Destined to be famous

 

 

I'm sure a majority of my readers don't think things are too out of the ordinary when I post things like "guess the connection," I'm sure this is no exception. You may ask yourself why I have a sudden interest in Dawn Wells, Erin Moran, Zac Efron, Mike Ditka, Lindsey Vonn, and Jean Claude Van Damme, followed by pictures of Matt, myself, and a shot of my late father, David Basch.

There's one major connection, and no, it isn't beauty, although they all OBVIOUSLY possess it. Is it overall talent? Perhaps. 

Give up yet?

All of the celebrities listed, as well as, Pam Dawber, Peter Boyle, Martina Navratilova, and I'm sure a few others, all share birthdays on October 18th. Matt, myself, and my dad share 18th's as well, May, January, and March.

Yep, we're having our little girl on Monday October 18th and we can't wait to meet her! Countdown is on! We got approved by our OBGYN today for surgery that day but we dont know what time yet, likely early morning. Hooray for plans, says the planner!

Juding by the people she shares her birthday with, we think she's destined to be famous!

Down They Go!

LABS ARE NORMAL!!!!

AST is 17, ALT is 46. Both are finally within their normal limits, 5-50.

As far as I know, labs will continue to get drawn twice a week. MFM and OBGYN have made no indications that our routine will change before baby comes.

Since MFM wants baby girl to come around 37 weeks, I've requested that I get my c-section on October 18th. Essentially since this will be a "routine, scheduled c-section", the date gets cleared with Dr. Shumate and he or his nurse will be in touch with me next week to see if I got approved for the date. Given baby's umbilical varix, they won't let me go past 38 weeks, so 37 is a good compromise since MFM wanted to deliver sometime between 36 and 38 weeks. I'm more than ready to be done.

If I had still been admitted and we stuck with our old plan, baby would be coming tomorrow. Developmentally, I'm glad she's still growing in utero and getting her nutrients from me, but physically, I'm done. My heartburn and difficulty sleeping has dramatically increased. My fabulous midwife, Shana, said heartburn worsens with breech babies, but she was kind enough to give me some prescriptions for some reflux meds and something to help me sleep at night, benadryl isn't cutting it anymore.

Nothing else to report. I attempted to put together a bouncy seat for the baby today, it was easier said than done and essentially looks right, but Matt will have to give it a once over before I consider it good to go. More baby news coming next week, she'll get remeasured via ultrasound and we'll find out if we have our birth day. Finger's crossed for the 18th, please.

Have a great weekend,

Matt, Rach, and baby

Healing at home!

I've always been a person who thought people heal best when they're in their own comfortable and familiar environment. My body might agree with me.

I was shocked to hear that my ASTs are for the first time in 2.5 weeks in the "normal" range! I was at 30 today, compared to 111 last Thursday. An extra shock, my ALTs are now at 120, down 200 points from last week!

Whether this is coincidence and they would have dropped like this in the hospital, I'm not quite sure, but I think its being at home that has done the trick!

Look at that drop!!!

New Weekly Rituals: Dr's appts!

We began our Monday with our new ritual: multiple doctor's visits. Fun fun fun!

Each week until baby comes, we'll see maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) early in the week for BPPs (biophyiscal profile, ultrasound) and lab work, followed by a "regular" office visit on Fridays with Dr. Shumate or one of my midwives for an NST (non stress test, me sitting for 20-30 minutes while baby's heartrate is monitored) and labs.

Since today was our first follow up, we had a few questions regarding the frequency of labs and frequency of visits, especially since in the 3rd trimester, patients are seen by their providers more frequently. We ended up cancelling a "routine" appointment with a midwife for this afternoon since I just got done seeing MFM and the appt seemed a bit redundant and unnecessary, and I'd be seeing a midwife at my NST appointment this coming Friday.

Baby was on her best behavior today and got her 8/8 points almost immediately during the scan. She demonstrated breathing movements and was just squirmy enough that they were able to see her tone and movements well. She is still breach (yay!), this week she's Frank Breach, meaning she is butt down. Last week she was footling breach with her feet down. Her position of choice is her head under my right rib and her face looking left with her feet pointing left as well. Since she moved a bit, I've been more comfortable as the foot jabs on my bladder were extremely unpleasant. She'll get measured again next week for her weight but her fluid levels and blood flow looked great today. Also promising news, the umbilical vein varix wasn't viewable today, so either it resolved or is very minor. I was instructed to continue baby aspirin but told that if I didn't take it every day, it would be ok.

