Cleared for the Weekend, take II (35w6d)

Wow. Possibly our last kid-free weekend. EVER. This is kinda hitting me all right now.

Today’s monitoring was pretty routine. The office was INSANE busy, but they were kind enough to squeeze me in early as Paul’s cousin Mike came in for a surprise visit this morning. (My 2:30 appointment wouldn’t have worked so well today.) My fluid was up to 7.4 – which is still crappy, but better than it has been in over a week; so maybe forcing fluids is helping the teeniest bit? Baby showed off his breathing skills and happily kicked at the monitor, so he didn’t have to get buzzed today. (He was doing some serious headspins on my bladder while I was on the monitor though – I actually thought I was gonna wet my pants at one point!!) My BP was not so hot though, 147/97 and 165/103. They took more blood to run my PIH levels, but since I’m scheduled for the amniocentesis on Monday they didn’t feel the need to get uppity about the BP.

So we’re in the clear for Monday morning. No change to the usual routine for this weekend – stay off my feet as much as I can (ha!) and force fluids. The better my fluid is on Monday, the easier it is for Dr. Schwartz to do the amnio. He says he likes a challenge, but I’d prefer that my son not get poked if possible. :)

This weekend…. I dunno. Paul and I still need to pack our hospital bags (I just *hate* packing for anything…) but other than that we’re pretty good. Oh, I need to prep/boil the premie-sized prefolds that Kelly sent us. I’ll boil the hell outta them and then throw them in the wash with the other infant-sized prefolds to make a full load. (At least the half-dozen premie PFs will easily fit into my regular stock pot!) I’m hoping Paul and I can spend some “quality” time together – not that we haven’t been enjoying our time together anyway. But maybe just spend some time together where we’re not running any errands or putting something together – no agenda. Gonna be a long time before we have the opportunity again, methinks.

Paul’s cousin Mike is out for a visit, so Sunday (Father’s Day) will be spent at Paul’s parent’s place. I’m writing this from their patio on Friday evening actually. Paul is on his laptop, Jeanne’s on her iPad and Mike is doing his insane-O workout routine for our comedy enjoyment. The dogs are happily racing around our feet and the breeze is blowing. Ya know, adding a baby to this mix isn’t gonna be a problem at all. :)

Holding Pattern & Why I LOVE Dr. Schwartz (35w4d)

Fairly boring appointment today. Did the test for Group B Strep, the results of which should be back on Friday. (Most people carry Group B Strep on them with no worries, but if I’m currently carrying it, the baby can get REAL sick if exposed to it during a vaginal birth. Two doses of antibiotics via IV during labor will take care of it if I am positive.)

Amniotic fluid was back up to a 6 today, so that’s good. Little man was happy to show us how well he practices breathing, and had fun kicking the ultrasound transducer. Monitoring was the same as usual, requiring the buzzer to get things going. But once he woke up, he proceeded to kick the contraction monitor pad for about 5 minutes. His heartrate did a scary little deceleration thing a couple of times, but he bounced back quickly – so that’s OK.

Blood pressure was mixed: 164/97. So it was higher than it has been, but the diastolic was under 100, which is good. Dr. Schwartz said he was OK with my BP today, so yay.

Paul and I chatted with Dr. Schwartz about the plans for the rest of this week and next. (We also talked about developing an iPhone app vs a fee-for-service website…) But once we got home, Paul was explaining to his Dad what my status is and kinda had it all wrong. We talked, but Paul was still pretty convinced that he had it right and that the induction wasn’t happening unless it was an absolute emergency. So I e-mailed Dr. Schwartz. Below is the actual e-mail conversation (along with an explanation of what’s up for the next 5 days):

On Jun 16, 2010, at 8:10 PM, Sarah wrote:

Sorry to bug you, but Paul and I seem to have heard completely different things at today’s appointment and I’m hoping you can clear things up.

I’m under the impression that barring any significant change to my condition, you’ll do a Jedi-worthy amniocentesis on Monday morning which will confirm binary-style whether the little man’s lungs have matured enough to be on the outside. If the test comes back with a yes, you’ll have me report to the hospital Monday evening to start the induction. If the amnio comes back saying baby’s lungs aren’t mature yet, we’ll hang out and do another amnio a week later to check lung maturity then.

Paul is under the impression that I’m not being induced until the situation becomes an emergency, and that Monday’s scheduled amnio is just to give us an idea if the baby could handle being outside the womb when that crisis time comes, whenever that is.

So, who’s got it right?

Sarah
——-
Hi,

As is probably the case in any disagreements that you and Paul might have, YOU heard correctly and Paul is wrong. Please feel free to refer Paul to this email throughout the rest of your life.

JKS

Sent from my iPhone

I LOVE my OB so freaking much. So we’re just hanging out for monitoring on Friday and then the amniocentesis on Monday morning. We’ll have results that afternoon, and either we’ll be at the hospital that evening, or we won’t.

Happy Anniversary (13w2d)

This has been a great weekend. Paul and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on Friday. We took the day off work and just hung out together. We looked at carpet and even picked out a color! Tonight we went to see Lion King (which we saw on Broadway on our honeymoon) and had an AMAZING steak dinner at Michael Mina’s StripSteak at Mandalay Bay. (Paul’s parents provided us with a little surprise when the check came and the waiter wouldn’t take Paul’s credit card.)

It’s been an amazing 10 years. Paul and I agree that we had no idea what the “future” would be like when we got married, but we’re both stupidly happy and wouldn’t change a single thing about our lives.

Only real change tonight for our night out was that instead of just pointing out girls with pretty hair, outfits or shoes (Paul and I point them out to each other – Vegas is a great town for people-watching) I was also pointing out interesting strollers and continuing with our new game, which is to guess the age of wee ones that we see. Paul had a little bit of a hard time keeping up with the topic changes. :)

So happy anniversary to us. It’s been an amazing 10 years and it’s only gonna get better from here.