Tag Archives: pre-eclampsia

Cleared for the Weekend (34w6d)

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Shortest appointment in the last two weeks! We were in and out in barely an hour!

Little man cooperated with monitoring and kicked and rolled over a couple of times. I gained back a half pound. So that puts me at 13.5 pounds total gained this pregnancy. I find it fascinating how these numbers bounce, since they seem to have no correlation with my actual size. But hey, I’m just happy I’ve managed to stay in a happy, healthy range. My blood pressure was better than it’s been in like two weeks: 147/90!!

Apparently, I have oligohydramnios or too little amniotic fluid. I’m drinking more, I swear I am. My fluid score was 6.7 today, so a teeny bit higher than it was on Wednesday, but still well under the 14 they wanna see at this point.

We were concerned because I’m feeling like ass about half the time, and my right and left feet/ankles were not equally swollen – which is something the lists of pre-eclampsia symptoms always point out, when one foot is markedly more swollen than the other. But the nurse said that as long as the edema wasn’t pitting and I could still move my feet, we didn’t need to be worried. That was nice to hear!

So I’m cleared for the weekend. Next appointment is on Monday. A week from then and we’re done!

Set a Date (34w4d)

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Good appointment today. Little man was lazy again and had to be buzzed several times to move while being monitored. His heartrate was in the 170’s for a while, but no one seemed to think anything about it.

My BP was in the same range of high, but not as scary as it has been. They always take it twice now, so today’s readings were 156/97 and 150/99. The response to this is: “meh”. Oh, and I lost three pounds since last week – that also didn’t really elicit a response. (But hey, my a1c is 5.7 – so HOORAY for excellent diabetes control!)

Amniotic fluid was even less today though. The nurse worked and worked to find pockets of fluid to measure, couldn’t find the required number of pockets for the full measurement, but calculated it at 6 based on the largest pocket she could find, down from 9.6 on Monday. And again, they wanna see 14. So yeah, I’ve been put on notice for that. I’m drinking. I really am. But now I’m chugging. If it’s lower on Friday, I get sent to the hospital for more intensive monitoring. I’m chugging, cuz I don’t want that. I want another weekend at home.

Dr. Schwartz entered the monitoring room asking “What are you doing still pregnant? I thought you weren’t gonna get this far!” So yay for levity. He’s impressed as hell that I’m still doing my Easy-Bake thing but thinks the end is getting close. My labs from Monday were all good, but things in general are just continuing on a not-good vector, so he wants to have a plan in place. To that end:

NEXT Monday (not this coming Monday, but the one after that) June 21 will put me at 36w2d. 36 weeks is the magic number for pulling the baby with essentially no guilt – the beginning of diminishing returns to my health for keeping the baby inside. On the morning of the 21st, Dr. Schwartz will do an amniocentesis to measure the maturity of the little man’s lungs. The results will be back that afternoon (fast, right?) and assuming everything looks good (which we expect it to because of the steroid injections I got last week) Paul and I will arrive at the hospital at 8:00pm that night to start the induction.

The induction process will take a while. Like overnight for sure. In the morning they’ll check me, hopefully find me 4cm dilated or better and they can start the pitocin. If I’m not dilated 4cm on Tuesday morning, they’ll give me a 2nd dose of Cervadil and let me go another 12 hours. So that part alone just to get me dilated a bit could take 24 hours. The pitocin could take 24 hours on it’s own too before things really get going – although we hope it won’t. (Cuz let’s not forget that I’m not allowed to have anything to eat or drink anything once I arrive at the hospital to start the induction. Ice chips: that’s it. Glucose and insulin IVs. yum.) I’m planning on getting an epidural, so there’s a hope that my being relaxed and pain-free will help the pitocin work quickly and get labor moving. Where it goes from there, we have no idea. Go with the flow will be the rule of the day.

So we’re looking at probably at June 22 or June 23 birthday for our little man. This of course assumes that things stay copacetic for another week. I’m still being monitored three times a week and at any time Dr. Schwartz says he could send me across the street to the hospital for more in-depth monitoring is something goes pear-shaped.

A bit of good news though: our little guy won’t be a preemie. Now that we’re past 34 weeks, he’ll be pre-term, but not a preemie. And at 36 weeks or later, there’s at least a chance that he won’t have to go to the NICU, meaning he can come home with us when I’m discharged! No way to know how things will go until he gets here, but we’re thrilled with our chances of our little guy not going to the NICU.

So that’s where we stand now. One more week of holding on, hoping to keep my BP where it is and keep my labs steady. But OMG, in like a week and a half, we’ll have a baby!!!

(NTS: figure out a dang name! and find a pediatrician!)

To recap BP over the last few weeks for perspective:

Date
BP
June-9b
150/99
June-9a
156/97
June-7b
162/103
June-7a
153/95
June-3
147/97
June-2
157/110
May-26
155/97
May-19
131/83
Apr-28
138/85

Monday update and Office Cat (34w2d)

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Today’s appointment took freaking forever, and I’m not sure why because the place seemed deserted. But seriously, we were there for 2 hours!