MFM wants me delivered at 37 weeks, which is great because we're hoping for 10-18 so we can all share birthdays on the 18th of something. 10-18 would be 37 weeks and 2 days and as it turns out, Dr Shumate is on call so he'd be doing my surgery. I have the utmost confidence in all of the doctors in the practice, but he really is my favorite and I feel most comfortable with him since he's been following my case so closely. As the days progress, the likelihood of the baby suddenly shifting is very small, especially since she's been in her spot for almost 4 weeks. We'll look into actually getting on the OR schedule for the 18th as it gets closer, but thats where we're looking for delivery.

So thats our updated baby news, Mondays we'll see MFM and Fridays we'll see our incredible midwives with labs at each visit. Certainly if my labs drastically change, so could our plans, but things appear to be stable yet high. Today we got labs and my flu shot out of the way, now if I could only face IVs as easily.

Hope everyone has a great week!
Love,
Matt, Rach, and the nameless wonder

Baby Shower!



My former bridal party, minus the lovely Randi!



Today we spent a few hours celebrating our upcoming arrival with some of our closest friends at our favorite pub, the Wilde Rover. We're also continuing to celebrate my freedom from the hospital! We had a great time exchanging stories with our friends and we definately scored with many baby gifts! We loved spending time (outside of the hospital) with our awesome friends and sharing a good meal with the beers flowing! 

Thanks to everyone for coming out and spoiling our little girl rotten with clothes, toys, and books!  



Parents to be!

Cupcake Royale, worth every penny!

Our crew! Dan, Matt and I, Bill, Makayle, Cami and Todd, Nathan, part of Bruce, Rob, Court and Anne

Who needs a tu-tu?

We like books!

We also like tiny accessories!



Jenna, Bets, Courtney and I



Free at last, Free at last!!!!!!!!!

Yes folks, you read it right, we are HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our maternal-fetal medicine doctor told me this morning that she was toying with the idea of sending me home and I pretty much looked at her blankly, partly in shock, partly in disbelief. They had told me day in and day out that I wasn't going anywhere, so this came as quite the surprise. She said she thought since I was stably-unstable, they can monitor me from home and through close follow up. I didn't really get my hopes up but called and woke Matt and told him the potential news, I'm not sure he believed it either. I didn't hear anything for most of the day and the OBGYN had already visited me by the time Betina (Dr Paek) had told me her thoughts. She said she'd consult with OBGYN to see if they had any objections and get back to me.

I had a decent day planned, my waxing gal oh so kindly made a hospital call and I was looking forward to a visit from Randi and Landon, who ended up surprising me and bringing baby Chase, who I scooped up and cuddled the entire visit.

Near the end of chatting with Randi, Dr Wells, the on call for OBGYN came in and said I was free. I hadn't heard anything prior that was in any way official so I pretty much freaked and danced around with Chase-man cuddling on my shoulder and squealed a bit with Randi. It was awesome to share such a happy and unexpected moment with her and the boys, and Matt of course.

I don't think Dr. Wells had finished her sentence before Matt was packing the room like a mad man. I thought we had done decently trying not to accumulate too much, but 16 days in a hospital, you accumulate a lot of crap. We took 2 trips to the truck with the cart overflowing with clothes, gifts, flat screen tv, xbox, you name it, we had it. Within 30 minutes of hearing from Dr Wells that we were good to go, we had the room packed and were heading out to freedom!

It still seems a bit surreal that I've spend the last 16 days away from home and stuck in the hospital. To our AMAZING and INCREDIBLE friends and family, WE COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS AND SURVIVED WITHOUT YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The food, the visits, the cards, the phone calls and text messages, it kept Matt and I both going and we feel so loved and so lucky to be bringing our baby girl into such an amazing family.

I'm excited to be home and get to working on projects like unpacking, restocking our poor fridge, doing baby and my own laundry, and normal activities. I'm NOT on bedrest, I am still not allowed to go to the gym but I can run errands and go places like I normally would with the understanding that I'm not to run a marathon..... Follow-up will be very closely monitored, I get labs done tomorrow, a baby non stress test (aka NST, me sitting still for 45 minutes while they monitor baby) and a visit with Dr. Shumate on Friday, and Monday I'll have an appointment with maternal-fetal medicine for a BPP (the ultrasound). I don't know if I'm doing weekly labs or every few days but I'll find out on Friday. I'm excited that I didn't cancel our room at our favorite pub for our baby shower since I now actually get to attend. The shower is Sunday and we're excited!!! Getting back to normal will be great for Matt, myself, and the nameless baby. Matt heads back to work tomorrow.

