First Visit to L&D

I had an appointment on Monday, and after looking at my blood pressure numbers from the weekend, Dr. Sizemore decided that it was time to send me over to labor and delivery for some more extensive monitoring.  I was officially admitted to Williamson Medical Center for the first time since I broke my pinky finger in 1990.  :)

They hooked me up to the monitors (tracking contractions - none - and Baby James' heartrate - perfect) and took my blood pressure every 10-30 minutes for a few hours.  At first, when I was lying flat in the bed, my numbers were ridiculously low.  Like making me look like a hypochondriac low.  One of the readings was 116/66.  WTF?  Then I sat up in bed - not even all the way, something like 45 degrees - and the numbers bumped back up where they had been, somewhere around 140/mid-80's.  I at least felt validated then, like I wasn't totally crazy.  :)

They checked my pee for protein, still negative.  They ran bloodwork again, still fine.  At the moment, we are dealing with a diagnosis of gestational hypertension (similar to pre-e, but without the protein indicating that my kidneys are failing).  It may yet end up being pre-e again, but who knows.  There's not that much longer in the pregnancy for pre-e to develop!

After seeing my blood pressure level out, even though it was still up, they decided that I could go home, but I have to be stricter about my bedrest.  I'm still only on "modified" bed rest, meaning that I can get up to go to the bathroom, to shower, to move from the bed to the couch to the kitchen table (sitting in a chair, not lying on the table, silly), but I really don't need to be taking care of Becca on my own, and it was time to officially go on maternity leave and stop trying to work from home.

So that's where we are now.  Sitting around.  But that's okay.  Church has been great with my leave time, so with the vacation time I've saved up, I should still be able to spend James' first 3 months in the world at home with him, which is good.  We have decided to go ahead and bump up his delivery to 39 weeks, assuming he doesn't decide to come before then and that I stay stable enough that we don't have to take him before them, just so that I don't use up another week of my leave waiting for the possibility of going into labor and attempting a VBAC, especially since there is no indication that I would even go into labor before my due date.  (Cervix of steel, I've got.  One complication we don't worry about.  :) )  So I'm a little sad to probably have to let go of the possibility of a VBAC, but it wasn't like my life depended on it or anything.  In fact, my life may depend on not holding out for one.  It did last time around!  :)  It would have been nice to possibly have that experience and labor not be something else that prematurity took away from us, but, wow, we've gotten to experience SO much more normalcy in this pregnancy that I can certainly deal with not having to deal with contractions, etc.  I hear they aren't much fun, anyway.  :)