March!

 First of all, thanks for thinking of us and for for all your nice comments and notes, we really appreciate it!

I love making it to a new month still pregnant. With Olivia, there were so many months that I was still "supposed to be" pregnant and wasn't. October. November. December. January. I even kept counting in my head how many weeks I should have been just to torture myself until it got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. Those months and weeks and days were such a crappy never ending blur.

But here we are in March with only one more month change left! Granted, we'll miss out on May I hope, but as far as I'm concerned weeks 37-40 of pregnancy don't sound like much fun to me anyway, I'll happily skip them and meet our little (big) guy instead.

Speaking of the little-big guy, I think he's gone through a growth spurt since Friday. For one, I noticed yesterday in the mirror that my belly seems to be sticking out more and even the nurse practitioner thought so. (Fundal height is measuring at about 29 weeks which is actually right in line with the baby's size predicted via ultrasound.) I haven't gained any weight in the last 3 weeks which isn't really bad and isn't really great since I'm supposed to be gaining a bit now, but whatever, I'm not exactly starving either of us. (Actually I'm kind of baffled by it.) Anyway, the other reason I think he's had a growth spurt is because I can now usually SEE him moving via my belly and all of a sudden his movements are a lot stronger. I think on Friday he'll do very well for the monitoring if what I've been feeling all day long is any indication.

Speaking of the monitoring, so the deal Friday was that he was having sharp variables/ drops, which like I said, they don't *like* to see, and it wasn't so much that he was having them in general, it was just that 4 in 20 minutes is a lot and they were pretty sharp. On Monday, his only variable/drop was much smaller. *AND* normally they don't do monitoring for 27-28 weekers. For 32 weekers, after they establish a baseline they want to see his heart rate go up for 15 seconds by 15 beats per minute. They call this "reactive" but basically it means passing. (A "reactive" NST is supposed to ensure fetal well being for about 3 days.) Anything less than that is by definition "non reactive" or in teacher terms, failing. But he's at a disadvantage since he's only 28 weeks and they don't really expect to see the "15 by 15" yet, for him, they are looking more for a "10 by 10"...10 seconds/10 beats per minute acceleration in conjunction with movement. She was going to give us a new label and call it "reassuring for gestational age". BUT. He ended up moving enough that she ended up calling it "reactive" instead. And then the biophysical profile (BPP) was the same as last time, breathing but not long enough, he was too busy moving around by then for that pesky breathing crap and who needs to practice breathing anyway when you have a mom to do that for you....except this time he "passed" the BPP because the reactive NST is worth 2 points. So on Friday he had a 6/10, fail, because -2 for NST and -2 for breathing. Monday was 8/10, -2 for breathing which is still not really bad this early. She said they are going to do a full BPP every appointment until 30ish weeks or so probably because the NST's will likely be iffy with the 15 by 15 standard. And we're officially twice weekly until the very end. Thank god I'm not working because there's no way I could keep up with all of these appointments and work.

I saw the nurse practitioner and my OB yesterday, though the NP did the appointment and my OB just stopped my briefly to talk. They aren't worried about all of the variables/drops that we saw Friday and think it was probably immaturity/movement/etc. and not something that's a big deal like a cord issue or whatever. And they were especially happy with the results from Monday. And that he's measuring so big after Olivia was so tiny. They have no idea why I haven't had a repeat blood flow study and apparently there was even a high risk doctor's order for another one in one of the reports that they never did, which should have been done a long time ago. She said she was going to put another order in for it but I'm kind of over it since he's obviously growing okay and I'm not showing any signs of trouble. But, whatever. We scheduled a fun 3D ultrasound for March 28th/ 32 weeks. That will be a great way to celebrate making it that far. Those pictures sort of creep me out, to be honest, but I really suck at surprises/secrets/etc. and I can't wait to see what he looks like. I hesitated to do it for a minute when I asked if they thought it would be overkill since I'm basically having a half hour ultrasound twice a week for the BPP. (But it's not like I get to see his face or anything, we are mostly watching his abdomen for breathing.) She laughed and said nah. And I figure what's one more ultrasound at this point. So we're doing it. Hopefully. But that's forever away and I can only think one week at a time.

