papers on our kitchen table as well.)  Lately we've been hearing and seeing squirrels, and just the other day we heard howling and barking of coyotes or some other kind of wild dog.  We've also seen deer in our neighborhood grazing on the empty lots, but I don't think they make much noise.

July 16 is the day we find out if Baby B is a boy or girl.  According to the poll on our blog, most of you think it's a boy.  Michael wants a girl, and I'm okay either way as long as the baby is healthy and not a picky eater.  :)  

Bedrest: Day 2

Today was day 2 of bedrest.  My parents came over to keep me company since Mike had work today, and my friend Joanne came with her 1-year old pomeranian, Ranchan.  I did a better job of staying in bed today, partly because the bleeding came back a little worse this morning.  I'm also having some cramping, but I think I'm just being paranoid with all that's happened and it's probably just my uterus growing.  I think I'm going to need an SCD (sequential compression device) soon to prevent me from getting a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) from the bedrest and inactivity.  I already think I have a small clot brewing in my right thigh, but that's probably the gloom-and-doom hypochondriac talking.

It was nice having my parents around to keep me company.  My mom made arroz caldo, one of my favorite Filipino dishes (kind of like the pinoy version of chicken noodle soup, except that it's more of a chicken and rice stew) and my dad and I played various games on Wii.  Joanne's dog was super cute, running around and forcing snuggles onto anyone he came into contact with.

Maybe tomorrow I'll start reading Twilight or bring some scrapbook supplies down with me to start a pregnancy book for Baby B.  And maybe tomorrow I'll have someone hang a "No Visitors" sign on the door so we won't get all the persistent door-knockers we've been getting lately.

Owen! Bring Mama a Pepsi.

Yesterday at work I had a big scare.  I was on my lunch break, laughing with a co-worker, when I suddenly felt a warm gush of something down below.  Thinking I'd peed myself a little (like I have been since being pregnant when coughing and such), I didn't think much of it.  But it didn't stop.  As I walked to the bathroom, it was still gushing, and then when I was in the bathroom I realized it was blood.  Bright red blood, soaking through my pants.

I was freaked out and used our Vocera (like a personal walkie-talkie we use at work) to call another co-worker.  She 

got a wheelchair and a couple of them got me down to the ER.  As I transferred from the wheelchair to the bed, I could feel more blood just gushing out of me.  I thought I was miscarrying and I was so, so scared.  A co-worker called Mike at work while the ER team worked on me, asking me all the admitting questions, getting my vital signs (203/130 BP, 130 pulse!), throwing away my underwear, and getting an IV placed.  The good news: the ER doctor heard baby's heartbeat with doppler, and found my cervix to be closed.  The bad news: I was losing a lot of blood and I was tachycardic.  I had an ultrasound which showed Baby B moving around, measuring correctly for its gestational age (around 14 weeks), my cervix long and thick, and no blood in the uterus.  When I returned to the ER, I was still gushing a lot of blood (I estimated at least 400 ml loss), and after another cervical check, two liters of normal saline infused via pressure bag, and calls to the OB at my regular clinic and the on-call OB at St. Joe's, the ER doctor decided to let me go home with instructions for bedrest.

Today I went to the clinic to be checked out, and they basically found the same thing -- baby is doing okay, and the ultrasound shows no placenta previa, no subchorionic bleeding, and my cervix is holding up.  They didn't see any polyps on my cervix which could cause bleeding, so the only other thing they could test for was bleeding abnormalities.  I've never known myself to be a bruiser, but I have a big purple bruise on one arm from the IV, and dark red bruising on my other arm from blood pressure checks.  They took tests for hematocrit (blood count), protime (bleeding time), and ran a Von Willebrand panel (checking for clotting factor abnormalities).  If anything comes up weird, they'll give me a call tomorrow.

So, in short, the baby is doing well for now but I'm still bleeding.  No longer gushing, but it's still bright red.  Hopefully it stops or they figure out what it is soon.  Until then, I'm on bedrest.  Mike and my dad brought down a mattress in the living room, so I've been here since last night watching TV, napping, and going online.  I've been perfecting my Mama voice from "Throw Mama From the Train" and asking Mike/Owen to bring me a pepsi.  He's been great about everything so far.  I'm so lucky to have such a loving and supportive husband.  We just hope and pray that everything will work out for us and Baby B.