Events Are Eventful!

It's been something of a hectic week. I had a doctor's appointment bright and early Monday morning, what I thought would be a quick in and out check up. It turned into a two day marathon of blood work, protein checks, and back and forth to the lab. Fun day.

Run down up until this point: Due to a family history of Factor Five Leiden I knew at my very first doctors appointment to ask them to do the test. Factor 5 is a blood clotting disorder. It breaks down like this, you have two genes that regulate your blood and control clotting. If one of them is mutated or doesn't function properly you are heterozygous Factor 5. If both of your genes are out then you are homozygous Factor 5. While heterozygous isn't as bad and doesn't increase your risk of blood clots nearly as much as being homozygous does, it still increases the risk, and if you're pregnant, then you're already at an increased risk, so any kind of positive test for Factor 5 is bad. I tested heterozygous so around my 8th week they started me on a baby aspirin a day regimen and a daily injection of lovenox, a blood thinner, to be sure that no clots interfered with the health of myself or the baby. The shot is certainly not my favorite thing in the world, but hey, what can you do. At 19 weeks I had a big deal appointment with a specialist who measured baby's body, head and heartrate to be sure that he was on track with development (woohoo, he was!!). He said that since I have no personal history of blood clots and am only heterozygous that he felt I could come off the lovenox, but stay on the aspirin. This was music to my ears.

Cut to Monday's doctor appointment. As I'm discussing this with my regular doctor she is taking my blood pressure, she's mid sentence (the sentence by the way was "I agree and am comfortable taking you off the injections") and suddenly gets a funny look on her face and checks my chart. Turns out my blood pressure is high. Not a lot high, but I'm pretty on target for blood pressure, I'm usually the same exact numbers, no variation. And this was no two point jump. She turned to me and asked if I'd been having any "abnormal symptoms"....

SIDE BAR: If you're a doctor, please know that someone who has never been pregnant before doesn't know an irregular symptom from a regular one. They're all irregular to me!! Every time I sneeze my pelvic muscles feel like a rubber band has been snapped against them! That's not a regular occurrence in my pre-pregnancy life, so don't ask if I'm having irregular symptoms, they're ALL weird.

My doc began listing things off, severe headaches that didn't respond to rest or Tylenol, pain in the right side of the abdomen, just under the rib cage, pain in the shoulder, dizziness or lighteheadedness...(okay, so maybe these do seem a little irregular, but I'm tough! I tough things out!!). I think with each symptom she listed my face took on more and more the look of a sheepish little kid who had been caught doing something they didn't realize was wrong. (Which I really didn't know, by the way, because a lot of that stuff can be explained away with normal pregnancy whatevers, how was I supposed to know that all together it meant something!?!). Obviously I realized something was wrong. She started making notes and talking about tests and blood work and then said "Given this new information I'm really uncomfortable taking you off the blood thinners." ::sigh:: SO close. Apparently all of those symptoms together spell out preeclampsia. Which any recently expectant mothers know is not something you want to hear while you're pregnant. It wasn't a complete shock as Factor 5 increases your risk of developing preeclampsia. I'm not going to go into too much about it, if you want details check out the Mayo Clinic article or the Google Health article. Succinctly it's a condition that constricts your blood vessels, causing high blood pressure and can severely decrease blood flow to the kidneys, liver, and uterus, which means, it can be dangerous for baby, if he doesn't get enough blood he doesn't develop right. There's more to it, but like I said, I don't want to go into details (mostly because it freaks me out). The only way to cure preeclampsia is to not be pregnant anymore, meaning a planned early c-section or early induced labor. I'm not going in for this tomorrow or anything, just giving an overview. The only treatment for preeclampsia is bed rest at home. In fact that's the treatment for MILD preeclampsia. If it gets to be a more serious problem you rest in a bed in the hospital. Woohoo. This is something they decide pretty quickly after diagnoses and insist happens right away.

Where we stand now: Waiting. My doctor scheduled me an appointment to come back in next Monday so that all the lab work and test results will be in. I do not definitively have preeclampsia. I could go in there on Monday, have stellar blood pressure and totally normal labs and walk out free and clear. Or I could go in and walk out, go home, do not pass go, do not collect a paycheck for the rest of my pregnancy, and have to lay in bed for the next couple months. I really don't know at this point. I know that the doctor was fairly confident it was preeclampsia, so I want to be hopeful, but I don't want to get my hopes up...does that make sense? I know that my kidney function and liver function tests came back with good results. Both my kidney and my liver are functioning and doing it well. So that's good. So right now we wait till Monday and talk to the doctor and see what happens from there.

For the record: When I do too much online research or look at peoples stories or read message boards, I get freaked out, I get really scared and wonder what's going to happen. I had a really great day Saturday where I kind of bonded with the baby and stopped worrying about all the stuff that had been scary and just focused on how cool it will be to meet Gabriel and hold him and sing to him and play jokes on his dad with him (he's totally going to be my accomplice). So Monday was hard to choke down, and all the information and stories and possible scenarios are really terrifying and I tend to be a worrier (not good for the blood pressure). But on the whole, when I'm not staring at a computer screen full of intimidating facts and figures, I am alright. Yes, it's scary, but I'm alright. I'm trying to stay positive and strong and keep my heart set in a hopeful, faithful, trusting place. If you're reading this and you have slash know preeclampsia horror stories, keep them to yourself. I don't want to know. Thanks. :)

I've looked into some things I can do to naturally try and lower my blood pressure. I plan to spend every night for the next month doing deep breath meditative stretches to soothing music while eating a sweet potato and drinking tomato juice.