My blood sugar fasting numbers have been borderline high since I started testing. My ob would like it under 90, high risk ob would like it under 95, I'm usually around 93 and sometimes 97-98, etc. It's not outrageously high that they knew I needed meds right away, and I've played around with the diet and even when I follow it exactly and eat a protein before bed (protein is supposed to level blood sugar out which sucks for me because I'm not much of a fan of any foods with protein), my levels will be high...actually higher than when I don't follow the stupid diet at all. They don't want me exercising and after I went crazy this weekend "nesting" anticipating delivery at any day this week, my fasting numbers were still high. Ironically, I can eat Olive Garden (minus breadsticks and drinking water) and my blood sugar levels an hour later were *fantastic*. Like 100 when they only want them 140 or under. So, I don't understand this at all. They decided after today (fasting blood sugar level 97 for the second day in a row, and last night I tried not eating a snack or anything before bed at all) to put me on meds. Right now it's just one pill at night and we'll see how it goes. So I guess I would have failed the 3 hour and I'm glad I didn't bother to take it. I'm nervous that the baby's growth will slow down (although I don't want a 10 lb 36 weeker and I don't want his blood sugar to be messed up), my high risk ob's nurse talked about his growth being at 78% like it is a bad thing. Um, after a severely growth restricted 1 percentile baby, 78 percentile sounds fantastic to me. (But I think she was just trying to convince me that meds are a good idea even though I really didn't need to be convinced, if they had put me on meds from the start that would have been fine by me.) I'm also a little curious to see if this is going to make me start losing weight because I'm already not really gaining...they aren't really concerned with me not gaining at this point but I'm pretty sure they don't want me gaining. But anyway, we'll see. I'm actually okay with it if I even need to go on insulin shots, I'm already doing lovenox shots so it's not like it really will be anything new.

So this week means a lot of exciting stuff. For one, March! Also, the first time I've ever been in the third trimester and 7 months pregnant, only 8 weeks to go.

Anyway, here's our big growth spurt picture:

I'm kind of liking that the bigger my belly gets, the smaller it makes my butt look in comparison.

Olivia's quilt square + 27 weeks

Volunteers from the Pre-Eclampsia Foundation are putting together a quilt for 2011...
"The Promise Walk Team is pleased to announce that the memory quilt is back! In 2007 and 2008 foundation members came together to create memory quilts to benefit the Preeclampsia Foundation. Foundation members were asked to design and create a quilt square to honor a loved one lost to preeclampsia or to honor a survivor. The past quilts have been auctioned off at the yearly Saving Grace – A Night of Hope 2007-08 events and were a huge success. The quilts not only raised awareness and research funds, but provided an emotional outlet for family members to spotlight their loved ones. The Promise Walk wants to give those who wish to participate a chance to remember and honor their sons, daughters, mothers, aunts, and sisters. The new quilt will be displayed at walks around the country during the 2011 walk season." - Rosemary, the person coordinating the quilt, explains it better than I could.


I'm not particularly crafty and especially suck at sewing or anything like that. So I wasn't really planning to participate until I remembered iron on stuff and fabric paint and decided we'd figure out something. We were a bit rushed with it because I'm supposed to have our square back by March 1 and I didn't request it until about a week ago. So anyway, my handwriting isn't that great and so we stuck with iron ons. And in fact, I brought everything to my mom and watched her put it together because I've never actually done anything iron on. Unfortunately, when we were putting our last name on the square, some of the letters moved around and we didn't notice until it's too late. I think we probably did a bit overkill with the butterflies, but, oh well.
So the square didn't turn out the way we would have liked...but I guess nothing with Olivia worked out the way we would have liked, so I guess it's fitting.

In other news, today makes 27 weeks! We found a dresser yesterday for relatively cheap at Big Lots. I'm not sure that the color of wood will match exactly but they are both cherry and I don't really care that they match exactly, I'm glad to be done with the dresser search. I have started panicking a little bit, not about getting sick or babies dying (although those thoughts are always in the back of my mind), but about the fact that we'll probably have a baby here in a couple of months. There is so much to do and buy still. I can't let myself think about it for too long or I start getting overwhelmed and panicky which isn't really great for my blood pressure.

