35w 5d

Wow, did the Spawn eat my brain or what!? I had no idea that it had been so long since I updated! My Facebook gets the day-to-day stuff, and apparently I just totally forgot about putting a digest version over here 🙂

Everything is going great! Seth is huge– I expect that he’ll hit the 6 lb. mark at my next measurement appointment on Wed. I’m doing ok. The SPD has gotten progressively worse, but that’s to be expected when you have an ever-growing bowling ball lodged in your pelvis!

Wed 12/5 is going to be a big day– It’s finally time to Ditch the Stitch! Once the stitch is removed, birth is imminent. My OB thinks it will be within five days, and my high-risk doctor says it will be within 10-12 days. Either way, it’s going to be REALLY soon!  Wed will also be my next ultrasound to take measurements of the baby, as well as monitoring the baby.

At my last OB appointment, we learned that Seth’s head is resting directly on the cerclage, and that my cervix has already thinned. His head is literally about 3-4″ from my vaginal opening. The high-risk doctor expects me to dilate straight to 3cm when she takes the stitch out. Put these two things together, and you have the expectation of a VERY short labor. Basically, First Stage labor is the process of the baby moving down, and the cervix thinning out and dilating to 3cm, which will have all already happened before I even have my first contraction. My OB has suggested that I prepare for natural childbirth, since chances are we won’t have time for an epidural. When I started this whole process, I was expecting a mandatory c-section because of my size and my age, and now I’m looking at a natural, vaginal birth. Talk about going in reverse order, LOL!

The only problems so far in this last trimester have been with my blood pressure and HUGE amounts of swelling–I’ve started spiking higher BP readings, but not consistently, and all of my lab work has been perfect, so no one is really worried, but we are all being cautious. As for the swelling… wow! Starting around week 34, my feet started to stay swollen, even after being up for hours. And it’s not just my feet– everything below the waist is swollen (nothing like icing your nether regions, let me tell you!).

I’m going to stop and post this now. I will try to get the rest written up and posted in the next day or two 🙂

29w 3d– Holy Crap, I’m having a baby soon!

The timeline really hit home this week. If all continues to go well, I will have the stitches removed around the 5th of December, and there is a good chance that the Spawn will arrive within 11 days thereafter. That’s EIGHT WEEKS away (not to mention that he could still come at any time before that). I also realized that I should already have my bags packed, just in case. I’ve looked at a few lists and got so totally overwhelmed that I just had to stop looking. I’ll try it again later. I really need to make a wheely trip to WalMart for baby outfits for pictures and coming home, cheap pjs and robe for me, nipple pads, nipple cream, baby wipes… *insert anxiety here* so much to think about!

Something else that I’m finally starting to process is that I’ll most likely be having a vaginal delivery. At my age and size, it never occurred to me that that would even be an option, and now it’s being treated like a given. Being the information junky that I am, I’m now starting to panic because I don’t know the first thing about having a vaginal birth! I’ve only ever been exposed to c-sections.  I’d feel more comfortable if I could attend a class at the hospital, but being on bed rest makes that pretty well impossible– the class is 7-8 hours and includes lunch. I’ve been thinking, and may look into getting a student doula to help us out. Stan has been absolutely amazing and I know that he will continue to be, but it might be nice to have someone experienced there with us to help lower the freak-out factor. Reading books and articles online just isn’t the same…

Speaking of freaking out– OMG the house is a mess, and Seth’s room isn’t put together yet, and his clothes and bedding need to be washed, and we really want to get the room decorated, and… and… well, you get the idea. This whole bedrest thing is so frustrating at times like this. Stan only has so many hours in the day, and teaching is NOT a 40-hour/week job (more like 50-60). On top of that, he’s trying to do all of the regular housework, and now he wants/needs to do the prep work for the Arrival of the Spawn. Meanwhile, I get to sit in my recliner like a lump. Soooo not fair.

My mom wants to know when she should come out, and I guess I’m going to tell her to plan on getting here the day the stitch comes out, and plan on staying 4-6 weeks, because he might come then, or he might wait until next year. There’s really no way to tell. I really, really want my girlfriend to be in the delivery room with me (even more so than a doula), but she lives 1200 miles away, and with the delivery date being wide open, it makes it near impossible for her to be here, which sucks, since last minute airfare is positively ridiculous.

It’s officially time for me to calm the fuck down and make a plan 🙂

27w 3d– Ugh.

I’m really coming to dread having to eat at all, much less every 2-3 hours. I have so many food aversions that it’s damn-near impossible and soooo frustrating! If I wait too long, I get super nauseous when the food hits my system, because my blood sugar levels are so low. It is all somewhat less than awesome. And no, I can’t just find a few things that work and stick to them, because I eventually develop an aversion to said items and can’t eat them anymore. Meh. Definitely makes it a challenge to get 3000 calories in in a day… Some days are better than others. Today would not be one of those “better” days.

