the big 3 2

Well tomorrow we are finally 32 weeks into this pregnancy. I am so relieved to have made it this far, and with all things holding good, we may yet make it to 38 weeks. I wouldn't know what to do with a healthy baby who comes home when i do, i've never had that, but i'm excited to see what that's like! lol

32 weeks is a major milestone, after this baby is just getting bigger and maturing his lungs, everything else is in place and good. It's just a small sigh of relief, which it will continue to be a new sigh of relief with each week that passes. I am just amazed at how well things are going for us. I have been able to resume normal activity, i'm still being monitored twice a week and seeing the dr often because they're just worried it's all gonna come back, but for now i'm just enjoying things going well....for once!

Baby is moving so much it's insane, the girls never moved like this, he just isn't content to sit in one position. For the past several weeks he has been shifting from breech postion (heads up) to a head down position about twice a week. For how big he measures they are always surprised when they see that he's changed again, but for the past few days i can feel him trying to switch around (he's been head down for almost a week now) and i don't think he has the room to do it anymore. It's funny cause i can feel his little behind and legs all pushing to try and turn himself over, it's a little painful even because he's pushing so hard to turn over, but then when he can't do it i can feel him go back to his resting position and just kick his feet. I swear he's stomping his feet in anger and frustration lol. He's a stubborn one, i can tell already.

Wondering what he's going to look like, i still can't picture a little boy in our family, what with all the pink and frilly stuff we have, how is "little boy blue" going to fit in to all of that? haha, everytime i look in his closet and see the boy outfits i just cannot picture what it'll be like to have a boy. I'm excited and nervous as usual with any new baby. It's all getting closer!

Medical Miracle

My dr has decided i am his own personal medical mystery, i prefer the term medical miracle instead. The preeclampsia is completely gone. The protein has gone down to normal levels, and my blood pressure is more normal every day, even with regular activity, taking care of kids and running errands and the like. Then today at a monitoring appointment we listened again and heard the sound a heartbeat with ZERO arrhythmia, it was completely normal!

The dr came in today even though i was only meeting with the nurses because he wanted to know how it could be possible for a patient to have preeclampsia and have it just go away. There are two ways to look at this:

Theory number 1: it never WAS preeclampsia, it was caused by the kidney stone all along, and now that the baby kicked the stone down into the bladder, the kidney is no longer in distress and no longer causing the symptoms.

Theory number 2: who cares why, it's because of all of the prayers and the blessing i was given that this was all a miracle from God, because even if the preeclampsia symptoms were being caused by the kidney stone, it does not explain the arrhythmia and it's also miraculous disappearance at the same time as the disappearance of the preeclampsia....i mean maybe i'm just overly optimistic and excited to see the hand of God in my own life, but it's pretty obvious the only way both of these things could simply disappear on their own is with a little divine intervention! Besides as is always said, to God there are no miracles, he understands the workings of life and death and illnesses in a way we never could, and if he wants to fix them, well then he just does, because he understands how.

Either way i suppose it doesn't really matter, although it seems to matter to my dr who is just dumbfounded by it all. He still checks in on me thru email, i think he's afraid to count it as completely gone, worried it'll suddenly reappear again, which is entirely possible, heck anything is at this point! But this is getting me so much further in this pregnancy than we thought possible that even if it does come back Catcher is getting bigger by the day and that means a healthier little guy in the end.

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us...it worked!

Feeling Human again!

Over the weekend i decided to test a theory. My blood pressure has been running much lower than it was even just a few weeks ago. If i truly have "preeclampsia" this would not really be possible, because it never gets better during pregnancy, once diagnosed it only gets worse, and the only cure is delivery of the baby. Well if my blood pressures were getting better, it's proof that more of these symptoms are related to the dreaded kidney stone, than to preeclampsia. Now the symptoms for preeclampsia (elevated blood pressures, and protein in the urine being the basic first signs) are also similar to things that can occur from a kidney stone, and they did start only a week or so after i developed the kidney stone. However these symptoms developed after i'd learned to control the pain from the stone. In fact i learned to control the pain so well that when i layed in the right position i felt NO pain at all, i could literally shut off pain from that part of my body (took some serious mind work to figure out, but it was safer than taking pain meds thru the rest of the pregnancy) Well when the drs realized i wasn't in pain, they didn't think the symptoms of high blood pressure and protein could be caused by the kidney stone, they were just sure if the kidney was in that much distress all on it's own, that it would be hurting so bad i would not have been able to control it without pain meds....uh huh, yeah right!