The gestational diabetes diet is CRAP. Or maybe the nutritionist is a sadist. All I know is I'm not really following the diet and luckily my blood sugars have been good after every meal anyway. (Even after Outback Steakhouse.) In fact, this is almost sort of backfiring because my blood sugar "goal" is 140 and under, 1 hour after a meal. After dinner at Outback, my blood sugar was in the low 100's, and so I thought "damn, I should have had a few extra pieces of bread." There have been days when I closely followed the diet (today I was pretty good), but I've noticed that my dizziness is actually worse when I follow it as opposed to eating normally. Tonight I was so dizzy that I didn't want to get up off the couch because I was afraid I'd fall over myself. I don't really think the dizziness is related to my blood sugar at all, though, because I've tested my blood sugar when I get dizzy and it's always right smack in the middle of normal. It makes me a little worried that maybe the dizziness is an ominous warning sign of trouble to come that hasn't shown other signs yet...I know it's not a typical symptom of pre-eclampsia or anything and that a lot of people with normal pregnancies have dizziness...but I didn't get sick the normal way last time and so it's always kind of in the back of my mind. I'm not sure if my high risk doctor is going to free me from the gestational diabetes prison on Wednesday or not. (Taking your blood sugar 4 times a day and thinking about food 6 times a day is really a pain, I want to go back to just worrying about my lovenox injections and blood pressure 3x a day.) After every meal, my blood sugars have been normal, but twice my morning fasting numbers have been a little higher than the "goal". She said if things look normal we'll back off testing, so I'm not sure if those two bad readings are going to screw everything up or not. I don't think there's anything I can really do diet-wise about fasting numbers especially since my numbers are good after meals, so, I don't know how it's going to work out.

Aside from the dizzy and annoying possible gestational diabetes junk, I'm feeling good. Blood pressure has been really good. And Luke is moving a lot. It definitely feels like his movements are stronger so I think we'll be in good shape at our ultrasound on Friday. Now if I could just drop this gestational diabetes stuff and get a lot done around the house, we'd be in really really good shape.

7 days to stuff my face.

So I saw my high risk doctor today and it was mostly good news.

#1- She's not going to make me suffer through the 3 hour glucose test since it's pretty likely that I'll fail. (She looked over my 1 hour results and said, "yeah, you really bombed it."  She's going to consider me to have GD and I go to the "diet class" next Thursday. Fun times. (Hence the title, 7 days to stuff my face. As far as I'm concerned, since I haven't failed the 3 hour and they haven't officially told me the rules yet, I'm going to enjoy eating till next Thursday.) She said that if when we start the diet and testing my blood sugar levels, if things seem to be normal and very easily controlled, we can always ease up on it. Sounds good to me. Right now I'm bracing myself for about 10 weeks of diet though.

#2- The best news of all, as far as I'm concerned, is that she agreed to let me cut my lovenox dose in half. Since I was 7 weeks pregnant, I've been injecting myself in the belly with blood thinner injections (aka lovenox), twice a day, at 10:30 am and 10:30 pm. I like it because I think it *has* helped, but that crap BURNS. Some people say it gets better but for me, it never really did, probably because most people are only on one dose a day and I was on two. My belly is out of places that aren't bruised. I've hit blood vessels so many times it doesn't even phase me anymore. And sometimes the places where I inject turn into a little knot that is achy all the time whenever I accidentally touch it or brush my hand against that spot. So, cutting back to just one a day makes me really happy. She was actually considering taking me off of lovenox completely now with everything so well, I halted that when I said, "No! I want to stay on it! Just not as much!" (Um, if it's helping, I don't want to stop it now and watch everything go to hell in another week or two.) Most of the people I "know", including people with real blood clotting disorders are only on 1 shot a day, 30 or 40 mg, (I don't even have a clotting disorder, I'm on lovenox mainly because they don't know why things got so bad the first time and to hopefully prevent growth restriction, so far so good on that account). So now instead of being on 60 mg a day-2 shots- I'll be on just 30 mg a day, 1 shot. At 32 weeks, I'll go off of it completely because once I make it that far they expect that I might deliver at any time and they really don't want my blood extra thin for a c-section. So hooray, only having one shot a day is a pretty big deal to me.