To make matters worse, I’ve pretty much burned out on most fruits and vegetables (and can only occasionally tolerate V8). Luckily I can still do smoothies (as long as they aren’t at all savory), so that takes care of one meal a day (out of 6-8…).

I really pray this isn’t all indicative that my son will be a picky eater *sigh*

26w 6d

Some good news– I’m not diabetic! Yay!

More good news- At the last check, my cervix is actually longer than before they put the cerclage in! This is a Very Good Thing. It makes it easier to stick to the bed rest plan when I can see that it’s actually working 🙂

Bitchy things–

1. With my constant low blood sugar, the need to eat is pretty well constant. My glucose levels drop significantly within 2-3 hours of eating (mid 60’s to low 70’s, when normal is 80+), and even faster if I don’t eat enough calories with a good carb/protein balance. I have to say I’m soooo sick of eating! While I’m not as finicky as I was earlier in the pregnancy (thank goodness!!), it’s still touch and go some days, and I have a hell of a time getting in enough food in a timely manor. I’ve actually lost 5lbs or so in the last month, which isn’t that big of a deal because Seth is gaining like a champ, but it’s also not ideal. I need to eat about 3000 calories a day, which is not an easy thing to do when you don’t really have a taste for junk food, and really are trying to eat a healthy diet. I have discovered, however, that adding cream cheese to smoothies is really yummy! So that helps.

2. Wow do I miss sex/orgasm! I actually started to orgasm in my sleep the other night and was able to shut it down in my sleep! I’m so worried about triggering pre-term labor… but damn, I can’t wait until I don’t have to walk around pregnant and frustrated anymore, lol!

3. Having to sit/lay around and watch your husband work himself until he’s sick and exhausted is heartbreaking. He has long days at school, then has to do the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning when he gets home, all while I sit like a bump on a log. I do help out a little with my 10-minute intervals during the day, but there’s only so much you can do in ten minutes, and I can’t lift anything, bend, stretch, walk a lot, etc… so it’s hard to be particularly useful.

4. Daytime TV sucks, and I’m too lazy to download anything else, and I don’t want to watch most of the good shows without Stan, because things just aren’t as fun without him

5. I’m really disappointed that the last half of my pregnancy isn’t going as planned. We can’t take that cool birthing class. There’s no tour of the hospital (hell, we don’t even know which hospital we’ll be delivering at, since it depends on whether we make it to term or not…). There’s no first-time parent classes. I can’t take a breastfeeding class. There’s no romantic date nights before the baby comes. I don’t get to work on the nursery, or go out to the store to look for cool baby stuff. There’s no “babymoon“. There’s no before-the-baby-comes-wild-sex. And what hurts the most isn’t that I’m missing out on all of this, but that my husband doesn’t get to do any of it either, and this is his first baby too. I hate disappointing him (and yes, he’s disappointed, although he won’t let me take the blame for it, because he’s awesome). Ugh. Maybe I should have put this at number one, since it’s obviously the most upsetting for me– the tears have been coming since I started writing this paragraph.

Overall though, I am incredibly grateful that the pregnancy is back on track and although I get bitchy, whiny, and sad, I ultimately can handle laying around if it helps this little boy come out healthy and on-time.

24w 5d– Good News and Bad News

This past Wednesday was my latest appointment– I saw my perinatal and a pediatric cardiologist. After taking a loooong look Seth’s heart, the cardiologist has given him a clean bill of health, but would still like to take one final look after he’s born, before he comes home. The concern for the heart is because of the slightly elevated Nuchal Scan. Once the cardiologist was done, the nurse took Seth’s monthly measurements, and he is still measuring 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule, having reached a whopping 2lbs at 24 weeks! So, in summary, everything is looking awesome for The Spawn.

Unfortunately, that rapid growth is  not sitting well with my incompetent cervix. Last week, my post-surgical measurement was 2.5cm (a gain of .3 cm!), this week it was down to 1.5-1.75 cm, with less than 1 cm between my uterus and the first stitch. This means that the I am still high-risk for delivering WAY too early. Now that we’ve made it past the 24 week mark, there is a much higher rate of survival, but things are still life-and-death. Once we get past 28 weeks, things get a lot less scary. I am also starting to show a small amount of funneling, due to Seth’s position– he likes to press down on my cervix with the top of his head.

One thing that I love about the new perinatal doc is that she is never alarmist about anything. If anything, she is sometimes too neutral for my comfort, lol. So when she suggested that we do the series of two cortisone shots to help mature Seth’s lungs, I wasn’t alarmed. I know that this is a Good Thing, just in case he puts in an early appearance. However, when she was visibly uncomfortable at waiting until next week to do the shots, I realized just how concerned she is. I had the first shot at the appointment on Wednesday (ow!) and then our roommate drove me to get the second shot on Thursday (I have to book my transportation 5 days in advance, and Stan doesn’t get off work early enough to take me to any appointments). I also may be going back on the weekly 17P shots, as I seem to be having a slight allergic reaction to the suppositories (OMG so itchy!! Luckily it only lasts a few hours).

