But, wow, has this pregnancy tried to teach me patience! Maybe that means I'm going to need more than what I had once Tristan gets here. I'm gonna have my hands full! Haha!
So, I had my regular 2nd doctor's appointment of the week on Friday. Things were looking good, until they took my blood pressure. It was 154/105. Not good. They don't like for the bottom number to be over 100. The nurse said she would re-take it at the end of my non-stress test and see if it had gone down. Nope, 154/114. I knew it had been up since last weekend, but I hadn't seen it this high, and it hasn't been this high at any of my appointments. So, after seeing Tanya, she told me to go home, grab some lunch and my stuff, and come on back to the hospital. I asked if this was for the duration of the pregnancy, or just a day or two. She said she didn't know.
When I got here on Friday, the gave me a gown and a cloth to wipe my belly, just in case I had to have a c-section. Wow...it got real. I mean, I've known the whole time that this was an option... but I wasn't planning on it right then. Sometimes, even though I feel Tristan move, and see my belly getting big, and the nursery is (mostly) ready, it is still very surreal that very soon, we will have a baby. Some fear set in right then.
Once I got settled, they drew blood for the bile acid test. This is one of the most important ones with cholestasis. We had already done regular labs at the office that morning. They hooked me up to monitors to keep an eye on Tristan's heart rate, and they started me on a low dose of blood pressure medicine. Then, we waited for lab results. And waited, and waited. Oh, by the way, my wonderful friend, Marissa gave me this tip... if you're in the hospital for any amount of time, ask for the egg crate thing for the mattress! It really does help! She was a life saver!
Saturday was spent mostly waiting. I saw Dr. Taavon Saturday morning, but he didn't really have anything to update me on. Through Saturday, they noticed the bp meds were working too well and my bp was getting too low, so I think they lessened how much they were giving me. We THOUGHT we would have bile acid results back and that we would get to see Tanya to hopefully discuss our plan. More of that patience building on Saturday. My dad and his girlfriend, and our cousin came to visit on Saturday (although I didn't get to see her, because she brought her 18 month old with her and they wouldn't let her in due to flu season), but it was otherwise fairly uneventful. We did finally get called down for an ultrasound, which I THOUGHT was going to be our growth ultrasound. The tech was clueless. I may or may not have called her Wack-a-do. I hate to be mean, but I seriously don't know if she could have told me her name if I had asked her to. I asked if she could give me his foot measurement, because there is a correlation between the length of the foot and the length of the femur in the leg, in skeletal dysplaisas. She didn't know how to measure the foot. Then she said that I wasn't there for a growth ultrasound. She called Tanya to double check. Tanya WAS going to have her do all measurements, but when she told Tanya that she had never measured arm bones and wasn't sure how to, but she could try... Tanya just told her never mind. So, hopefully today (Monday) I will get to see the specialists again and get the growth ultrasound done.
I finally got to put real clothes on Saturday evening, instead of the
Super Bowl Sunday... spent in the hospital. Not exactly how we had planned it. We finally got the bile acid results back. They were at 25. Anything over 10 is high, but mine have been in the 40's before. However, these were taken on Friday, so it could have changed. And my itching has increased tremendously. I seriously wanted to claw my skin off at one point. They gave me something similar to benadryl for the itching. Tanya said there's nothing that really helps with it, but it would make me sleepy and if I slept, hopefully it would take my mind off of the itching.
This came with my lunch!
Tristan got his first football! Now I have to save it for him and tell him the story of how he got it. I mean, dang, I would have just bought him a football if that's what he wanted! :)
Dr. Taavon and Tanya both came by yesterday. Since they have had Tristan on the monitors, they noticed he is having long periods without as much acceleration as they would like. Tanya said that typically babies around his age sleep for about 45 minutes at a time. His hear rate is remaining steady and very good, they are just seeing periods of 3-5 hours without a lot of movement and acceleration. This could just be his normal pattern, or it could be caused by the cholestasis. It's another one of those things that we just don't know. They want to watch him a little longer because of it though.
This part is scary to me, because they know that decreased fetal movement COULD mean that the cholestasis is getting to a dangerous level. So could increased itching and increased bile acids. But, Tanya said that so much of that is NOT measurable. Like, how much did people's itching increase? And it's all relative. So, being here has sucked, but I'm glad that they are keeping such a close eye on Tristan.
My bp jumped yesterday afternoon to 137/99, and this is with me on the meds. So, I'm not sure what Tanya will say about that today.
We did still have our Super Bowl food last night! :) Rocky went out and bought spring rolls for us to share, wings for him, and grilled chicken strips with wing sauce on the side for me. We watched the game in the room and he stayed with me again. He has truly been wonderful throughout this whole experience. He has taken excellent care of me and made sure that I didn't need or want anything at any time. I told him if he's as good of a daddy as he is a husband, we're going to be alright!
I woke up early with him this morning. He had to get ready and go into work, at least for a little while, since he had to leave early on Friday too. He has a few things he has to get done and then plans on coming back. And with as much waiting as we've had to do so far, I told him I'm sure it will be a while before we know anything today anyway. There is a possibility that we MAY go home today... but then again, they could continue to keep me here for monitoring. Like I said, it sucks being here, but I know they're keeping an eye on the baby, and knowing that he is okay gives me a peace of mind. I think they're going to do more labs today, and HOPEFULLY get the growth ultrasound done, so maybe we can develop a plan and know what the future holds for us. We'll be 34 weeks on Wednesday. That's been our first goal for a while now. Ultimately, we would like to make it to 37 weeks, but we're not sure if my body is going to cooperate. Dr. Taavon said that if we have him at any point now, it will be certain NICU time for Tristan, but it's not a life or death situation. He's okay with how far we've made it, although we're happy with each day that we make it a little further.
So, all weekend I've been trying to give updates, and people have been asking, but there really isn't but so much that we have to update people on. So much of it is wait and see, and things could literally change at any point depending on test results and the monitoring. We have received an outpouring of love, support and prayers through this time and through this whole pregnancy. That really means so much to Rocky, Tristan and me.
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