34 weeks, 6 days.

I had my second OB appointment of the week earlier today. I was feeling pretty good as my BPs have been relatively steady in the 140/80 range since my last appointment, and I was using the power of positive thinking about my urine protein levels based on the fact that I peed over three liters in 24 hours and the color looked good. (Those probably aren't scientific qualifiers for having a good urine protein result, but that's what I was going with.) The MA checked my BP 130s/70s (great!), I was put on the NST and Baxter's heartrate was in the 130-140s and kicking along fine (excellent!), and my dad was playing Scrabble on his iPhone in the room with me.

Peggy (my midwife) came in and said my bloodwork result was good, but my urine protein level had more than doubled from the previous week. She was concerned at how much it had increased (from 780 mg to over 1500 mg) and talked to Dr. Venuto about it. They decided to admit me this Sunday (!!!) to be induced. Baxter is doing fine, but they're worried I could have permanent kidney damage from the protein and/or go into severe eclampsia if we wait too long. In weighing the pros and cons of delivering Bax at 35 weeks, she said one thing he had going for him was that he was living in a stressed environment the entire time he was in utero because my blood pressure was always a little elevated. She also did a cervical check and was pleasantly surprised that I was already 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced. She even said, "Oh! You could go into labor by yourself before Sunday!" Har har har.

So, that's what's going on. By next week, Michael and I will be parents. Baby B will be here. The day I've looked to with both fear and happy anticipation is coming up sooner than I'd ever planned. I hope everything goes smoothly and that Baxter and I will be okay.

34 Weeks

Remember how I was complaining of some type of respiratory problem in my last post? It turns out that my childhood asthma came back due to being pregnant. Joyous! I earned myself an inhaler and a Z-pack for my cough. I'm back to bi-weekly OB appointments and non-stress tests for Baxter (hour long baby heartrate and contraction monitoring). My blood pressures have been on the high side (SBP 140-150s, DBP 70-90s) and my 24-hour urine protein levels went back up to 780 mg. We had an ultrasound last Saturday morning to check on baby's growth and was pleased to see his weight went up to approximately 4 lbs., 9 oz. According to Dr. Venuto (high risk OB), everything's progressing normally. He still has good blood flow through his umbilical cord and is growing proportionately. My blood work continues to be normal and I'm not having any symptoms of pre-eclampsia anymore, it's just my dang blood pressure and urine protein that's abnormal. Unfortunately, those are the two hallmark signs of pre-eclampsia so until those resolve, it's bedrest and constant testing for me.

We also had a family baby shower at our house last Saturday. Rosanna was nice enough to plan everything and we thought it was a big success. We've never had so many people at our house, but it all worked out with the help of creative seating. It was kind of like an open house party too, as some of our guests had never seen our house before. We got so many wonderful presents! After the party was over, we both felt like we were more prepared for Baxter to come. His nursery is starting to become more functional with the addition of a diaper pail, shelves, and a changing pad. We just need to finish the rocking chair and hang wall decorations. I've started washing a few of his tiny outfits and blankets, and started packing our hospital bags just in case. It's a little surreal but exciting at the same time.

Any bets on when he'll come? I'm thinking (hoping) for mid to late-November. My mom's hoping he comes out on her birthday but since that's tomorrow, I don't think she'll get her wish. Happy Halloween everyone!

Baby Shower and Bedrest

Some of my co-workers threw a baby shower for me and Baxter last Saturday. It was so nice to hang out with them (with me sitting on the couch, of course), eat good food, and see all the nice gifts they gave us. A big thanks to Kirsten for hosting it. (She's the one on the left.) Baxter got a bathtub, bath toys, a taggie blanket, a cool coinbank, beanbag animal friends, and numerous cute outfits. I can't wait to put them on him!

The past couple of days have been pretty trying for me. I've developed some kind of respiratory issue, and I'm not sure if it's all baby related because I'm wheezing and crackly sounding at times. Going up the stairs makes me lose my breath for about 5-10 minutes and I have a hard time sleeping because I can't breathe. It's been hard. My SBPs have been pretty steady in the 130-150 range, but I'd like to see them even lower. I've been having more headaches and that come back as soon as the tylenol wears off. The swelling in my hands go up and down throughout the day, and I've been having more contractions and feeling big movements from the baby. Baxter is pretty active from about 10 pm-4 am, so that keeps me up as well.

My goal for the week is to not get admitted to the hospital. I'm afraid if I get admitted, they won't let me out again. Part of me wouldn't mind getting admitted because at least Michael wouldn't have to work double hard with working full time and trying to take care of me, but the other part of me doesn't want to have to stay in the hospital all by myself day and night. Mostly I don't want to have to stay in the hospital for six more weeks.

Bedrest: Week 2

Week 2 of bedrest has been a little more exciting than Week 1. I've had visits from family and opportunities to leave the house and see the world. Okay, so most of those outings are my bi-weekly visits to the OB or to the lab (I get to do weekly 24 hour urine collections), but this week I also went to the dentist (ooh!), our newborn preparation class, and Target.

