Ultrasound at 32 Weeks!

Here's Katie!!

She is currently weighing in at 4lbs. 8oz. and is in the 53% for weight. We learned that she does have hair on her head, obviously they can't tell you the color, and she is very flexable, yes that is her big toe right by her mouth in the first picture. Nat, my father and I both think she has Nat's nose, thank God, and other than that well we think she's just down right adorable.

I have another doctors appointment on Friday so I will fill you all in about me then, today was Kaite's day in the spotlight so I really don't have more to say than she's looking perfect!!

32 Weeks!!

Good Morning!!

Well here I sit at 4:52am, bored, awake, and tired at the same time. I have been wide awake since about 3am; I wish I had a great story as to why I am so awake but I think my bladder woke me and my mind wouldn't let me be, so here I am. I just wanted to give everybody an update on my doctor’s appointment yesterday and my first NST (non-stress test).

First and foremost Katie is looking great and she passed the NST with flying colors. All the test consisted of was strapping me to a baby monitor and handing me a button to press every time she kicked or moved, as expected I was depressing that button constantly and told the nurse I would pay for the next ink cartridge for the machine. (A black line appeared on the print-out every time I pressed the button.)

About half-way through my 30 minute NST my doctor thought it would be funny to zap my stomach with a little hand held buzzing device that looks like a mans Norelco shaver to get her really fired up. I tried to tell him that was a bad decision, but he did it anyway and we couldn't get a fix on her heartbeat for about 3 minutes because she was flipping around and making too much noise with her kicking. The doctor and nurses thought it was hilarious meanwhile I'm getting the crap knocked out of me and I had to deal with a foot-in-lung situation that literally took my breath away for a few minutes.

So Katie did well, but Katie's mom is still having issues, of course. My blood pressure was 140/90 and I had 3+ proteins in my urine, again, but in a small but countable victory my weight was down about 3 lbs. which sounds like a weird plus but with my swelling issues loosing some weight is good and indicates decreased swelling. (small hooray!) Due to the high blood pressure I am now mostly confined to my bed, laying on my left side and ordered to take my blood pressure a few times a day.

I am now visiting the doctors office twice a week, having NST's done every time and on watch for any new signs that I could be slipping in to more trouble like headaches, more swelling and vision problems. My doctor can't predict when Katie will need to make her appearance but she will not be a Christmas baby, we are all thinking she'll be a Turkey baby. I am currently 32 weeks pregnant and both my doctor and I think I should be able to make it at least to 35 weeks, meaning Katie will be small and premature but her lungs will be developed and she will most likely be able to avoid the NICU.

Up next is our ultrasound on Halloween and tacked on to that visit another NST. Hopefully we will get some good pictures of Katie to share, this is our last ultrasound and even though a c-section looks more and more likely I'm still holding out hope to see her in the right position just in case I can have a natural birth.

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we scramble to get things ready for Katie's arrival; it's going to be a fun ride here with me on bed rest and Nat working over an hour away from home!! Have a good weekend!!

Another Weird Day!

I just wanted to give everybody a quick update on my current situation since I haven’t blogged in about a week so I thought I’d let you all in on my exciting life!

Yesterday morning I woke up with some swelling, nothing too bad, but after weighing myself and noticing a 5 lb. Increase in my weight in the past week I decided that I had better call my doctor just to be on the safe side. They told me to come in and have a quick evaluation just to rule things out and wouldn’t you know that I had to go and add some high blood pressure to the mix.

Ugh.

The first reading was 128/90, which for me is high; my blood pressure normally is in the 110’s/70’s. My weight from swelling was up 5.5lbs. and I had 2+ proteins in my urine once again, so my doctor thought he would check my blood pressure one more time and damned if it didn’t come out 128/100. That was that and my happy butt was heading back to the hospital for some observation time.

My all too frequent trips to the hospital must be boring you all by now, I don’t even think Nat and I react to them anymore, it’s almost an expected trip following every appointment. Anyway, I waddled back over to the Labor hall to room 2314, same boring room with outdated wallpaper, to be poked and prodded and hooked up to machines for a few hours before inevitably being sent home to stay off of my feet.

