So pregnancy for me is typically a breeze, until the third trimester…
Now that I’m in the third tri, all of the issues start cropping up. For Juneau (born when I was 35), I had pre-eclampsia (PIH) at 36 weeks and was induced at 37 weeks because my blood pressure was high. At least I had been somewhat dilated, so I don’t think I would have been much farther beyond that. For Orinoco (born when I was 37), I didn’t have high blood pressure. However, at 32 weeks, I was sitting in my midterm review one day before my last day of teaching and I had like 50 contractions. I went to the Dr. that night and was put on bedrest and procardia until week 36, because of a positive fetal fibronectin test. I came off of all of that and made it to 38 weeks and 3 days, when my water broke. She was born that night. With this one, I started the contractions at week 27. However, these proved to be doing nothing, just a nuisance, but contracting every 2-5 minutes on a regular basis. They told me to take it easy, then advised pelvic rest, modified bed rest, and then at week 31, I was in the hospital for all the contractions, and despite having repeated negative fetal fibronectin tests, a long cervix (4-5cm) etc., they want to treat me for pre-term labor. So I was sent home on strict bedrest and told to take procardia 4x a day. This was later modified to as needed, and I’m taking it 1-2 x a day, when I have contractions more than 6 in an hour. It’s all very annoying of course. Bed rest is very difficult, especially when all the science seems to indicate that there is no proof that it works. I asked my perinatologist about this, and he said that all the Doctors still use it, and that it appears to be working. This in fact is true. Instead of having contractions very frequently, I probably have less than 10 a day. I do have a hospital table, and am using my computer pretty regularly. But it’s physically tiring to being in the same position all day all day long. Luckily I got a new Windows Surface Pro to keep me busy.
So I mentioned pregnancy is a breeze, but that’s if you don’t count gestational diabetes as a problem. I have had it with all three pregnancies, last time starting treatment at 8 weeks, and this time at 12 weeks. This was really hard the first time, but frankly I’m getting used to it at this point and will certainly try to stay to this diet after birth (the best laid plans). This time I’m on glyburide 12.5mg. The first time I managed with diet, and the second time I was on insulin, which was very hard. I gained a lot of weight, and was always hungry and struggling with low blood sugar.