I'd been heavily hinting to Michael about wanting to go out to Target for a while, and yesterday he finally let me, on one condition -- I had to sit in a wheelchair. A manual wheelchair wouldn't have been bad, but all they had were those motorized carts. Michael made me use it and it was totally embarrassing. It made a loud BEEP BEEP BEEP noise every time I backed up, I ran into the back of Mike's legs a couple of times, and I almost took out a couple of endcap displays when attempting to turn into an aisle. I decided that I wasn't going to ask him to let me out to the stores any longer if I had to ride in another lame-o wheelchair.

Earlier in the week we went to Mike's parents' house in Poulsbo to visit Guy (Mike's oldest brother) and Erin's family who are visiting from California. I had a lot of fun playing with Kate and Quinn. Kate and her Uncle Mike carved pumpkins, and when they were done she clasped her hands together and declared them "beautiful!" Before we left that night, Mike went to say bye to Kate only to find her fast asleep in front of their pumpkins. She's so sweet!

Bedrest Blahs

What an interesting week I've had. It started with a couple of very busy shifts at work, followed by four days off. The first day off I had was Thursday. I had these grandiose plans of doing a bunch of things and ended up staying at home all day because I felt crappy. Friday I was okay and drove around town doing errands. On Saturday, I went to my friend Greg's wedding and tried various Korean food at the reception. I noticed some different symptoms on Saturday, but I chalked it up to being either excited for him getting married or due to being further along in pregnancy. For instance:

I had a burning sensation in my right upper quadrant, right underneath my rib cage. I figured it was from sitting in the pew and turning all the time to see if other people I knew were at the church, or from the way I was sitting. I kept massaging it and it only went away after a couple of hours. Later on I would learn that it was probably my liver saying "OW."

I had some visual changes, like blurred vision and seeing spots. I thought it was from driving toward the sun and not having my sunglasses on.

Later on that night and on Sunday, I noticed more troubling symptoms that made me want to visit my midwife, including feeling swollen around my eyelids and an increase of edema in my hands, attacks of shortness of breath, and sudden onset dry heaving. I contemplated going to the ED (since it was the weekend and my midwife's clinic was closed), but went against that idea since I figured they wouldn't be able to do anything for me except ship me off to SJMC. I called in sick Monday morning and scheduled an early appointment with my midwife, and after checking my vital signs and telling her about my weekend symptoms, she promptly admitted me to the antepartum unit for observation of pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome.

During my first hours of being admitted to the hospital, my nurse asked me if I was trying to get the prize for the highest blood pressures in the unit. (Later she was amazed at how much I could urinate. I told her I was always an over-achiever.) My systolic BPs were running between 170-196 with diastolics and heart rates above 100. After three attempts of getting an IV in, they were able to get an 18G in a vein on top of my wrist bone. If I had been more with it mentally, I probably should have asked the nurse if an 18G was really necessary, and if so, why was she trying to put it in my wrist vein? Either way, it hurt the entire time and even now that it's out, there's a big hole to remind me of what was there. After some IV labetalol (blood pressure medication), my SBP were around 150-160. They added some oral labetalol and by night my SBPs were in the 130s. I had to do a 24-hr urine collection to quantify the amount of protein in my pee (which ended up being somewhere around 750 mg, over the 300 mg cutoff for pre-eclampsia), and one of my nurses put me on "low stimulation restriction", where I had to have all the lights off in my room, curtains drawn, no noise, and only two visitors at a time who could sit in a chair and not talk to me that much. I felt like I was a dungeon and started to panic that I was going to have to be in this situation for the next nine weeks.


By the end of the admission we had seen four providers: Peggy (midwife), Dr. Venuto (high risk OB), Dr. Funk (night shift OB), and Dr. Read (maternal-fetal medicine high risk guy). We also had two ultrasounds to check on Baxter's growth, one done by the Tacoma Community College student, and the other done by Dr. Read in his office. At Dr. Read's office, he pronounced Baxter having IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) and that his size (3 lbs., 6 oz.) was in the 9th percentile for his gestational age of 31 weeks. The IUGR was probably caused by my underlying chronic hypertension, which was compounded by pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) and pre-eclampsia. He then told us that we would be lucky to keep Baxter in utero for another one to two weeks and suggested I stay on bedrest in the hospital, and told us about physical and mental developmental delays that could happen with a pre-term baby with low birth weight. I was upset when I got back to the room and started blaming myself for what was happening to Baxter. It wasn't a happy morning.

Dr. Venuto and Peggy came in after that and shared their opinion on the matter, and told us about differences in software and politics between their office and Dr. Read's. Dr. Venuto believed that Baxter did not have IUGR, and although he's small, he's not unusually small. The important thing was that he was growing proportionately and had excellent blood flow through the umbilical cord from the placenta. They also said that my other labs were coming back normal and that I would be a good candidate for home bedrest so that I wouldn't have to stay in the hospital. Hooray! They did say that if my symptoms worsened then I would probably be re-admitted for the duration of the pregnancy. I'm crossing my fingers that everything will work out okay.

So, that leads me to where I am now. Lying on the sofa bed, making best friends with the computer and shows on-demand. I am so thankful for the shower of love and support that our friends, co-workers, and family have given us. My friends at work have been keeping me entertained with texts and pictures, our families have been coming by to drop off gifts of food, flowers, and other essentials (like a carseat). Michael has been the greatest by spending his days and nights at my side, listening to me gripe or plot about breaking my bedrest, and even sleeping on a wimpy blow-up mattress on the hospital floor by my bed to keep me company. I don't know how I could do all this without his presence.