Isn't that a FABULOUS plan?!

Baby Swag

On Saturday I spent the day taking pictures of, cleaning, and finding a place for all the baby stuff we've been given (or bought). It was nice to be able to see how generous people have been and to kind of take stock of what we've got down, but it also did something I wasn't expecting. It got me all twitterpated and excited about the baby! I know, I know. I'm 20 weeks, and you're thinking "You weren't excited yet?!?!!" Well, no! This was a surprise and an adjustment. I was still in adjusting mode. But Saturday I just got all teee heee hee and realized I am excited. I can't wait to meet Gabe. He's for sure going to be suuuuuper handsome. So here is some of the stuff we've got. :)

[you can click on the pictures to see them bigger]

Aaron bought the baby this little outfit (that says "future rebel) and cute giraffe. We didn't know the baby's gender when he bought the giraffe but decided it was gender neutral.

This super cute towel is from his wonderful cousin Paulet. This too is gender neutral, but I like it better for a boy. :)

These clothes and the ones to follow are all from Ryan and Elizabeth McBride. We really appreciated they're generosity! They have three boys so they had lots of great stuff for us, some that hadn't even been used ever! How awesome is that!

I mean. Bears. What can you do? It's new and it was a gift....I'm gonna save if for days when he's especially poopy. :)

The onesie on the left says "prince charming" with a frog and the one on the right with the blue pants says "i love mommy"

This is my fave outfit they gave us. I think it's soooo cute!

Onto the toys and equipment. The rest of this stuff is from Christian Life Church's giveaway, Jodi let me sneak through the stuff and check it out. I Got a lot of great stuff (like that baby bath thing!) and I REALLY love Jodie for it.

So that's it!!! ...so far. I have a feeling Gabe is going to be a little bit spoiled. Hehehe. Oh well. He'll deserve it I'm sure. Hahaha. Oh dear.

I had a pretty intense DR appointment today. I'm fine and the baby is fine, but there are some risks that I had not been anticipating. And I don't get to come off the blood thinners which is pretty much a serious sad day. When I have more time I'll post the details.

Thanks to everyone who has been giving us this awesome swag! We really appreciate it (and so does Gaber)!!!

Stay warm!!

Boy Oh Boy, It's A Boy!!

Baby Smith officially has a name...well...he or she always had a name, but now we know which name to call baby by! Introducing Gabriel Soren Smith. :) He is currently 9 ounces and an unknown length. But he’s a wiggler. And he was extremely proud of his man parts during the ultrasound, even the tech commented on how, uhm, showy he was being. Up until a certain point, and then he decided he was done and turned over on his side and was giving us a butt shot. The doctor kept wiggling the ultrasound thing a ma bob in an attempt to jostle the baby back to the front but Gabe was done and refused to cooperate. Hm. Fidgety and stubborn. Clearly he is his fathers child.

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty excited about a boy. I wanted the baby to be a boy. I’m only a little sad since you tend to be able to dress girls cutesy longer than boys, but that’s the only thing. For the rest of it, I’d rather have a boy. We can play in the mud and build forts and climb trees...all of which I probably would have done with a girl too, but still. I’m glad he’s a Gabe. There are a lot of reasons not the least of which is that girls are way more dramatic and way more expensive. Plus I get to, at least for a little while, be surrounded by handsome men, because if this baby is anything like his daddy, he’s gonna be VERY handsome. :)

As much as the whole “baby has a penis” thing was good news, the doctor had some even better news. This wasn’t my usual doctor. This was a specialist OB doc who basically was making sure that everything was developing normally and that we were both healthy and doing well. This doctor talked to me and Aaron a lot about the Factor V thing and the risks it could bring and why it’s treated the way it is. He ended his little lecture slash interview with the announcement that he feels my treatment for Factor V is unnecessary. For those keeping score, this means that I can maybe stop giving myself a shot in the stomach every day. Can I just tell you how awesome that would be?!!! The doc said that since I have no immediate family history of blood clots and since both myself and the person I inherited the gene mutation from only tested positive for one problem gene there’s really no indication that blood thinners are necessary. He actually seemed really surprised that my doctor had put me on them at all. He kept saying “The consensus is that it’s really not indicated in patients with only one mutated gene.” So. He’s sending that note along in the file to my doc who will hopefully sign off on it, AND I WILL BE FREE OF THE DAILY SHOT!!! I know that there are people in this world suffering a lot worse stuff that this, but to me this is a small answer to prayer. The shots are painful and leave me looking like a bruised melon and it’s really hard for me to do them, something about stabbing myself with a needle just doesn’t seem natural. :)

So I’m a happy girl with a happy boy wiggling away in my guts, and a happy husband who already bought an ADORABLE outfit for our son. :)