transcended.net

I know I say this pretty much every time I post lately, but how can a month have passed since my last post??  It doesn’t seem possible, and yet it is, because I’m now twelve weeks pregnant (it still feels weird to type/say that word, who am I talking about?  Oh, ME? Really?).

Symptom-wise there still isn’t a whole lot to report.  I’m not exactly having morning sickness, although I do feel queasy sometimes.  I’m definitely having a lot of food aversions but I’ve always had a lot of food aversions.  I’ve actually lost about 3lbs and am really hoping that everything I’ve read is right and that when I need to be gaining weight I WILL feel hungry.

I’m still super gassy, still pretty constipated.  Waking up way too many times per night to pee.  I have a yeast infection (pregnancy is not sexy).  My face is breaking out like never before.  Bo.obs are definitely bigger but don’t seem to be growing anymore at the moment.  The fatigue seems to have slowed down too.

The reason I’m not totally freaking out about my waning symptoms/lack of symptoms is because I did end up biting the bullet and getting a fetal doppler.  I try not to use it too much but it does come out about once every other day for a quick check and luckily it has become MUCH easier to find the heartbeat so I don’t need to hunt around for it and cause my own heart-rate to shoot through the roof.

I had another ultrasound at 8 weeks with the OB I finally settled on, the office is close to our condo and I liked the OB, as well as the fact that their office seems much more up to date with technology than any of the other offices I visited.  My high risk ob said they were one of the two clinics he generally likes to recommend so it all worked out perfectly (especially since I did not at all like the other clinic he recommends).

And I had yet another ultrasound done at 9w3d with Dr. M (the high risk doctor).  That was my favorite one so far because we actually saw the baby waving its arms and it did a little flip!  Seeing the look on Paul’s face was almost as incredible as seeing the little peanut with arms wiggling around in my belly!

I see Dr. D (regular OB) on Tuesday and have my NT scan on Wednesday so I’ll probably just skip doing a scan with Dr. D if he offers me one.  I’m really excited about the NT scan and am keeping my fingers crossed that we might get a gender prediction!

In other pregnancy related news, I am pretty much “out” at my company.  Everyone in my extended team is aware, so is the boss of our office and HR has been notified as well.  I told the head of my team and the big boss first because my mid-year review happened at about 6.5 weeks and I didn’t want to have to essentially fib about my plans for the second half of the year knowing there’s a good chance I will be on bed-rest by the end of the year.  I told them about the pregnancy and the lupus and they were incredibly understanding, including about the fact that I didn’t want to share with the rest of the team just yet.

However, at my last visit with Dr. M he decided it was time for me to cut down my hours to “only” 40hrs/week so when I told the big boss about this we both decided I had to let the rest of the team in on my little secret since they would be covering for those 2-3hrs/day that I’d be missing.  I cannot say enough about how incredible the big boss has been through this all.  I offered to come in at 6 or 6:30am and he said that he wanted me to come in at 7am because he thought it was important to get rest.  He repeatedly told me over and over again that I’ve earned the right to take care of myself and the baby first in this situation and that is what he wants me to do.  He even insisted that he wanted to be the one to tell the rest of the team about my reduced hours so that no one would push back about it.  I am so blessed to work for a manager like this and it’s not something I will ever take for granted.

I can’t even put into words how blessed I feel these days.  God has given me so much despite the fact that I haven’t always trusted Him and His timing.  I know that so much can still happen with this pregnancy, I will be getting ultrasounds every two weeks starting at 18 weeks to monitor for the potential heart defect and my blood pressure and urine is being watched like a hawk for any signs of a flare/pre-eclampsia.  But I’m starting to really trust that what will be, will be.  I can only do what I can do and leave the rest up to God.

Still, though, I am counting down the milestones that are coming up.  The NT scan next week, finding out the gender at 15 weeks, the first fetal ECG at 18 weeks, viability at 24 weeks, 28 weeks because that’s when 80% of premature of infants survive, 34 weeks when the survival rate is almost that of a full-term baby and the number of complications should be low, 37 weeks – full term!, and then of course 40 weeks.

I’ve been told by most of my doctors that it’s unlikely I will make it to 40 weeks (they think my bp will most likely be an issue by the last few weeks of the pregnancy if not sooner) but that’s ok.  I’m hoping that I go into labor on my own sometime after 37 weeks so that I don’t need to be induced but if I need to be induced I can live with that.  If I have to have a c-section, then I guess so be it.  My number one goal is have a healthy full-term baby at the end of this and though I do have certain preferences for my “birth experience” I’m okay if things go completely off course as long as the end result is a healthy baby and healthy mama.

So far *knock on major wood* my lupus has been kind.  In the past ten weeks I’ve had ONE day where my knee ached a little bit.  Including rainy days.  Including days I didn’t get enough sleep.  Including days I was in the sun more than I should have been.  It feels like a miracle.  My blood pressure has been awesome, consistently lower than it has been in years.  The last urinalysis I had on Wednesday showed NO blood and NO protein in my urine!  I always have at least a little blood and/or protein in my urine even during my non-flare times!  The doctors said it was just that my kidneys were damaged and would likely always leak a little.  My creatinine was at 0.9 (normal is 0.6-1.0)!  My complement levels (C3 and C4) were still low, but higher than the last check three months ago right before I got pregnant!

My doctors are all in agreement that things seem to be going about as good as they can.  Of course this doesn’t mean things can’t still go horribly wrong – they absolutely can – but for now I’m just reveling in the fact that this pregnancy seems to be making me healthier rather than sicker!

I’m doing my best to enjoy every day of this pregnancy and to push the fears out of my mind since there’s nothing I can do about them anyway.