As soon as I got in my bed I was hooked up to a blood pressure machine and an IV line was started. I had some tests done and although my blood pressure stayed high, around 130’s/90 it didn’t do anything funky like jump up and down so they called it high but normal. They did hook the baby and I up to a fetal monitor and for the first time we got to hear her have a bout with hiccups, which was funny and cute, but no doubt annoying to the woman in the bed next to me trying to sleep off some nausea. And yes once again Katie seems to be unmoved by any of my problems, happily kicking me and flipping all around.

The final call from the doctor is that I am headed for preeclampsia but no one is quite sure when it’s coming. His analogy was that of skating on a pond with a big hole up ahead, I’m going to hit it at some point but the ice leading up to the hole is thin and at anytime it could crack and send me in the drink. Long story short, am I going to make it to my due date, probably not, am I having her this week, probably not…but she’s coming sooner than later.

All of my other blood work was fine and just like I had predicted I was sent home and told to back off on all activity. I am back at the doctors office on Friday and fingers crossed everything will be somewhat normal again. Oh and did I mention that my parents are in Ireland, so making a big deal out of this might send my mother to an Irish hospital or she might start swimming home, either way $10 says they don’t leave York until she’s born.

Ok, I will say goodbye for now, I’ll update again after my doctors appointment on Friday, pray for lower blood pressure!!!

Random Pictures

Here are some random pictures from the past few days. Obviously the picture of me is just to show you my current size, extra large, since I didn't get any pictures from the shower of me standing up or moving around. This picture is at 30 weeks and 3 days.

The other two pictures are of my Dad and Nat running the Dr. Segro Memorial 5K this past Saturday in Red Lion. It was a great morning for a run, about 50 degrees and sunny, my Mother did a 1 mile fun walk after the 5K so we both watched the boys take off and met them at the finish line. Nat clocked in at 30:09 and dad at 32:21, both had minor complaints about their personal run but Mom and I thought they did really well. Also you can tell luck was not on Nat's side with his random number assignment?!

Baby Shower

This past Sunday was my baby shower and man did I get a ton of good stuff!! If I had time to tell you everything we recieved I would but, I don't think this blog is big enough to list everything. In short it was awsome and my friends and family were overly generous, so a big thank you to everybody.

I will say this, my sister-in-law Christy came up with an awesome bingo game for opening gifts, all the cards had different registry items on it so there was crazy competition going on. When you are opening gifts for over an hour it makes it fun for everybody to stay somewhat involved and the crowd was watching intently as I opened every gift. It was mayhem up in front, at one point I though MaryAnne Tillotson and my cousin Allison were going to leave the shower just to buy me a gift card just so they could win at bingo! MaryAnne did win in the end with the opening of the Boppy, thanks Shannon, so all was right with the world!! (It was hilarious!!)

Thanks again to my Mother, Mary, Liz, Christy and Sarah for an awesome afternoon, everyone had a good time and for a biggie sized shower I thought it ran really, really smoothly. Katie will be blessed to be born into such a loving family, I know I am!!

29 Weeks

Well here we are at 29 weeks, only 11 to go!!

Let me begin by saying that today is an ugly day, inside and out. It's currently 2:15pm and 49 degrees outside, there is a bit of a drizzle and everything is soaking wet. This of course would have to be the day that I scheduled my three-hour glucose resistance test for my gestational diabetes, lovely. I'm sure you are all familiar with the notion that when it's cruddy outside you just want to stay curled up in bed all day, well today was that day for me and not only couldn't I stay in bed I had to have this stupid test done at 7am, when it was pouring outside and dark.

So you can see my day started off with a bang, oh and did I mention that the power went off at some point last night so lucky me that I woke up at 6am or I would have missed my appointment. I guess this is one time when I can thank my bladder for not allowing me more than two hours of sleep at a time! Anyhow I got to Apple Hill Medical Center at 7am and they immediately ushered me back to the galley of blood letting to take a vial of my blood, have me drink this even nastier, and sugary, version of orange soda for the test and they put me in a separate waiting area with a 13" TV and some magazines.