Well, OK – some of it was our fault. And by ‘our’ I mean the baby’s. He was being a lazy little putz this afternoon and *refused* to move around to let the nurse measure the amniotic fluid. She jiggled the hell outta my belly with the ultrasound transducer and more roughly with her hands. She had me chug half my ice water to dump it on his head. She finally went and got the buzzer. Nothing helped. The little man was just firmly set in taking a nap and nothing was gonna budge him. She was *finally* able to maneuver around him enough to get a measurement – which wasn’t good anyway. The measurement was 9.68 – lowest I’ve been so far is 12.5. They wanna see around 14. I need to drink more, especially since it’s been so crazy hot.

Then on to the monitoring room. Got me hooked up and left the room for what seemed like a longer than normal time. Come back in, take my BP (153/95) and use the buzzer on my belly + jiggle things to try to get the little man to move around. Fetal monitoring requires the kid to move a couple times during the monitoring so they can track his heartrate at rest and activity. All resting doesn’t tell them what they need to know. So, once they got him to move a bit, they left me on the monitor for a while longer. It was a tad disconcerting that they were so concerned about baby not moving. The phrase “decreased fetal movement” was tossed around.

By the time the nurse came back, it had been 90 minutes since I’d last pee’d and things were getting desperate. I asked if anyone else wanted a sample since my last two appointments required secondary samples at the end and after WAY more hemming and hawing than I wanted while I tried not to wet my pants – they asked for a 2nd sample. I come back and they took my BP again since the first urine dip stick test found trace protein. Second BP of the afternoon is 162/103 which kinda sent the nurses into a tizzy. 10 minutes of squawking at the nurses station pass and the nurse comes back in with labs for me to have drawn. I’m used to this part, that’s why I asked about the 2nd urine sample. They asked if I had a headache or blurred vision, to which I truthfully responded that yes, I’d had a minor headache all weekend and today that tylenol wasn’t helping and a teeny bit of blurred vision. (But honestly, I think the blurred vision is the normal pregnancy vision weirdness, not BP.)

So more blood work drawn today that will presumably be back tomorrow or Wednesday for sure. I imagine that if something comes back really amiss, I’ll get a phone call. Otherwise, my next appointment is Wednesday at 2:30, with Dr. Schwartz. We’ll see what he has to say then. My bag will be packed by then, just in case.

In the meantime, I got a lot of work done today – my first day in my home office. Of course, the cable went out around lunchtime and has been intermittent ever since. Cox will be out tomorrow to check it out. Perfect timing. Thankfully, I can work offline on payroll and accounts payable, so it’s annoying, but not terribly problematic. I’ll get some more work done this evening to put me at full-time hours for today. My goal is to be as caught up as possible on payroll and accounts payable every day until the baby comes so that if my boss has to take over mid-stream, things are as complete as possible.

Good first day home. And yes, I have to say that having a cat and a dog in my home office while I’m plugging away at spreadsheets is pretty damned awesome. :) Oh, having Paul at the desk three feet away from me ain’t too shabby either

*To recap BP over the last few weeks for perspective:

Date
BP
June-7b
162/103
June-7a
153/95
June-3
147/97
June-2
157/110
May-26
155/97
May-19
131/83
Apr-28
138/85

Weekend Update (34w1d)

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I’m feeling pretty good this weekend. A bit of a headache, which is either BP related or just standard pregnancy. Dunno. Baby is kicking like a total freak all weekend. Not sure what that is about. I’ve stayed on the couch most of the weekend, mostly because that’s what I’m apparently supposed to do; but also there’s a fair amount of pain and pressure when I’m up and about for too long. And sometimes 10 minutes is too long. I’m having more Braxton-Hicks contractions that I’ve ever had too. So that’s something I’ll be mentioning at my next appointment. I’ve got appointments on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for monitoring and I’ll see Dr. Schwartz on Wednesday.

Nesting (or at least my form of it) has set in, I think. I’m more motivated to get things organized. I’m not cleaning cupboards or scrubbing things – let’s not get crazy here. But Saturday evening Paul and I organized all the baby’s clothes and gear that we have so far. I’ve washed all the hand-me-downs and all the new clothes that aren’t on hangers, sorted them all and put them into the dressers by size. Paul brought in some storage cubes and put them on the floor in the baby’s closet, so there’s a place to store all the random toys and gear and whatnot that shouldn’t just be laying around. He set up the froggy humidifier and the turtle nightlight and got the diaper changing pad installed while I futzed with clothing. Next up, we’ll wash and re-hang the stuff on hangers, organizing the closet as we go by size.