So about two weeks ago, the baby gave the kidney stone (which until then had been trapped in the Ureter - the tube leading from the kidney to the bladder)a nice hard kick and dislodged it, sending it rattling down into my bladder. Well i've talked about all that before, but the interesting thing is that although the day after that happened my protein seemed to go up and they thought i was getting worse with preeclampsia, once they cured the bladder infection being caused by the stone irritating the bladder, then over these past two weeks, the symptoms have started to almost dissappear! The protein is nearly indetectable, the blood pressures are "near" normal (not quite perfect, but pretty close!) and i feel about a zillion times better. I mean i was able to tell my body not to feel "pain" from that part of me, but i couldn't control the effects that the weakened kidney were otherwise having on my body. Now that the stone isn't blocking the kidney anymore, and it's starting to heal, my whole body feels better. I mean i'm still pregnant so i'm tired a lot and i move slower :) but as far as overall, my body feels soo much better! I wish they would have done something about the kidney stone earlier, i kept asking the urologist to go ahead and do the stint just in case the symptoms were being caused by the stone, but she reiterated that if i wasn't hurting, it wasn't that bad off so she wasn't going to do anything about it. Maybe if they had done the stint and relieved the pressure off the kidney then these symptoms could have gone down even sooner and they wouldn't have freaked out about preeclampsia!

I don't know, i've still got a little ways to go, but i'm hoping to at least make it to March, the baby's due in April, but i don't know that they'll want to push it that far, depending on how things continue to develop, but either way, we're looking at a much larger, much healthier baby in the scheme of things, and we can only thank our Heavenly Father for the blessings which have been given to us thru all of this! I could never thank Him enough, i can only hope to show my gratitude thru service when this is all over, and hope to help someone else in need.

possibly exciting news!

Today i saw the nurses at Kaiser to get the baby monitored. My blood pressure was lower than it has been in a while (still slightly elevated, but nothing like it had been) and there was NO protein detectable in my urine (which is also VERY down from previous) and the baby's heart had NO arrhythmia the whole time he was monitored!!

It's very easy to get my hopes up about all of this and think that at my appointment next week maybe the dr will say i don't have preeclampsia after all and i can be off of bedrest. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking because i don't think the husband man would let me off bedrest because he's paranoid that i would suddenly get worse. But maybe i can do be off of bedrest on a trial basis and see how my blood pressure does. Now i know that preeclampsia doesn't just go away until they deliver the baby, but i'm thinking at this point that this was all being caused more by the kidney stone than anything else. The stone, as far as i can tell, dropped into my bladder about two weeks ago after getting a swift kick from Catcher. It wouldn't have moved down on it's own because of it's large size, but i felt the baby kick it (it hurt like NOTHING else!) and then i started having bladder spasms and a bladder infection immediately after that. (i know this may be TMI, but it's my life right now!) So once they fixed the infection which was most likely caused by irritation from the giant stone rattling around in my bladder, all things seem to be returning to more normal levels. Now technically i still qualify as having preeclampsia, but things are definitely moving in a better direction since the stone moved out of the tube it was blocking. I thought from the very beginning that the high blood pressure and elevated protein levels could have been caused by the kidney in distress from the stone....but people see a pregnant woman with these symptoms and automatically assume they know what it is... preeclampsia. Well when i asked the Urologist about it in the beginning of all of this she said that if the kidney was so distressed as to be causing the blood pressure and protein, that i would be in severe pain. But you know maybe i just have a higher pain tolerance, i mean really, i've dealt with chronic pain from Arthritis for a very long time (since about age 7)so maybe i just wasn't feeling the pain the same way other people normally would. She said since i could control the discomfort without medication that the kidney couldn't be in that bad of shape or i would be in such serious pain as to NEED medication. Well excuse me for being able to manage my pain better than that, cause now that the stone is rattling around in my bladder and not blocking any flow from the kidneys, well suddenly the numbers are turning around a bit. Go figure.