At first I didn't think I was going to have any issues with the gross drink but after sitting for 15 minutes Katie started going bonkers and banging on my lungs and I got all sorts of queasy. I knew right away that having to fast for 10 hours previous to the test was going to be an issue but I never really considered the ramifications to adding a high concentration of sugar to the mix, very bad things people, very bad. Thank goodness I was in a waiting room by myself, with a closed door, because I started burping like a trucker and for all I cared if someone would have come in I don't know if I could have stopped.

At 8 am the nurse came in my room to usher me back to the hall of blood letting to take another vial of blood from me, of course with my awesome luck she couldn't find a good vein in my right arm so back to the same spot on lefty we went. That same spot ended up getting a quadruple hit because apparently I only came with one good vein. After that I went back to the waiting room to wait another hour for the test to be readministered at 9am and finally at 10am.

The waiting wasn't as bad as I thought but the not eating was horrible, especially with that horrible sugary mixture floating around in my stomach. Me being a thinking lady, I had two pieces of bread stashed away in my purse so I could chow as soon as my nurse would allow me. (She complimented me on my thinking ahead, nice eh?) I came home around 10am, ate a baked potato and fell asleep curled up in bed with my cat. What a morning.

In conclusion, after just speaking with the nurse at my doctors office it has now been determined that I do NOT have gestational diabetes. (and the crowd goes wild) She didn't give me the exact results but my doctor did say to me that sometimes women test high after one hour which would indicate diabetes but during the three hour test their levels normalize after one hour, to be diabetic it should stay above 140 for two of the tests. I guess I fell into that catagory.

Score one for me, finally!!!

Ok everybody, have a great weekend, and don't forget Baby Shower next weekend; I can't wait to see everybody. And, YAY, I can eat my own cake!!! (I was a bit worried about that.)

New Baby!!!

Lauren Claire Mishler

Born September 28th at 9:54am

in Charlottle, North Carolina

6 pounds 12 ounces

19 and 1/2 inches long

Welcome to the world Lauren, it's a better place now that you are in it!!!

Crazy Swelling!!!

I just wanted you to see my fat legs, ankles and feet, it's like walking on water balloons! My real post is below.....Enjoy.... 

Back To The Hospital

You would think by now Nat and I would have our own parking space at the York Hospital, we made our fifth and sixth trip of the pregnancy this week and had our first overnight experience. Before I get ahead of myself lets take a journey back to Tuesday........

Tuesday morning I woke up and at first didn't really think too much of anything; I ate breakfast and then went about my morning routine of checking emails, reading the paper, and surfing online. While I was sitting at my desk I noticed that my normally swollen fingers looked especially plump and when I looked down at my feet I almost laughed out loud, I had no ankles and my toes looked liked little sausages. Now I know that swelling is normal in pregnancy so I kind of wrote it off as normal swelling, but as the day went on I noticed I was walking funny and my socks were too tight on my ankles, I had noticeable indented rings around them.

At this point I decided that I should weigh myself, just to see if I was really as swollen as I thought I was, I tend to be a tad overly dramatic. I couldn't and didn't believe the scale when it popped up that I had gained 14 lbs. in the past 8 days, what the crap, how do you gain that much weight that fast? I naturally assumed that the scale was broken so I used a backup scale that was in another bathroom, that scale said that I had only gained 7 lbs., still high but more acceptable.

I didn't really think too much of the rapid and abnormal weight gain, mostly because I convinced myself that scale #2 was right, and forgot about my bloated body until Nat got home from work. When Nat came home I was sitting in a chair in my sunroom with my feet propped up and Nat noticed my chub legs right away. I explained the tale of the two scales, showed him the rest of my lovely swollen self and he looked at me like I was five and asked why I hadn't called my doctor. I told him it was normal to swell and that although 7 lbs. was a lot to gain, it wasn't out of the question. Nat immediately went upstairs weighed himself on scale #1, came back downstairs, handed me the phone and said, "Call them and tell them you have gained 14 lbs. in 8 days!"

