Quick Update

This is just a very, very quick update to let everyone know what’s going on. I was finally able to come home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. It took some experimenting, but we seem to have finally found the right combo of blood pressure meds, and I’m getting doses at 6AM, 9AM, noon, 6PM, and midnight. Still, it’s better than having to be woken up every two hours for blood pressure readings!

The girls and I stayed at my parents’ house Wednesday night and Thursday night, but Nick brought us home last night, at least for a couple of days, which was wonderful. I love my parents, but it was honestly really stressful just spending that much time with them and the kids in the same house. Yesterday my dad took me back to the doctor, and things still look good on the ultrasound. My amniotic fluid is back to normal, the baby looks good, and the blood flow to the placenta is still improving. I have to go back again on Monday for another ultrasound.

Last night before we went home we had Christmas at my parents’ house, so I spent a few hours after my doctor’s visit working on the unfinished gifts we had to give last night. Nothing terribly strenuous, and my bp stayed within the acceptable range, but I’m glad to be done with that part of it.

I have a few more to finish today, so I’ve got to go, but I wanted to say thank you so very much for all the wonderful thoughts and prayers (and a very special gift from a dear friend on here – thank you L!).

So here’s what’s up…

Okay, so it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted. I’ve been crazy busy trying to get all the Christmas presents made (and a few of them bought). Unfortunately that all came to a standstill a few days ago, but more on that in a minute.

Nick ended up buying the truck from my dad. We used part of the insurance money to pay off some bills, which got rid of some high interest stuff and freed up more than enough to cover taking out a small car loan at a low interest rate to pay for the truck. It also had to be registered and have new tires (the others were seriously dangerous), and it will have to have a new fuel pump, but the rest of the insurance money has pretty much covered that.

Now, baby news:

At my doctor’s visit on the 1st, I had gained 10 pounds (from a starting loss of 3). She had wanted me to start gaining some, but I was a little unhappy to see 10 pounds in one month. Still my doctor was fine with it, so I decided to be too. My blood pressure was up a little at that visit, but I had forgotten to take my pill that morning, so we assumed that was why.

Wednesday I went in for my next visit and an ultrasound. My weight was up another 11 pounds (in 13 days time!) and I kind of freaked out. There was just no way that I had gained 21 pound in 6 weeks. It turns out it was all (probably including the first 10) fluid. My bp was very high, despite having taken my pill that morning.

We discovered the high bp after the ultrasound. Nick had come with me to the visit, and we anxiously watched the monitor to see how much the baby had grown and how my amniotic fluid level was. As it turns out, things were not ideal. My fluid level was pretty low, somewhat concerning, but even more so coupled with the fact that the baby was showing smaller than he should be. At the last ultrasound 4 weeks prior, he was in the 35th percentile on the growth chart. This time he had dropped to the 15th percentile.

The ultra stenographer had me go out to have my bp taken and to talk to the doctor. I was kind of worried at this point, but Nick was saying, “Look, don’t freak out, I’m sure it’s no big deal.”

Then my doctor came in. Now I LOVE my doctor. I’ve had her for all three babies, and besides being just an awesome practitioner, she’s also got an amazing bedside manner. She’s very low key and laid back, so when she came in with a grave look on her face and said, “Okay, we need to turn this around. I want you to go check in and we’ll get you on the baby monitor and hooked up to an IV”, well I really started to panic. Even then though, I assumed she was talking about a 3 or 4 hour procedure, after which I would go home.

Nope, this was to be at least an overnight visit. At this point Nick was looking a little pale himself, but we grabbed my purse and headed over to the women’s pavilion part of the hospital to check in. We called my mom on the way to let her know what was happening since she was watching Daisy, and she assured us they would get Morgan after school and keep the girls overnight.

I got checked in and put in a room on fluids and a baby monitor, and they gave me a steroid shot to help mature Jack’s lungs in case he needed to be delivered.

They did some blood work to see if it looked like I was in danger of needing an immediate c-section, but fortunately that all came back okay for the time being. After a bit my doctor came to check up on me and let me know that I would be in there till at least Friday to give the amniotic fluid time to build back up and my blood pressure to get under control. She tripled my bp meds dosage and told me she would come do an ultrasound Friday morning.

Friday morning there was absolutely no change in my fluid level after about 30 hours of being on an IV as well as drinking plenty of liquids orally. The placenta shows some damage from the combination of the low amniotic fluids plus the stress from the high blood pressure. At this point it’s not unrecoverable damage, but it’s very important that the fluid levels come up and the bp stay down so that the placenta can grow and recover. Right now it’s showing a diminished level of blood flow, which is why the baby is so small. They’re measuring him at about 3 lb 1 oz.

She told me after the ultrasound that the very, very, very earliest she was willing to even speculate that I might be able to go home will be Monday, and that’s only if everything looks great on the ultrasound she will do then and my bp is consistently low. If there’s not been a marked improvement by Monday, then she will most likely induce labor or do a c-section.

I’m 32 weeks and 2 days now, and she’d ideally like to get me to 36 and 1/2 weeks. She said that with the steroid treatment (I had the 2nd shot 24 hours after the 1st) that at that point I should be able to take him home with me. But if he comes now, we’re looking at several weeks in the NICU, possibly up to 8.

This has been such a crazy surreal experience for me, mostly I guess because it just happened with no real warning. I never had any sort of problems with Morgan’s or Daisy’s pregnancies, at least not to the point that it would have caused them to have to be born too early. Morgan came 3 weeks early on her own, and Daisy was induced 2 weeks early because I was halfway dilated and she was fully developed and considered full term.