I don't know if maybe this is just a fluke, or maybe it's just all been the kidney stone all along, only time will tell, but i am 29 weeks and we're moving further every day towards a bigger healthier baby. Maybe i'm just getting my hopes up for nothing, but i think at this point that if things continue to trend in this happy direction, that there's a possibility of a near full term baby...what do you think? Just being optimistic i suppose, but it never hurt.

Being Thankful

I've been sitting in a near silent room for quite sometime. The children went to sleep quite easily (not an everyday ocassion) so the hallway, void of their laughter and screams, sits eerily silent. The only sounds which carry down it's vacant hallways are that of the rare night time cough, the subtle sounds of bed sheets rustling, and the dog as she wanders around the table searching for lost crumbs dropped by the chair's previous occupants. The dogs clinking collar and tags remains for only a few minutes, each crumb quickly licked, she finds a spot to lay down and the sound of her flop, followed by a final clink from her tags, and ends with a sigh as a contented canine relaxes at day's end.

My mind wanders as i notice the few sounds left in the bedroom where i spend nearly every waking (and non waking) hour of these long days. The sound of the ceiling fan, it clicks as it sits slightly off balance, it's short chain clinking gently against the glass of the lamps hanging down from it's center. The sound of my own typing, clicking, then silent, then clicking again. I am given pause to ponder.

I ponder on what duration this all might last. Will we somehow miraculously manage to keep this little life inside of me until some point as late as even March? I dare not care to guess at this, for i find that if i guess and perhaps in guessing, find myself hoping, i may only be dissappointed if guesses and hopes disappear at some near future doctor's visit. So i only allow myself these thoughts for a moment. Then i wonder on what life may eventually turn into when this child finally arrives, whenever that may be, not just into this world, but into our home, as those two things will not necessarilly be at the same time. How different should life end up being with four kids? How will outtings go? How will the children behave after such a long period of spending so much time with other people, to go back to spending so much time with me? So many questions, and so few answers.

I stare at the cursor, it's flashing line poised to give life to my typed words. It sits in a vacant box asking "status update." I read other people's "updates" all day long, finding interest, intrigue, or sometimes confusion at the brief glimpses this gives me into the lives of these "friends." Some more acquaintances than friends, people i knew once on a personal, or semi-personal basis, but have now moved on with their lives, as have i, and yet i am allowed this voyeristic view of their day to day "updates," or perspectives, on that precise moment in their day or in their life. What then should i allow others to see in this moment of my life. I dare not repeat the mundaneness of the monotony of boredom i feel daily. This has been mentioned, and surely there are others who would wish for such freedom from life, even just for a moment. So instead, what should i say? Should i tell then about the subtle sounds of the dog drifting down the dark hallway to my room? The clinking chain of the ceiling fan? The ceiling fan, suddenly i am given pause as i stare at it's hypnotic spinning arms. If i close my eyes i can feel it's gentle breeze stirring the air around me into a soft cool wind, only felt in my room, in my space. I am suddenly in awe and gratitude of this little thing, this wind in my otherwise stagnant day.

It is something to be thankful for. In that moment i realize that there are a great many things i am grateful for, that i have failed to take note of. In gratitude i remember He that has blessed me with all things wonderful, Heavenly Father.

The curser still blinks, awaiting my thoughts. I have decided that in this "status update" view of my life, i should tell those things which i am grateful for...for nothing else truly matters in this life, but that which we can see the good in, for there is good in all things.

