Monday, May 30, 2011

Progesterone

Seriously. I can't remember if I'm supposed to taper off these progesterone suppositories or quit cold turkey ....

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Quantitative Loss

I went and saw the OB on Wednesday.  The SCH is nearly totally resolved.  The baby was leaping and jumping all over the place - so much so that she couldn't get a heart rate.  She's still very concerned that I continued to bleed and strongly suggested that I remain off work.   The problem is that I wholeheartedly believe in evidenced based medicine.  I asked her about statistics and if there was any evidence that staying off work on limited activity would improve outcomes for the baby.  And there isn't.  None.  It's just what is suggested because there is nothing to improve the outcome.  It's a last ditch attempt to try and salvage things.  She scheduled me for every week appointments and every 2 week ultrasounds.  She's doing everything she can to talk me out of an amnio for genetic screening because she doesn't want to rock the boat.  So I agreed to the 2 step NT scan instead.  We'll see.  I'm sure it'll ramp my anxiety sky high.

So ...I went back to work on Thursday.  With limited activity.  Driving between campuses instead of walking.  Hanging out in the ER to see patients instead of walking all over the 3 hospitals.  Literally putting my feet up in between patients.  I honestly think that it's probably much more limited activity than what I would have at home.  Chasing an overly active nearly 2 year old that climbs all over me non-stop is way more physically stressful than what I'm doing at work. 

And the bleeding stopped.  Go figure.

All but one of my losses has occurred between 10 and 14 weeks - and the one that wasn't occurred before I even adjusted to the idea that I might be pregnant.  Inappropriately slow rising beta followed by miscarriage a couple of days later.  It sort of felt like it never really happened.  The later miscarriages were very tough.   Emotionally and physically.   My biggest fear with this pregnancy is that I'm delaying an inevitable occurrence.  That the loss will come - but will come late in the second or third trimester or something.  Which seems ridiculous to me.  A loss is a loss  ...but I'm much more fearful of one occurring later in the pregnancy than now.  Which I'm unsuccessfully trying to wrap my head around.

Today is my one day off inside a stretch of working 6 12 hour shifts in a 7 day period.  I'm not sure I'll make it through all 6 shifts.  The OB said I absolutely shouldn't and work is being fairly flexible about it.  We'll see.  The golden child escaped with a friend up to a cabin for the holiday weekend.  We're planning on laying relatively low though there is sooo much yard work to do.  So much.  It's rainy and glum out ... which is seriously affecting my motivation to do anything.

Did I mention that I gained 3 lbs in 3 weeks???  I'm so freaked out about that.  Morning sickness with baby A2 made me lose 15 pounds or something in the first trimester which left me with an overall net weight gain for the entire pregnancy of 13 pounds.  I have morning sickness with this baby - but only when I'm hungry and it's relieved totally by eating.  Umm.  NOT good.  Couple a ferocious appetite with limited activity and no exercise and I feel I'm probably headed for disaster.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Relaxin'.

I'm thinking this baby, if it lives, is going to be deaf.  Because seriously?  How many ultrasounds can you have?  The really nice part of my job is that I spend the majority of my time in the ER and work pretty closely with the ER physicians.  Several of them have just had babies, and most of them are as paranoid as me.  Easy access to ultrasounds.  So, despite the massive amounts of blood over the weekend, the baby is still alive ...and kickin'.  Heart rate 170.

I called the OB yesterday morning just to make sure there was nothing else that I should be doing ...and she said, Umm. Yeah.  You should be on bedrest.  Wha?  This would pose a major - and I mean major - financial conundrum.  I have short term disability and we could technically make it ...but just technically.  Monk is going through weird job stuff right now because of his back injury.  I don't know.  So anyway.  I promptly responded by staying at work for the remaining 7 hours of my 12 hour shift. 