(I’m amazed at the HUGE difference in sizing between brands. I’m fairly certain that the Gerber brand size 0-3 onesies would fit the baby *right now* as opposed to the Circo brand size 0-3 onesies that look like they would fit our 14 pound cat fairly well. And then there’s the Carter’s stuff that within the same dang size is all over the place! Ah well, variety and spices and whatnot, right?)

We also figured out the complexities of car seats and their installation today. Turns out that the LATCH system in both our newer cars is the best thing ever. Since it’s eleventy billion degrees outside this week, we’re not gonna bother to install the car seat yet – but at least we know how now. (Also, for the time being we’re going to use the carrier-based car seat in my car, since it’s not like I’m going anywhere with the baby without Paul for a while. The carrier-based car seat is better suited to a smaller baby as opposed to the larger convertible seat we have for my car.)

So this week we’ll get my hospital bag mostly packed. I’ve got nearly everything I need – and I’ll be picking up two nursing bras (that will be too small I’m sure, but they’ll work for now) tomorrow. I’ve got a big list of stuff for my hospital bag, so we’ll pack as much as we can that isn’t day-to-day stuff. The rest of the stuff can get tossed in before we head to the hospital. I’ll deal with proper-fitting nursing bras once sizing sorts itself out. I found a couple good tutorials about turning regular bras into nursing bras, so I’m gonna go that route since they don’t make nursing bras in my size.

So I’m home now, not going back into the office for some time, barring something fairly extraordinary. I knocked myself out on Thursday and Friday to get my stuff wrapped up so I could move my base of work operations home. The plan is that I’m still going to work full time until the baby comes – and I’ve got enough projects and tasks to do that for 2 weeks at least. I want to burn as little paid time as possible before the baby actually gets here. After the baby arrives, I’ll still do some work from home while I’m on maternity leave: payroll, accounts payable and a monthly report or two. Not a huge amount of work, but stuff that I already do, would be difficult to train someone on in less than two months, and allows me to not burn time (and actually earn some back.) I’m so grateful that my supervisor and I have been able to work out an accommodation that works for the agency and for me. This is kind of uncharted territory for my agency, so it’s kind of try-it-and-see. It’s amazing what can be accomplished with a laptop, RDC, e-fax and a printer at home.

So lots going on this week, combined with me trying to stay as calm and relaxed as possible with my feet up at nearly all times. Should be interesting. I have no idea when this kid is gonna come – I figure there’s at least a chance we could be sent to the hospital after every appointment this week. So that should be fun.

LOLercoaster + Tilt-a-Whirl (33w5d)

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I feel like I’m getting jerked around and I don’t like it.

Today everything seems to be fine! No really. Like according to everything today I’m barely pre-eclamptic. Apparently once you’re in the pre-eclamptic zone you don’t get out, but you can vary within the zone from mild to moderate to severe. Today I’m at the mild end. Which is great. My blood pressure was 147/97 today, as compared with 157/110 yesterday.*

Except: if I’m barely worse off than I was two weeks ago (no protein showing up on today’s dip stick) then why am I being forced to modify my work schedule and burn my precious paid leave for nothing? Why can’t I work at least half days in the office? (I’m wanting to be in the office because there’s stuff I can do there that I can’t do at home – the amount of stuff I have to do at home is finite and will get burned through in this next week for sure in order for me to keep up full-time hours.)

YES, OF COURSE I’m happy that things look rosier today. Healthier Mama means baby stays put which is a good thing. OF COURSE. This is just all very hard to take on 3 hours of sleep (cried myself to sleep finally last night and was up at 4:30am this morning) with hormone overload raging. I feel so completely out of control and that scares me and makes me angry.

Yes, I’m a control freak – but it’s not that. I literally feel like I’m being told different things each time I go in now and it’s hard to assimilate them all together and find a way to waddle through the next day or three before the next appointment where I’ll be told who-knows-what. Going with the flow when your health, your baby’s health, and your family’s financial stability are all on the line is really very difficult to do. And being constantly told to calm down and relax and just let everything in the world go doesn’t help. (I appreciate everyone’s support, really I do…. it’s just hard advice to follow.)

So for now, we’re stable (?) in this mild pre-eclamptic state. I did get the 2nd steroid shot today, so at least those are doing their thing – with their peak of efficacy in about 7 days. I’m planning on going into the office again tomorrow for a half day because there’s stuff I need to wrap up there still. Depending on how things go at my monitoring appointment on Monday, I may go into the office for a half day or two next week as well. I don’t feel that I’m pushing it to do that, especially if my blood pressure is barely higher than it was two weeks ago. If BP readings are creeping up, I’ll stay home. I have monitoring appointments M-W-F next week, and I actually see Dr. Schwartz on Wednesday. They’ll do a urine dip-stick at each appointment which I guess is the starting point for worry if it comes up with anything.

*To recap BP over the last few weeks for perspective:

Date
BP
June-3
147/97
June-2
157/110
May-26
155/97
May-19
131/83
Apr-28
138/85