Thank you for ceiling fans. Thank you for a breeze which exists solely in my space to bring me comfort. And truly for all things in this life, THANK YOU.

nothing new, just blah blah blah

I don't know why, but today i'm having a hard time with the best rest crap. Maybe it's because it's been 2 months of this and i am tired of laying around! Maybe it's because i want to clean so bad it hurts, physically hurts everytime i walk out in the living room or kitchen for one little thing and see how much i would love to be doing instead! (don't worry i only really walk out there if i need a drink of water in the middle of the night and there is no one else to get me one...i really am being good about resting) And it's sweet of all the offers i've had for people to come over and clean, and Lee Ann even actually did...came over and did some serious cleaning! But in a house with three kids and a husband loose in it, well the clean doesn't last very long. And truth be told it's not about getting it clean, it's about doing the cleaning, there is something so satisfying in cleaning my house, cleaning it the way i want it, and doing it myself! I appreciate the help my mom has been, in cleaning and taking care of things three days a week, and on weekends when my dad or my husband's parents watch the kids, and the various people who have taken shifts here and there, but i am seriously going insane not doing this by myself.

It's hard enough to say thankyou enough for all the people who have been a help in some way, to my husband who is doing everything, and more, humanly possible to keep things together, to my mother who is killing herself everyday she's over here to keep the house in order and the kids routines going, and all everyone else. But it's so hard to thank them when i wish i didn't have to be, because i wish they could relax and i could take care of them for all the care they've given me.

I know people are going to read this and make comments like "it'll be over before you know it" or "it's all for a good cause" or "we love helping!" and while they're all true, and i've heard them all a million times, i just need to rant about this, i'm going nuts right now, trying to find things to entertain my mind and my hands, it is a boringness that is beyond any boring i've ever known, and frustrating too. I know Catcher is worth all of this, and i'm glad to know i'm getting my tubes tied when he's born so i KNOW i won't ever have to go through this again, but it's hard waiting for an unknown time when this will all be over and life can be normal again, with one extra little person in our family. Not knowing when is killing me, i mean technically there is a due date and i know it CAN'T be any longer than that, but it probalby won't be as far as that, and i hate not knowing how long this will go on, i'm a control freak and i'm not getting to control anything right now....that must be what it all comes down to, i'm feeling out of control. Out of control of my body and what's wrong with it that i can't fix, out of control of my own care, and the care of my family. Out of control of how long this will last. Control is very hard to let go of, someday i'll get it back, and until then it dangles before me, constantly reminding me i don't have it. Argg. Ok enough ranting.

home....AGAIN

Yes you heard right, i know i said before that i would be living in the hospital until the baby comes, but today they changed their mind, (they being the dr's)

 

Some of the tests that were inflated last week turned out to be because of the bladder infection i had (which i kept trying to tell them and they kept ignoring anyway) well so now that it's gone they feel that my mild preeclampsia is back to being just fine monitored at home.

 

My blood pressures have been super low while i've been laying in a hospital bed, the dr says i have better blood pressure than anyone he's ever seen (especially considering my weight). So at home i am supposed to rest IN BED, not on the couch, and not out with the kids even if someone else is taking care of them, otherwise i could end up back here AGAIN. Please no! I am so getting tired of this back and forth hospital stuff. I just get myself mentally prepared to be spending a long time in the hospital and instead they send me home.

 

Don't get me wrong, i am VERY happy that my health is not that bad and that will give Catcher more time on the inside, this makes me very happy to know that he'll be getting bigger and healthier. And i did kind of feel pointless being here, the nurses kept pointing out how low and good my blood pressures have been, so i suppose it makes sense not to waste their time taking care of me, but i still worry that this could turn worse at home, that's the thing about preeclampsia, it can turn worse at a moments notice. So it's all back to the waiting game.

 

Just trying to keep everybody posted, this baby is staying in as long as possible, heck maybe i could think optimistic and hope he could make it to 35 weeks just like my other babies, wouldn't that be great!