And I'm home today.  I only work 3 days a week ...and in my mind, I'm going to be ready to go back on Thursday.  The thing is?  I'm a horrible patient.  When baby A2 asks for me to pick him up ...I pick him up.  I really think that being home may be more physically straining than being at work.  I can pretty much adapt my job to be very non-physical if I need to.  I currently walk ..a LOT ..but could easily not.  I could have one of my partners see the patients that are far away and I could sit my butt in the ER - only getting up to go see 7-8 patients a day.  And I could sit through the majority of their evaluation if I had to.  Bedrest doesn't make much sense to me because I know that I won't actually follow through on it.  Monk - god love him - doesn't get it.  Even last night - day 1 of the trial - from 8 p.m. when I got home until 10 p.m. when I got the baby to sleep - he must have grumbled 27000 times about what I wasn't doing.  And honestly?  It wasn't a lot that I wasn't doing.  I would feel like a heel if I didn't at least try bedrest and the baby died.  So I'm trying it for 2 days.  We'll see what happens.  Follow up with the OB tomorrow and I'll go from there. 

Having an almost 2 year old has got to be the best thing ever.  He is soooo amazingly fun right now.  Full of enthusiasm and clapping and screaming, "HAPPY!!" when he gets something he wants.  Love love it.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Shocking

I know that this comes as a huge surprise to those that know me ...but honestly.  I don't have what it takes to be pregnant with a subchorionic hemorrhage.  Seriously.  This is rough. 

Everything had been mostly okay for about a week.  I went to buy flowers this morning with baby A2.  Not thinking, I picked up a hanging basket to carry out to the car while the guy I was working with was carrying everything else.  I was already holding baby A2.  I didn't notice anything at all until I set the flowers on the ground and got baby A2 buckled in his car seat.  Then sudden cramping, ripping sensation, gush of blood.

I'm bleeding quite a bit today.  Pretty severe cramping.  This is the ...fourth? fifth?  round of this kind of bleeding.


I'd like to curl up in a fetal position in a dark room and stay there.  But it's 79 and sunny ...and the baby that IS here and somehow managed to survive the uterus of doom loves the outside.  So it's outside I go.

I can't for the life of me see this ending well.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Weird.

So ...blogger went down and my last post went with it?  Very strange.

Anyway.  Bad day for blogger to be off for me.  All of the blogs I follow on google reader that are blogger blogs are messed up too. 

So.  I went and had an ultrasound yesterday, fully prepared and expecting to see a dead baby.  I had even tentatively scheduled a D&C for before my OB went off call.  And ...lo and behold.  The baby is alive.  And relatively huge!   Like ...2 cm crown to rump length from 0.18 cm 2 weeks ago.  Heart rate 165.  Measuring on track.

And I have a fairly large subchorionic hemorrhage.  Which I know close to nothing about.  I came home and read about them for a while, got duly freaked out, and quit reading.   I'm taking it easy and that's about it for now.  There's been no additional blood. 

I'm taking it one day at a time.  Trying not to anticipate.  Trying to remember to breathe.  Slowly.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Mother.

Today was unreal.  Absolutely gorgeous outside.  At one point, I was outside watching the ribs that I was grilling to deliver to my mom and grandmother for dinner, with Monk, the baby, the dog, and the teenager running around the backyard giggling and laughing.  And it struck me.  Who's life is this??  How did this happen?  I think the moment even struck the golden child ...because she said to me later, "Can you believe we even have a white picket fence??"  It was all very Norman Rockwell.  I don't want to upset this apple cart and can't help but think that I'm tempting fate.  Being greedy by having another.  Why would I rock a perfectly floating boat?  Why invite anxiety and heart ache in when we're fine without it?

I ended up in the ER on wednesday night after work.  I worked 12p-12a.  I felt more and more short of breath and uncomfortable all day long.  Ultimately, I decided to say something about the pregnancy and my concerns to the doc I was working with.  He essentially confirmed that my worries were valid.  At the end of my shift, we walked back to the other hospital (about a 1/2 mile trek that starts with climbing 2 flights of steps).  I think he was sort of horrified by how out of breath and uncomfortable I was.  We walked slow and it was still really bad.  He ended up calling my OB/friend, who agreed that I should go to the ER.  Which means that virtually the entire hospital knows that I'm pregnant - and not a single soul in my family other than Monk knows.  Not exactly comfortable.  Especially because we aren't planning on a reveal until the end of June. 