Oops.

Of course I called the doctor who told me to go immediately to the hospital to be checked for preeclampsia. Luckily my blood pressure was fine and when the hooked Katie up to the monitor she was happy as a clam, no signs of trouble. After two hours of monitoring and some other tests we were sent home and I was told to stay off of my feet and avoid salt.

Then came Wednesday...

I woke up Wednesday with the same swelling and another familiar symptom, nausea and vomiting. Ugh. I called my doctor and was told to head on in to get a full check-up. Once there I was told that maybe I might have something non-pregnancy related going on so my doctor ordered a gallbladder ultrasound and some blood work to check on my kidneys. So that evening Nat and I headed back to the hospital for the gallbladder ultrasound, which turned out to be normal so back home we went.

Then came Thursday......

Thursday started off alright, had my breakfast, read my paper, went back up to my room to read emails when all of a sudden I began vomiting, hard, and kept on doing it three times before 9am. (I get up around 7am.) I called Nat at work who agreed that I should call my poor doctor back, who by now was most definitely sick of me, so I put in a call, left a message and waited for a call back. At this point I was feeling rotten so I called Nat back and asked him to come home from work and no sooner did he walk in the door than my doctor’s office called and told me to head straight for the hospital. This time I was being admitted for observation, I think they were just sick of me bugging them, hehe.

We got to the hospital around 11:30am and I was immediately shuffled into a bed, placed in a horrible robe that didn't fit and was missing snaps and an IV line was started. The nurse asked me tons of questions, hooked me up to a monitor and then administered a drug that we now know I'm allergic to called Phenergan. Phenergan is a drug that helps stop nausea, so is Zofran the drug I told her I had been given every other time I was in the hospital for the same reasons, but in all of the rush the doctor most likely didn't even look at my chart and just decided to give me what he normally gives sick pregos.

Bad decision.

Within 30 seconds of being given this drug I turned into a raving lunatic; Nat was convinced I was possessed. I was shaking, the room was spinning, I was convulsing, itching and I couldn't get comfortable (tossing and turning constantly). Plus there was the crying, I was so dehydrated that I wasn't producing tears so it was blubbering without the blubber. My inhibitor switch was also turned off and I began swearing, mostly to Nat not at him, and I have no idea what I said to the nurse and doctors that kept checking on me, but I'm pretty sure I owe them all flowers.

At some point when everyone around me agreed that it was safe to move me, safe for them not me, they moved me to my own room in the maternity ward to let the rest of the drug ware off. The next point in time that I was aware of was when my friend Michelle came in to visit after she had gotten off of work, she is a nurse in the OR. When she came in I was still itching and twitching, but most of the spinning had worn off. Michelle let Nat take a much-needed break from me and while he was gone I got sick all over my bed and myself. Thank God Michelle is a nurse and a mom because she flew right into action, cold washcloth on my neck one on my forehead, she called another nurse in the room, basically she did all of the thinking that I was unable to do. After getting cleaned up and Nat coming back in the room, I passed out. I think now that the throwing up was like the curtain call on my drug addled afternoon, it was over and so was my day.

By Friday I was feeling better and had some visitors that afternoon. The culprit of the vomiting and nausea seems to have been really bad heartburn, can you believe that? I guess my diet wasn't jiving with my stomach and with Katie getting bigger and bigger and putting all sorts of stress and strain on my system it finally just gave out. I am now on a bland diet, eating six small meals a day, nothing fried, greasy, or spicy. I am also on a new pill called Protonix, for the acid, and it seems to be working at least a little because although I am still having problems getting the food to go down, no acid is coming back up. I can work with that.

They sent me home Saturday afternoon and I just had a check-up and my weight has stabilized although I am still really, really puffy. (Call me Puff Mommy) I just had my baked potato and half a chicken breast so now I am going to prop myself up in bed and try to relax, drink lots of water, and take a snooze. There is more to this long story, including a new baby in the group, but that's too special to add to this pitiful post so I will update again really soon. Sorry this was a long one, I just have to write it down so I have proof when we ground Katie for freaking her parents out so much.