Showing posts with label blood pressure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blood pressure. Show all posts

Friday, August 01, 2014

nugget: thirty-five weeks


Pregnancy Highlights

How Far Along: 
35 weeks 


Size of Baby: about the size of a coconut


Total Weight Gain:  26lbs and starting to feel swollen.

Maternity Clothes: some of the maternity shirts are hardly covering the bottom of my belly.  I know she's dropped some and I am definitely rounding out a bit...

Gender: GIRLIE

Movement: oh yeah, thank goodness she moves like a bowling ball! I don't mind her movements one bit!

Sleep: my sciatic nerve is acting up again and I having trouble sleeping.

What I Miss: sleep!!!

Cravings: I go through spurts of being really hungry and then not being able to eat at all because I can't possibly fit anything else inside me.  It's really weird.

Best Moment this Week:  getting to come home and seeing our little girl on the ultrasound screen.

Blood Pressure:  
We had a little scare this week which landed me in L&D. I took my blood pressure Tuesday morning and it was borderline high at almost 140/90. Took it again a few hours later and it was high still. So I called my doctor and he said to come in ASAP. When I got to my office, the doctor and nurse were waiting for me and took my blood pressure immediately.  It was 157/91...CRAP!  They sent me to L&D right away. When I got there ten minutes later, my blood pressure was lower at 140/96, but still higher than what it should be. The nurse came in and switched up my probes, plopped me on my side and my bp went down to 120/86 and eventually 120s/70s. 

So basically something is up. My urine and blood tests have come back clean all week, but as of Friday, my fluid levels were VERY low... like almost land me in the hospital low.  And oddly enough, my blood pressure was fine.  So my Perinatologist did a intensive ultrasound, NST and biophysical profile just to see what's up.  She's growing great, but with my blood pressures jumping all around and very little fluid he said that's basically the start of placental failure... so for now moderate bed rest is in the cards and I need to see if hydrating like crazy can reverse the low fluid.  I am still giving myself lovenox shots to lower the risk of clotting.   35 weeks is a heck of a lot better place to be in than 30 weeks, for sure, but she would still most likely need NICU time if she were born now.  So... I am going even slower than I was before, which is hard because I already felt like a complete blah.  Now I am going to be a sloshy, water-filled incubator.  Every day counts!



and on a side note, baby girl was SO cute during the scans.  She had her fingers curled up and was playing with her mouth.  She kept trying to push her face up against the ultrasound probe.  The doctor didn't focus on getting photos of her face though... he was obviously checking out things like my placenta, her blood flow, her growth, fluid levels and all that other important stuff.  


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

get your blood pressure cuffs ready...

So part of my blog history started when I began documenting my pregnancy with Noah after my difficult and tragic pregnancy experience with our first son, Mason.
Mason was born 10 weeks early after I was diagnosed with a hypertensive illness (high blood pressure) known as preeclampsia.  This illness can be deadly for both mother and baby. Many people don't actually know anything about preeclampsia. I know I didn't. I am one of those women who likes to know what's going on when it comes to everything and I had NO clue about this deadly illness.

Anyways, you can read the rest of that story here...

Fast forward to 2013.  I have a wonderful 1 year old son and I am awaiting for my sister, Stephanie, to give birth to my precious niece, who is not due until the end of April.  I get a phone call in the middle of a Thursday (March 14...well over a month early) from my sister explaining that she is going to the hospital for an emergency c-section because of the SAME illness that I had 2.5 years earlier.  My wonderfully healthy and amazingly strong sister who does EVERYTHING right to a T has preeclampsia.

Thankfully, her doctors knew exactly what to watch for in her case.  Amazingly enough before she became pregnant she was tested and her doctors knew our family history so that she could proceed with caution.  That's how they were able to notice her high blood pressure and even more importantly her little baby's distress signals on the monitor.  This is important stuff, people!  Knowing what to look for and knowing to be proactive is the key!  I am so sad that the only way some of this knowledge is found is through trial and error, but I am so very thankful for my sister and her little girl, Clara Elise's life!
We are very excited to be participating in the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia for the second time since it is fundraising for something that catastrophically affected our family TWICE.

Please consider walking in your local Promise Walk or supporting someone who is walking!
Support the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia

Friday, September 28, 2012

should be packing or even sleeping

but instead I am thinking and wanting to write out what's in my mind.

WARNING: This post has to do with my current emotional state.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

20 weeks

Pregnancy Highlights

How Far Along: 20 weeks 3 days (pssst... that's about 120 days to go since I won't be going all the way to 40 weeks)

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

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