Ultimately - they ran a bunch of tests which confirmed that I had to have a CT scan.  I discussed the risks/benefits at length with the radiologist.  The radiation he felt would be a non-issue because of the direction of the rays and the abdominal shield.  He feels that the contrast was low risk as well.  I don't, but ultimately had the stupid test anyway.  Everything was negative.  The preliminary heart/cardiomyopathy stuff was all negative.  No blood clot.  I still have to have an echocardiogram and possibly a stress test next week.  Ended up not getting home until 5 a.m.

I could barely keep up playing with the baby outside today.  I hate it.  And regardless of the cause (I'm still hoping for just plain old pregnancy induced tachycardia), it's only going to get worse throughout the remainder of the pregnancy.

I hope everyone out there had a good time with family and friends today ...whether you're holding your babies in your arms or in your hearts.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

8 week Freak Out

So it turns out I'm an emotional wreck. 

I'm on night shift this week ..which is never good emotionally.  This week is the 10 year anniversary of my dad's death - which I never deal with well.  I spent a lot of time last night re-reading my blog entries written during the last pregnancy ...and I think I wrote 27 times that I would never be pregnant again because it (anxiety, physical discomfort) was so horrible.

I don't do this well.

So.  Eight week check up.  Everything with the baby is fine.  Still there.  Heart still beating.  Hard to tell much beyond that at this point.

Then we talked about symptoms.  Probably the most concerning symptom that I've had - which has been there since I was on spring break and before I knew I was pregnant ...is really, really bad shortness of breath.  It seems to be getting worse.  It only happens with exertion.  At first I wrote it off to fluid shifts or something.  But ...it's gotten worse.  It's now to the point that I have to stop and rest while I'm walking from one building to another at work (maybe 1/4 mile walk).  Yesterday, several of the docs noticed I was breathing heavily just talking to them.  I also noticed that even while I was dictating a patient note I had to stop several times to catch my breath.  Not good. 

So ...I'm getting worked up for a couple of different things.  One - pulmonary embolism.  Because I drove to florida recently without stopping and have a history of a previous clot.  Great.  I love high dose radiation exposure in early pregnancy.  The second - and quite honestly my biggest fear and suspicion - cardiomyopathy.  Even typing that word right now made me cry.  I don't even know what will happen if that's what's going on.  No.  fucking.  idea. 

Because I re-read my blog, I have a fairly fresh idea of what a nutcase I am and keep rationalizing that this probably nothing.  But I'm still scared shitless. 

Someone promise to make me go on an anti-anxiety medicine after this pregnancy.  Assuming I'm still alive. 

For the love of God.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Ambivalence.

I feel so strange emotionally with this pregnancy.  With A2, I was obsessive about everything.  Um.  Everything.  Now I'm very ho-hum about everything.  Most of the IF blogs that I read have progressed to life after infertility blogs (thank God) - and I honestly haven't sought out new ones lately.  So...my brain got lazy.  It occurred to me the other day (as a surprise) ..umm..NT scan!!  Right.  yeah.  Supposed to do that.  But umm..when does that happen again??

I wouldn't say that I'm overjoyed with this pregnancy.  Definitely not disappointed, but not super excited, either.  The idea of having a newborn, a 2 year old, and a junior in high school is slightly overwhelming.  I guess it's more the idea of being a working mom with all of that stuff going on that it is overwhelming.  We have a lot of work to do between here and there.  As in.  Umm.  We need another bedroom.  Not sure if there is one handy that I can borrow, but yeah.  I was all set on having the babies share a room for a while when my cousin posted on facebook that her similarly age-spaced children were being urgently moved into separate bedrooms because she went to check on the newborn in the middle of the night and found the 2 year old standing in the crib with a blanket over the newborn's head.  So. Yeah.  End that thought right away.

Anyway.  This is what I'm doing. I'm alternating between being in complete denial that the pregnancy exists and preparing for delivery.  Yesterday I was prepared for miscarriage because I have waning morning sickness, severe cramping, and continue to bleed.  Today I'm pukey, exhausted, the bleeding is gone and there is no more cramping. 

Monk is in complete denial.  As in ....we're using condoms when we have sex because he doesn't want to take the chance that I might get more pregnant.  Um.  Yeah.

I have no idea what's going on.