In the Hospital

So last night I was pretty sick, puking and whatnot and of course I had a fever the entire time which would not go away. So once the dr's office opened, I called them and told them about my fevers and new sickness. The nurse called me back and said that the dr wanted me to go to the ER because I might be bleeding in my GI tract. Well, I asked what he said about the fevers and the nurse said he didn't even mention them so I told her to ask him. She called me back while Tony was driving me to the ER (my favorite place on earth) and said the dr said they'd evaluate my fever in the ER. Wow, he's really helpful.

Once at the ER they took me in right away and the dr was nice and helpful. She ran blood tests, a urinalysis, and did a chest xray. Basically my blood count has dropped since I had Nola, so that leads them to believe I am bleeding internally somewhere. It could be around the lung, but they can't tell that yet because it's in a bunch of fluid and collapsed. It could also be somewhere in my GI tract, but they don't want to put me under anesthesia while I'm having trouble breathing to begin with in order to do the tests to find GI bleeding.

They admitted me and told me I'd be here at least a couple of days (sat is the soonest I could go home). I talked to a pulmenologist and the GI guy. The lung guy is giving me some vitamin K supplements to get my blood level up so they can suck the fluid off of my lung in the morning. Then the lung should re-inflate pretty instantaneously. He thinks I have an infarction which means the blood clot got lodged in a vessel which caused a bit of the lung to die which was irritating and caused all the fluid to build up and collapse the lung. He said this would cause my fevers if it was the case. He also said once the fluid is gone (which he said was a LOT whereas my dr said it was hardly any) I will start feeling better almost right away. :) I don't want to get my hopes up, but yay! Also once the lung is inflated then I'll start hacking up whatever was stuck in there and they'll be able to tell from that if it was actually infected (pneumonia) or not.

Then while my lung is ok and I'm off the blood thinners, the GI guy wants to do some endo-something where they put me under and run a camera down into my stomach to check things out.

So that's what's on the agenda for today. Hopefully nothing will hurt too bad and we'll get some answers. Thanks for your prayers.

23 Weeks (1 day)

23 Weeks
Taken 7/22/10

I'm actually posting 'real' belly shots for the first time this pregnancy. I hadn't because, well, I've got stretch marks and then some more on top of the old ones and it just isn't pretty. Now I figure, who really cares? Nobody except me, I'm sure, so whatever.

I'm 23 weeks along and feeling Nola move a ton. She jumps around, punches, kicks, etc all the time. You can even see it from the outside now, it's great. Tony's felt her move a number of times and watched it from the outside too. It's so exciting to be constantly reminded that she's growing, developing, and still alive in there.

I stopped bleeding about a week ago. I was hesitant to say anything because I figured it would just start up again, but it hasn't. I'm thinking this is probably a good thing, but it also means the remaining clot isn't passing, but it might just be reabsorbed into my body. Our ultrasound is on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to seeing if the clot has grown, shrunk, stayed the same, or gone away. I'm guessing the placenta will just keep moving away from the cervix, so I hope I'm right about that.

Embry: sleeping in her big girl room is going great! She even got into bed all my herself the other night without me plopping her down in there. We need to move her bed so there's more wall space and then I'd like to move the bookshelf out of the nursery and into her room and paint it pink. I've been working on potty training her the past couple of days...it's umm interesting. She had started telling us when she'd poop and pee about a week ago, so I figured now was as good of a time as any to see if we could make some progress. She hasn't peed in the potty at all yet, only on the floor, but she did poop in the potty once. It was more of an accident than anything, but I still made a huge deal of it and gave her m&m's. She looked at me, made a weird face, said poopy and I quick threw her on the potty and out it came. She was actually a bit shocked I think. Then she warmed up once I started clapping and cheering, etc. She tells me when she's going or when she just went, but not beforehand...I guess that's the whole point of potty training.

Update #2 (18 weeks)

Went in for my OB appt this morning. Tony came home from work and picked me up. The dr measured my uterus and listened for the heartbeat with the Doppler. She found the heartbeat pretty quickly after Nola kicked the monitor a couple times. Tony breathed a sigh of relief.

I asked the dr a bunch of questions. Here's what we found out. The bright red bleeding was most likely the edge of the placenta separating from the cervix as the uterus grew or could have been caused by some trauma. She didn't seem very concerned about the blood clots because now I'm having dark brown spotting which would indicate that the clots are slowly dissolving. She said I could gradually increase my activity too. Swimming, walking, picking up Embry are all ok as long as there's no more bright red blood. If there is, then it's back on bed rest. Basically I shouldn't do anything to jar, jiggle, or disturb my placenta as the uterus continues to grow.

I asked her if she could give me a percentage of people who have this same issue and have a good outcome. She said that knowing what we know now and having the time passed that has, she'd estimate I have a 99% chance of a good outcome. So hallelujah! That is such a relief!

I'm going in again in a week to hear the heartbeat and just check in with the dr. It didn't take much convincing for her to push up my ultrasound because she wants me to have peace of mind. So we should be going in for another one around July 6 which will be 3 weeks after the last one. Basically it will be to check if the clots are shrinking and mostly to see if the placenta has moved away from the cervix.

She also said my lack of weight gain is fine since the uterus and baby Nola are measuring right on target. She asked if I was eating a lot and I reassured her that, yes, I am eating a TON of food. Tony also agreed, haha. He knows I can really pack it away if I want to!

So all in all, things are going really well and we couldn't be happier. I feel so blessed.