#3- I've only gained 9 pounds this pregnancy (as of today 25+2) and of the 9 pounds, only 1 pound in the last 2 weeks. My weight has been weird this time. I didn't really start gaining until 20 weeks and my gains have happened in big spurts that freak my high risk doctor out. Like 4 pounds since my previous visit and at my visit 2 weeks ago I had gained 4 pounds in 2 weeks. My diet really isn't changing much from week to week and neither is my activity level so I don't really have an explanation for it except it does seem like my belly goes through big spurts, some weeks where I don't think I've gotten bigger at all and some weeks when it was like, "whoa, when did this happen?" . But I'll take 9 pounds gain, for sure, especially when about 2 pounds of it is baby.

#4- She gave me the option to start seeing her every week. And guess what? I'm feeling so good about things that I actually said "eh, no thanks for now." (I see my OB next week so I really don't feel like I need to see the MFM too, since if something comes up I'd call them anyway.) So week 26 will be OB and diet class, week 27 will be high risk ob and ultrasound at the end of the week, week 28 I'm hoping to start seeing my ob every 2 weeks but if not I might ask to see high risk ob or I might just enjoy a doctor-free week, we'll see how I'm feeling then.

#5- No signs of swelling, my blood pressure was up a little but I was kind of stressed today (I thought I had lost the little photo album I've been keeping ALL of my ultrasound pictures in, so I was scrambling to re-trace my steps and trying to figure out where it might have fallen out of my purse), but my blood pressure has been normal tonight and every other day and time except this morning and afternoon, no headaches, no heartburn, no suspicious pain, and baby is moving okay.

#6- I'm not anemic. Guess that wasn't causing my dizziness. My platelet levels were great. (Since they haven't been tested since week 10 and blood thinners can sometimes lower them, that's good to know.) They did bloodwork to test my liver function today just as a precaution- I actually asked for it since I've had a twinge or two here and there. I'm 99.9% sure the twinges are just from the baby shifting around and moving and organs and ribs having to readjust...but still...they are usually on the right side. I know they are nothing like the "upper right quadrant" pain that I had with Olivia when I was sick (they usually don't even last a full minute, that pain lasted for hours and hours), but still, I'd rather have them double checked. I *could have* asked for a 24 hour urine test to make sure I'm really not spilling any protein, and she would have smiled and ordered it for me, but peeing in a jug for 24 hours is not my idea of a good time and I never spilled protein with Olivia so I don't really trust that it would mean anything anyway. My problems with Olivia were all in my liver enzymes and blood platelets, so I'm more concerned with watching those.

She asked if I've started believing we are going to have a baby, yet. And I shrugged and said sometimes and sometimes not, but told her how we have a crib, and she was happy about that. She's convinced that this baby won't die, she said she can't guarantee that we'll take him home with no NICU time, but we "won't have another death". In theory, I know that the odds are becoming overwhelmingly favorable that she's right. (Some calculators give survival odds of male, 2 pounder (907 grams), 25 weeker, with steroid shots as 90% http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/cdbpm/pp/prog_epbo/epbo_case.cfm.) But I also know that unfortunately, babies die all the time, at all gestational ages for a lot of different reasons (and unknown reasons). I'm not sure it's even possible for me to 100% believe in this until we're strapping the baby in his car seat and driving away from the hospital.

It is good to be 25 weeks with no glaringly huge problems. The dizziness has pretty much gone away and his movement has returned to normal, I guess yesterday was a lazy day for him or a growth spurt day or who knows. This morning I did a kick count and he moved 10 times in 10 minutes and then several times during the day. My high risk ob really is not concerned about keeping track of movement yet, but I'm neurotic like that and it actually reassures me. So today was better pretty much all the way around.

25 weeks and new drama.

Yesterday was 25 weeks. I feel myself relaxing a little bit more each week, at least some of the time.