So, the good news out of all of this is that Seth is doing well, and way ahead of schedule in size, if not development. Hopefully the cortisone shots will help him along in the development department. Our next milestone is 28 weeks.

I am still on modified bed rest, and will be getting another cervical check a week from Friday. If things keep going downhill, I will need to either go on strict bed rest, which means my mom will have to come down from WA and take care of me (which could be INCREDIBLY stressful for me, but also very helpful), or I will be put on hospital bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy (less stress for me, but WAY more stress for Stan). Best case scenario, I stay on MBR, and things stabilize until I reach at least 34 weeks.

I think that’s about it! I plan on one more post about the whole bed rest experience, but I’m not sure if that will go up today or not.

Thank you all for your support and prayers– I really do appreciate them. I also hope that by keeping this blog, I can help others who are going through similar circumstances to know that they are not alone.

Cerclage Recovery and Bed Rest

Ok, so the last post brings us up to 23 weeks. The week went fairly well as I hung out in my recliner and attempted to get the prescribed 1-2 Gallons of water into me. I hit 24 weeks on that Saturday, and had a friend coming over to given Stan a massage (the man has been sooooo wonderful, taking care of work, me, and the house!). While I wasn’t up a great deal, it was definitely more than the 10-or-so minutes that I’m allowed per trip, and I ended up spotting a little bit, which freaked me right the hell out! I haven’t had a single incident of spotting this whole pregnancy, so this was really scary. I called the on-call doctor, and he assured me that everything was OK (not optimal, but not an emergency since I wasn’t contracting), and instructed me to stay off my feet until my next visit on the following Wed (Yesterday). I definitely complied, and there was no more spotting.

After a week on modified bed rest, I was rapidly learning just how much bed rest sucks. I haven’t had anything resembling an attention span this whole pregnancy (unmedicated ADHD FTW!), and as such, I haven’t been able to focus on reading, or writing, or really anything productive. I spend an inordinant amount of time on Facebook playing all manner of bubble games and I watch TV. And I twitch. A lot. I am, however, grateful that I’m not on Strict Bed Rest, and can at least get up for short periods of time to get food and go potty.

I also know that I’m doing what’s best for Seth, and doing whatever I can to keep him in until it’s A LOT safer for him to be out in the real world.

24w 5d– Lots of catching up to do… Part the first

A lot has been happening here, and I’ve been bad about keeping up this blog.

So, let’s back up to my routine visit with the perinatal doc on 8/29 (22w4d). This was an in-between visit to check my cervix, and make sure that it was holding up to the now 1lb+ baby. This was also the first visit I went to by myself, as the hubs is happily working at his new teaching job (7th grade history!). Oh, an my regular peri was having her baby on this day, so I was seeing an associate of hers for the first time. I should have known something would go wrong, lol! Well, the ultrasound showed that my cervix had shortened from 3.0+cm to 2.2 over the course of two weeks. This was NOT a Good Thing. The doctor explained Incompetent Cervix to me (is that one of the stupidest sounding diagnoses, or what!?), and then she listed out my options– 1. I could have a progesterone shot (17P) and then go home on Modified Bed Rest for the next week, and then recheck to see how it was doing, or 2. I could have the 17P shot and go to the hospital to have a Cervical Cerclage placed to hold the cervix shut, and then still do the bed rest until the next week. I felt that I needed to research and weigh what was happening, so I opted for option one. Stan (the hubby) picked me up from the appointment, and I went home to Google and cry.  Research showed me that the cerclage needed to be put in before the 24th week, and that it had a decent success rate, so the next day I called the office and the scheduled the surgery for the next day.

The surgery involved an epidural, so I could have nothing by mouth for 8 hours prior– this led to spectacularly low blood sugar (61), and an early admission for me, so that they could get an IV and some dextrose into me. The epidural sucked (I’ve had one before this, and it sucked too), but the anesthesiologist was amazing (Dr. Dempsey for those in the Vegas area). The surgery was… interesting. I was on the operating table, with my legs in the stirrups,  and the table tilted back to a 45 degree angle.

Like this, but without the supportive boot, and of course, I was naked from the waist down…

My peri did the surgery, and she informed me that I had a “difficult cervix”– I would expect nothing less from my cervix. She ended up putting in two very thick stitches. Surgery went well. I had no contractions, and my amniotic sac remained intact– yay! I was able to get a sandwich in recovery and lots of apple juice, and about 3 hours later I could feel all of my parts and use the potty, so they let me go home. I was kept on modified bed rest and pelvic rest (read: No sex, and no orgasms. Yep, you read that right– no orgasms until after The Spawn makes his appearance). The doctor also switched me from the 17P injections to a vaginal progesterone  suppository that has been shown to lower cervical elasticity and help prolong the pregnancy.

