Sapphires and Libras

After a week of having relatively no clue about diagnosis and plans, we finally have a solid plan. Hooray, says the planner!

After reconsulting today with all of my specialists, GI, ID, MFM, OBGYN, and my awesome midwife, who is just along for the ride at this point, a decision has been made! Based on my labs increasing so much, they've decided that they'll deliver me at 34 weeks and have informed me that hotel Evergreen is my home until then. Certainly should an unstable situation arrise with the baby or myself, they'll deliver me earlier but we've both been so stable that they just decided on when to deliver, but not sure how yet. Baby continues to be frank breach so at this point I'm heading for a c-section on September 25th, and if she turns we'll attempt a normal delivery. I personally, am hoping for a c-section. I know the recovery is more of a challenge but I'd prefer a 20 minute procedure over a lengthy labor. So we have a birthday for our little girl! We'll have a little libra.

This news came as essentially a relief. I had been freaking out over not having a plan and not knowing what to expect, when I could go home, how long it might be for....yadda yadda yadda, but its bittersweet thinking I'm here for a few more weeks. I miss the comforts of home, the ability to go run errands, very simplistic events. Its been interesting learning to be not only reliant on others but accepting of everyone's willingness to not only help Matt and I but make this experience more tolerable and positive. Its crazy to think that the next time I go home, it'll just be Matt and I while little one stays in the NICU. I'm not sure how long she'll stay. Initially when we arrived and we discussed delivering a 30 weeker, they had mentioned a NICU stay of 4-6 weeks, but with a 34 weeker, I'd imagine a shorter stay as she's had more time to mature and gain weight.

I had my BPP done today and will have future scans on Tuesdays. Baby girl got 10/10 for her tone, heartrate, movement, NSTs, all the things they evaluate for. As I mentioned before, she is still breach so we'll be closely monitoring if she stays that way or not as it'll be the ultimate determinant for the type of delivery we'll have. The sonographer told me that the baby has hair which I didn't know you could see on ultrasound. I hope its managable! :)

As for labs, I'll now have labs done once a day versus twice and my veins are thankful. Physical therapy brought in resistance bands for me to play with and in doing my bicep curls, my ACs were so sore from the constant stabbings. ID and GI decided that there's a few more things like autoimmune disorders that they'd like to test for so they'll draw extra labs in the morning. It sounds like the doctor's clinical suspicions aren't high for these disorders but they figure'd they test for them anyways. They mentioned that I don't mean criteria for having most of the things they're testing for, but they'd test anyways. Its not like I'm being stuck anymore times than normal to test for them so they can go right ahead.

So thats our big news, we're moving in, at least I am. We're contemplating things to bring in to make the stay more comfortable, so far the only thing we've really considered is a TV so Matt can play xbox here. :) I'm trying to keep the clutter to a minimum so we're recycling things through a lot at home, its a good thing we live 5 minutes from the hospital.

Matt's heading to work for a day shift tomorrow, and although I love the man dearly, he needs some normalcy and a break from being in the hospital with me all day. Its boring for us both. We normally have coffee together, watch a movie, and wait for visitors. He had been scheduled to go to Eastern Washington with the guys for the weekend and while I can't convince him to go for the whole time, I might have him on board to go over night. He needs guy time and to just get away for a bit. He's been a trooper through this. He had was scheduled to be off for 3 our of 4 days of his work set so it doesn't impact his schedule much whether he goes or not. Next week, he'll work 3 days as he was scheduled to be off on one of his night shifts so we could have our baby shower at our local pub. We're now cancelling the festivities and potentially moving it to the family lounge on our floor. Not that we need an excuse to party, our friends have been here and super supportive each day. We've joked about "awarding" non family members with titles, earliest visitor, most frequent visitor, visitor with the most creative or though provoking gift.... We know it isn't always easy to not only get to the hospital for some, but be able to stay a while and visit, so we're thrilled that so many have been able to join us to cheer us up and get laughing about things.

Speaking of laughing, Matt had Nathan and I in stitches tonight. There's been a lot of new terminology and initials and accronyms for things so its understandable that we mix things up from time to time. Our first days here, Matt kept calling our unit ANTIpartum not ANTEpartum, and he kept forgetting the word for preeclampsia. He kept asking "what is it they think you have?". Tonight he was trying to describe one of our practitioners and was saying "Our wetnurse was in today...." the title he was looking for was MIDWIFE. He had said wetnurse and I looked at him like he was nuts and Nathan and I had to tell him that a wetnurse is a surrogate breastfeeder. It was pretty funny. Midwife, wetnurse, same thing, right? :)

So there you all have the most recent update on baby. We're moving in! I'll continue to blog about whatever events occur and if things should change but my main doctors dont think anything's going to change in the next 2 weeks. Countdown is on!