For some reason, probably just in my head, it seemed like Lucas was moving a little less than usual last night. But I did a kick count and had 10 movements in about 30 minutes, still not exactly reassured by it because it still seemed like less to me. And then this morning when he's usually crazy active too, there were a few movements here and there but they weren't as strong or as frequent as I'm used to. I can't even remember the last time I used our fetal doppler, it's been weeks and weeks, but I got it out this morning, his heartbeat was his normal 140's, still, not really reassured. He's been kicking every once in awhile this afternoon, though, which is usually his most quiet time, so...I don't know. If I wasn't seeing my high risk doctor tomorrow already, I'd probably call them. It's so hard to know what's me being paranoid and what's trusting my instincts. Right now, I'm just a little freaked out about everything.

I found out yesterday that I failed the 1 hour gestational diabetes test, which really didn't surprise me because I felt awful the entire day afterward and was so dizzy that afternoon-evening I really didn't like walking. So now my ob's nurse wants me to do the 3 hour, but I don't think I can and am pretty pessimistic that I'll even pass it. (I say I don't think I can because I got sick after the 1 hour and I'm doubtful I can keep down double the drink for 3 hours. And I don't really want to take it and feel like crap all day long only to find out I failed that too.) I'm going to mention it to my high risk doctor and see how she wants to proceed. If I have to try the 3 hour than I guess I will (apparently insurances can be crappy about covering things for it without the 3 hour being done first.) But with my history of severe early onset pre-eclampsia and PCOS and also the unexplained dizziness, I think the odds aren't really in my favor. I'm crabby and frustrated just thinking about a diet or MORE shots- I'm eating relatively well already (but I do like carbs and I'm not going to give them up easily). And also, if I do have it, of course that brings my risk of getting pre-eclampsia up even higher. (And it's already high because of my history and then the notching in blood flow.) It's just weighing on me.

On the bright side, my c-section is officially scheduled, 9:45 am on April 27th, pending the results of an amnio indicating mature lungs the day before, I'll be 36 weeks and 2 days. I'm going to pretty much insistent on getting steroid shots by 34 weeks so his lungs should be good. (Knowing my luck, I'll go through the amnio and find out we have to wait another week.) If lungs aren't mature, we'll deliver at 37 weeks exactly (May 2nd), no amnio redo, because by then the risk of me going into labor is too high to risk waiting longer (if I go into labor, I'm at higher risk for my uterus rupturing because of the type of c-section they had to do with Olivia. So after 34 weeks if I start having real contractions, they'll probably just deliver then without an amnio.) Any drama before 36 weeks or at 36 weeks (blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, labs acting up, contractions, fetal indicators like blood flow or growth), and they'll deliver sooner without an amnio. So April 27th is actually pretty iffy, but we'll see. I have no interest in prolonging this pregnancy a minute longer than necessary just to see how bad things will get or if they'll get bad.  It was a little weird because they actually started giving me instructions for the c-section (don't eat after midnight, be there by 7:30) as if it was a week away and not 80ish days from now which as far as I'm concerned is *forever*. (This was still my ob's nurse, not the hospital.)

Last night we finished the Valentine's day project for all the newly bereaved parents. We got them all finished but my friend and I both noticed that Maggie had a rather large stack of new people that had had losses in the last couple of weeks, since we met last, not even 2 full weeks ago. Blech. And then, we were using post it's because we were putting in pink "presents" for parents that lost a girl and blue for boys and yellow for if she couldn't remember and couldn't tell by name for (white) presents...when we were all done stuffing the envelopes, I sorted the post its into piles by color so she could reuse them later since they didn't have writing or anything on them....the stack of blue post-its was so much more than the pink pile. That might be the reason I'm a lot more freaked out today. Yesterday was just not a great day for me. I ended up strolling around the garage for about 20+ minutes in the freezing cold trying to find my car. I thought I had parked on the ground floor because for some reason when I walked in the nearest door, it was on the ground floor. So I walked the entire ground floor of the parking garage several times with no sign of my car and was starting to think it got towed or stolen- and my car isn't anything worth stealing so that seemed nuts. I went back in to the hospital and sat and warmed up and decided to try again and started on the first floor, I had parked on the first floor after all (but I really did walk in on the ground floor before, I had to go up a flight of stairs, I'm not sure how I managed to end up parking on the first floor but walking in on the ground floor.) Anyway, I hate that stupid hospital, it's such a maze. Yesterday was just not my day. Hopefully the rest of this week will get a bit better.