Maternity Leave

Yep, that's right. 34 weeks pregnant and I'm officially on leave!!! Woo hoo!!! I'm not even gonna lie, I was hopeful that the doctor would put me off sooner rather than later, I lucked out. I also lucked out that my job's sick policy means that going off work a full six weeks before my due date doesn't change the six months I get off work once the baby is here!

Unfortunately, the doctor opted to put me off work so soon because I'm showing early signs of preeclampsia. I'm having some pretty nasty swelling which is surprisingly uncomfortable and my blood pressure is starting to see it's way up. I'm still having some consistent contractions too. I'm not dialated at all though, thank God! Being off work is precautionary at this point.

I have to save all my pee in a jug today (not as disgusting as I originally thought but I'm still glad the day is almost over) so they can test creatine or something. I'll go in tomorrow for a wide variety of bloodwork also. I start seeing the doctor weekly and I will now also go in twice weekly for NSTs.

I'm really looking forward to being off work so early because we are not even slightly ready for this baby. Our apartment (that I mention here) is just about done. We're hoping to actually move our bedroom upstairs tomorrow. Once that's done, I'll need a few days to settle our stuff and then I can start up the baby's room. I have tons of baby shower gifts to sort through, return/exchange, wash, organize and even more stuff to buy to finalize the registry. I just pray that being on leave doesn't cue the little one to come out and join us. He needs to wait until March. Please baby wait until March!!!

That's the basic update. Hopefully, once we're settled in I'll be blogging more.

Trip #2 to L&D

I had my 31 week check up at the OB this past Friday. Aside from being reamed (okay, that might just be how I took it) about weight gain (already up 38 lbs from my last pre-pg dr appt) she was concerned about my Braxton Hicks, or what I thought were BH. I have a ton of them! I have since about 20 weeks. They're not painful, just uncomfortable. She decided to a do a quick internal ultrasound to check on my cervix. It's still nice and long. She was going to do a fetal fibronectin test (fFT) to see if I'm at risk for preterm labor, except...we had sex. Dun, dun, duuuuun!!! Apparently, sex within 24 hours will give false results on the test so she couldn't run the test. She reminded me of this numerous times. I finally had to tell her that lately, sex is rare and I'm taking it when I can get it (or when I want it) so I'm not going to feel guilty for it. She laughed and said she didn't blame me!

She decided to hook me up to the monitors to see what the contractions were looking like. Turns out they're not all BH. Although they still feel like BH, my entire uterus is contracting and that supposedly means that they're real contractions. Anyway, the monitors showed pretty decent contractions every 2-5 minutes. Who knew? Then, because she couldn't rule out preterm labor with the fFT (which she reminded me again) she had to send me to L&D, in the main hospital 30 minutes away, for further monitoring. Ugh!

We laid around in the L&D room being monitored for about four total hours. At least there was TV in this room. They determined that the contractions were far too frequent and since they can't rule out preterm labor with a fFT (yep, this doctor said it too...ugh!) they were going to be cautious and give me a shot of terbutaline to stop contractions. While uncomfortable (the shot burned like a mother f---er and made my heart rate sky rocket) the contractions slowed and spaced out enough that they were comfortable with me going home with an oral terbutaline prescription.

All is good now...well, I'm still having contractions and I think they're going to be here until I deliver (just 8 weeks until my EDD!) Baby is doing wonderfully and doesn't seem to mind any of the excitement going on out here. He's measuring 11 days ahead of schedule and over a pound bigger than expected at this point. Big boy!!!

I had my baby shower Saturday and we were showered with lots of love and gifts like crazy!!! I'll be posting about that next with pics.

I hope everyone is doing well out in bloggy land. I'm going to be working on posting more frequently. Looks like I'll start maternity leave in 4 weeks and that will give me some time to post and then I will hopefully be off work for 6 months (and maybe permanently) after the baby is here. Fingers crossed!