The past few days have been challenging to say the least. Friday night I had a bit of a pregnancy scare (not going to get into the specifics...) and my doctor put me on bedrest for the weekend to make sure I didn't have contractions or leak amniotic fluid. I'm now 29 weeks along so the next few weeks are particularly precarious (Sam was born at 32 weeks).
This morning we went back to the dr and he ran some more tests. The scare from Friday night seems to have resolved, but my blood pressure has spiked significantly. One of the problems I've had during this pregnancy has been very LOW blood pressure. So low that my doctor sent me to a cardiologist to figure out what was going on. I was routinely feeling dizzy, light-headed, and about to faint. The cardiologist ran a bunch of tests and diagnosed me with "ortho static hypotension" and instructed me to drastically increase my salt intake to increase my blood pressure. Crazy, right?
I followed his instructions but my blood pressure has remained very very low and has dropped even lower as the pregnancy progressed. However, at the end of last week and today, my blood pressure drastically increased and is approaching the red zone for third trimester in pregnancy. He's not sure what caused this very quick jump, but he's hoping that bedrest will help. He's running a number of tests to try to rule out preeclampsia (which can be life-threatening to me). We don't think it's preeclampsia, but just doing the tests to make sure it's not. I have a number of doctor's appointments this week including the cardiologist on Wednesday and the maternal fetal specialist on Thursday.
The good news is that the baby is fine - no problems whatsoever. The amniotic fluid levels are completely normal. The baby's heartbeat is normal, he is head down (which is good) and is very active.
The bad news is that I will be on bedrest until at least Thursday night at which point my doctors will assess the situation and determine the next steps.
As you might have seen from my blogposts, I am a very active person and don't "relax" very well. Brad and I have concluded that I pretty much stink at bedrest. All weekend he had to convince me to stay home and hang out - and still I probably did more than I was supposed to do. I can work from home on my laptop and am trying to use this opportunity to catch up on some things that I can do from the couch.
Brad is taking on pretty much all of the household responsibilities and has been absolutely amazing. A friend is bringing us dinner tonight and tonight we'll come up with a plan for the rest of the week.
Sam's at the in-home childcare this afternoon (even though I'm normally home with him Mon/Tues of each week) and I think we'll bring him in there tomorrow too. It really stinks b/c I love my days home with him but running after him is not exactly what the dr meant by bedrest :)
I am having a hard time with it emotionally because I just go stir crazy with the "hanging out and lay low" instruction and like to be very active, but I am just trying to remind myself that this is temporary and I have to take care of the baby right now. Tomorrow we have to miss our last class at the Little Gym and we won't get to say goodbye to his wonderful instructor. Sam has no idea he's missing it or that his schedule is different this week. He was happy to go to the in-home childcare and has been very cuddly with me when I'm on the couch, etc.
Anyway, that's the news in the Geller-Cheney household. Emails are a welcome distraction!
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