Nick stayed overnight with me Wednesday and Thursday, then went to work the next day, but tonight I’m by myself. There was a family Christmas celebration tonight (which I was pretty sad to miss), and he attended and took the girls home with him to give my parents a break. They did stop by to see me for a few minutes, but it’s killing me to be away from them so much. Prior to Wednesday, Daisy had never been away from us overnight. She did okay that night, but Thursday night she got to missing us really bad.

I would really appreciate all your prayers on this situation, most especially that I can hang onto the pregnancy long enough for him to not have to go to the NICU.

Crazy, busy, blessed life

Gosh, I can’t believe it’s been 11 days since I posted! Ah well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. The last time I posted was right after Nick’s car accident. Let’s see…

The next day (Wednesday) we had an appointment to have an inspector come look at our roof. There was no real reason for this other than that the company called offering free inspections and there have been some pretty bad storms in the area in the last year. We really weren’t expecting any sort of bad news, but it turns out that we had an actual hole in the roof about 6 inches in diameter, along with various other damaged spots. The roofing guy made it sound like it was the worst roof he’s ever seen, which naturally worried me a bit. I called my father-in-law (who is head of construction at a large hospital in our area), and he came over to check it out after the guy left.

The hole in the roof does indeed exist, but it’s on the edge of the eave. While it does need to be fixed, it’s not as urgent as the roofer made it sound. My FIL did a temporary repair with sheet metal, and we’ll have to see if we can get the insurance to pay for a new roof. The issue there is that we had to get a new insurance company a couple of months ago. The damage on the roof seems to be clearly from prior to that time, so we’re going to have to try to get the old company to pay for the repairs/replacement. Just another thing we’ve got to leave in God’s capable hands.

Thanksgiving was that Thursday. Ours was nice. We spent it at my parents’ house, as we do most years. Afterwards Nick and my brothers went hunting while Morgan, Daisy, my sisters-in-law, and I went to a local Christmas tree festival. This is something I’ve attended a number of times over the years, and my mother-in-law’s co-worker got us free tickets, which was very nice. It did turn out to be pretty exhausting (the perils of hauling a two year old around while 7 months pregnant), but it was a good way to get into the Christmas spirit.

Thursday was also the day I was supposed to get the final payment for the wedding Nick and I shot in October. We were actually supposed to be paid the previous week, but the bride asked if we could wait till she got paid again on Thanksgiving, and I agreed. This was the money I was counting on to pay our electric bill. Because it was Thanksgiving day I texted the bride and told her I’d be happy to wait till the next day if she needed me to. She texted me back saying that she would be out of town till Friday night and asking if she could pay me the following Thursday when they got paid yet again. Unfortunately I had extended our electric bill final notice as far as possible after the bride couldn’t pay me the first time, and the coming Monday was the last day we had to pay before disconnection. I explained this to her and she said she would try to come up with the money by Saturday.

Saturday she texted me and asked me to meet her to get the money at 2PM the next day. But the next day she called me and told me that she wasn’t going to be able to pay me that weekend after all. At that point I told her that I understood and that I would just be praying about it, and I asked her to please call me if she was able to come up with the money. A few hours later she called and said she had $200 (of the $300 due) and asked me to meet her. While it wasn’t quite enough to pay the electric bill, it was certainly better than nothing, so I headed out to meet her. When I got there she had the whole $300. I don’t know how or where they came up with it, but it was certainly a relief to be able to put it in the bank and pay the electric bill the next day!

The next hurdle on the horizon was the house payment. The very last day it could be paid without being late enough to go on our credit report was this past Wednesday. You know, there have been many times in the last couple of years especially that we’ve been in a relatively desperate situation financially, and God has come through for us. Every. Single. Time.

But this time, although I knew He would provide, I was completely stymied as to how He was going to do it. There just seemed to be nothing at all on the horizon, especially considering Nick’s car wreck, the whole roof issue, and the fact that his next paycheck looked to be shaping up to be pretty short due to the holiday (and resulting lack of customers at his job).

On Tuesday the car insurance guy came out to do the adjustment on Nick’s car. He not only totaled it out (the best possible outcome for us), but he gave us about $2000 more for it than we expected. This allowed us to pay the house payment as well as supplement Nick’s paycheck as we needed to for the rest of the bills. We still have some money left to put down on another vehicle for Nick. My dad recently bought a used truck at auction for a good price, and he’s told us that he’s willing to sell it to Nick for what he has in it. We’re still praying about whether or not this is the direction God wants us to go, but He has been so amazingly good to us, and I know He will lead us the right way!

On Wednesday my friend Elizabeth had her baby – a beautiful, perfect 5 lb 12 oz girl! She’s tiny, but oh so beautiful with tons of gorgeous dark hair. Elizabeth was just 8 weeks ahead of me, and I can’t believe my own pregnancy is getting so far along!

Thursday I went in for my 30 week appointment, and I’ll go back on the 14th for another ultrasound. Friday I went in to see Elizabeth and the baby and took her hospital pictures for her. It was so awesome to get to snuggle that precious baby girl, and it just made me ache to have little Jack in my arms!

Tonight was Nick’s company Christmas party. This was the first year he didn’t win any prizes, but it was so much fun to get to dress up and have a date night with my hubby! We also got to go see a movie this past Sunday. We hadn’t been to see a movie in a theater since May of last year, so when my mom offered to watch the kids, we jumped on the chance. We still had the movie gift card Nick got for his birthday in 2010, so it was completely free except for $4.00 toward the drink we shared (seriously – $5.75 for a drink! You’d better bet we got a refill!). We saw Hugo in 3D, and it was a really neat movie.

Anyway, this has been a crazy long post, so I’ll save the ABC’s of Gratitude and the pregnancy update for the next one.