Recovery went well, with very little pain and only a small amount of discharge. I’ll continue this saga with my next post…

21w– Wow that was awkward! TMI Warning! :)

Doesn’t that warning just make you want to read it a little more? Well, if you do, you were warned, so don’t blame me! Heh.

This sentence is here to take up space in the Facebook preview screen. Aren’t I so creative??

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Ok, so here’s something that no one tells you before you get pregnant– sex can be REALLY awkward! Trying to find a position that works for both parties and doesn’t leave me hurting in one way or another is not the easiest thing in the world (nothing is as sexy as having your wife yell, “Ow! My hip!” when you’re trying to get it on. I swear, I felt like an 80-year-old woman! LOL!!). Add to it that we were feeling adventurous (read: “Lazy”) and decided to have sex on the living room floor, rather than going up to the bed (Roommate is out of town, woo hoo!), and hilarity will ensue. We were both laughing at several points because of the sheer awkwardness of the situation. Luckily, primal instinct won out, and we were able to find a way to sufficiently bolster me up and achieve our mutual goals. But damn, it was awkward :p

After it was all said and done, I decided to go hunting for positions for pregnant and/or overweight people– I’ll leave a few links here, so that I can perhaps save you from re-experiencing that moment of virgin awkwardness  from your youth 🙂

One caveat here– some of these positions could  really use illustrations. I’m still not entirely clear on the logistics of several of them. Maybe I need to sit down with a pencil and paper and try to sketch them out…

Oh! And don’t forget that the woman shouldn’t be flat on her back after the fourth month, as this can put weight on her abdominal arteries and cause her to pass out.

Now to the links:

Assume the Position (this one has some rather useless pictures, but good information)

Sexual Positions for the Obese/Pregnant Woman

Comfortable Sexual Positions for Pregnant Women

There are more, but mostly they just repeat the same information. Good luck to those of you who are pregnant and embarking on the journey of carnal pleasures! Remember that it’s healthy to laugh at yourself when it all becomes horribly awkward– sex can be even more fun when you both have a case of the giggles 😉

20w 3d– Half Way!!

Wow, I’ve really been neglecting this blog… I blame the baby. He’s been eating all of my creativity :p

First, we have decided on a name for the Spawn: Seth Alexander Leonidas.

Second– Holy Crap, I’m half way!!

I’m still having issues with low blood pressure/blood sugar, but I’m figuring out how to preemptively strike to avoid the spectacular crashes that I was having. Added to the mix is Pubic Symphysis Separation, also known as “broken crotch” on the December 2012 boards on babycenter.com (by the way Google Image “pubic symphysis separation” at your own risk– the pictures are pretty horrific!). Which means that, unless I’m sitting in what I now refer to as “an approved pelvic position”, my pubic bone feels like someone has been kicking it (which I guess someone has… lol). I’m talking to the OB next week about getting a prescription for a custom support belt, which will hopefully help. Sleeping with this issue has become a huge challenge, but thankfully, a fabulous friend is sending me her pregnancy pillow this week, so hopefully that will help! Otherwise, things are good. Given my age and my size there are TONS worse things that I could be dealing with, and I am incredibly grateful that things are progressing as nicely as they are.

Today’s ultrasound went well. Seth has everything in the right place and right proportions. He is still measuring almost two weeks ahead (1lb 1oz today!), so they are going to be watching that carefully so that he doesn’t get too big. We are still hoping for a 12/21/12 birth, because that would be cool. I’ve also hit the point in the pregnancy where I will be seeing the perinatal doc every two weeks. Well, not her for the next few appointments because she’s due next week–in the meantime, I’ll be seeing her associate who is also fabulous. In a month, we’ll be seeing the pediatric cardiologist to make sure that everything is ok, because of that worrisome Nucal Scan. Things looked perfect on the ultrasound, but she wants to be sure, and I’m ok with that 🙂

The baby registry is almost finished, so we’ll be sharing the link soooooon! I hate shopping, so I’ve had to do it in small steps, but we’re almost there. Yay!

Hopefully I’ll be better about keeping you all updated! Thanks for your good thoughts, support and interest 🙂

16w 3d– Amnio

Amnio is tomorrow… or I guess later today. I’m starting to get really nervous about it, and worried that something bad is going to happen to the Spawn. I mean, I know that logically the strongest odds are that everything will be ok, but I can’t help the pregnant paranoia, ya know?

Ugh. I’m hoping that I can sleep tonight. And I’m hoping that I don’t have horrific dreams about terrible things happening to the Spawn…

I’ll post more in the next couple of days, I’m sure. For now, I just wanted to get this off my chest.