Never a Dull Moment

There has never been a dull moment with Baby J! A nurse totally called it when we were in the hospital at 26 weeks. She said babies with low placentas are special because they almost didn't exist, but at the last minute, they decided to hang on and be a baby instead of a period. She also said, from the way he was kicking and squirming already, he was going to be quite the handful and would demand our attention all of the time. I think this is absolutely true. He has been perfectly healthy, but I feel like I bled just enough to be forced to relax and focus on him from 26 weeks to 34 weeks, then as soon as I was able to be on my feet, doing things around the house and running supervised errands with Ryan, my blood pressure began to rise just enough for me to have to relax again and focus on him again. For the last few weeks, we've been able to see him on sonograms and hear his little heart beat at least twice a week during non-stress tests.

Yesterday morning, we settled in to have my blood pressure, baby's heart rate, and my contractions monitored for 30 minutes. Baby's heart was great and we had a few sporadic contractions, but my blood pressure readings were troubling. My normal BP is 120/80, but between 7:45am and 8:15am, I had the following readings: 138/84, 128/94, and 134/94. Not good. Fortunately, I'm not showing any other symptoms of preeclampsia, but the specialist thought it's probably hypertension and wanted to see what my OB thought at our appointment with her later that morning. Our ultrasound showed a great level of amniotic fluid, a big active baby, and an aging placenta which looks like it belongs to a mature 39-week-old baby. With my blood pressure, baby's size, and state of the placenta, the specialist thought it wouldn't be likely that we would be pregnant beyond the 38th week.

We left that appointment, got some breakfast at the hospital cafeteria, and went to our second appointment of the day with the orthopedic specialist to check on my floating thumb. Everything looked good there so we headed up to our OB appointment. After spending a good amount of time relaxing in the waiting room and drinking plenty of water, my BP was 140/100! The appointment pretty much ended right there and we were sent up to labor and delivery (for what is now our third visit!) to have my BP monitored for a few hours and do some other labs.

We were freaking out that we might end up delivering that day; not at all what we expected when we woke up in the morning! During my pelvic exam, we learned that I was already 50% effaced and 3 cm dilated! I'd been having sporadic contractions but they hadn't been painful, so that was surprising as well. Our nurse commented that, in case we needed it, the hardest part of having an induction was already over since I was already at 3.

My lab results were all good; no signs of preeclampsia. My blood pressure improved, but wasn't great, when I laid on my side and my contractions remained sporadic. Giving consideration to my unstable blood pressure, aging placenta, baby's size, good lab results, and progress already made toward delivery, my OB and specialist decided it would be best to come back on Monday to be induced if labor didn't intensify on it's own over the weekend. Yesterday was definitely eventful, but Monday will bring us the most eventful day of all! We are so excited (and nervous) to meet our baby boy! We can't believe we'll be parents next week!