With this new news, we won't be delivering baby early UNLESS something goes crazy between now and October-ish. Since she's been so stable and they'd like to avoid NICU time (us too), I think they'll let her bake until 36 or 37 weeks. Since she has the varicosity in her cord, they won't let her go past 38 and I dont think they'll let me go that long anyways, so delivery is TBD. We might not have a libra afterall, but maybe we'll get lucky and get to deliver her on 10-18 so Matt, myself, and the baby can all share birthdays on an 18th, which I think would be cool.

Back to normal life we go, and we couldn't be happier!

Thank you all for your well wishes and support!
We love you,
Matt, Rachel, and the nameless wonder

Uno!

I got schooled in playing uno by a 3 and a 5 year old, thank you very much Hailey and Tyler Quiggle for letting me win at least one round! Val, thanks for bringing the kids over and giving me the soaps, they're amazing!!!

Today has been low key thus far, I enjoyed my visitors shortly after coming back from my weekly BPP (biophysical profile, aka ultrasound). Today's scan took longer than most as the sonographers only do measurements every other week. Baby continues to look great and pass her scans earning the 10 points possible. They were kind enough to humor me and get some new 3D shots. Nothing too new with baby, she looks great and is now at a healthy (for a 32 weeker) 4lbs 6 oz. The only thing that MFM mentioned to me was that baby has an umbilical vein varicosity which is essentially like a varicose vein in her umbilical cord. It can be harmless but to be safe and prevent blood clots, they're starting me on baby aspirin tomorrow. Wow, 2 weeks in and its the first "med" I've been on aside from prenatals and folate and my beloved ambien. MFM said this is common and not a concern but they'd put me on a med to be safe. Fine by me, whats one more random thing to take in the morning.

No other news to report. Baby is still breach, not frank anymore but footling, which explains why I've had what I call nerve zingers near my sciatica and down my legs at time. Her feet are low so when she's stretching and squirming, they're pushing down instead of to one side or another. Not pleasant but not terrible. Her head is still happily under my right rib and her back is to my left side.

Enjoy the pictures of our little chunky monkey, I'm pretty sure all of her weight is in her cheeks...... like mother like daughter I suppose......



Admission day 8/31, 30 weeks 3 days, 3lbs 14 oz





9/14 32 weeks 3 days, 4lbs 6 oz



why does this shadow make her look like she has an Afro?

 

Hotel Evergreen

Well, we're heading into our 3rd, yes 3rd week here. We've officially been in the hospital longer than we spent on our honeymoon, pathetic, huh?
Labs have been essentially improving, but not enough for anyone to entertain the idea of sending me home, I'm still stuck. All of my physicians have been pleased that my numbers haven't increased in the last 4 or 5 days but they aren't going down quickly. My ALT has been 307 for 3 days, a vast improvement from my day at 450, but its upper limit is 50 so I'm still way above where I should be. My AST has been stable hovering around 106-113, but that should only be 40 at its highest. My other labs continue to be normal, every now and then my platelets are low but we're sure thats based on my hydration levels. I did "graduate" a few days ago (things have melted together so I'm not sure if I mentioned this before) to once daily labs instead of twice a day. My veins appreciate the break. I've been enjoying my resitance bands but my antecubes have been so sore from the constant sticks so I haven't done as many biceps as I'd like to.

I'm still a medical mystery to my many specialists and although I've enjoyed getting to know them, I'm hoping some will once again fade out. I went through a few days when GI and ID seemed to be done and they came back retesting for things that I didn't feel was necessary. I had a "come to Jesus" meeting with MFM who are the ones calling the shots here and I pretty much said I wasn't interested in having crazy send out labs done anymore or get tested for things that I didn't have symptoms for. They were pretty understanding and said I can decline whatever I dont want in terms of testing or non OB scans. GI wanted to send out genetic tests to Ohio and Texas and I wasn't on board with the tests in general, particularly since the results wouldn't be back for 3 weeks and I wouldn't be inpatient or pregnant by that time. Also contributing to my decision making, knowing insurance doesn't cover the crazy stuff! It seemed odd to me that 2 weeks into my stay they started investigating other tests, if they had truly been suspicious that I needed the tests done, they would have been done weeks ago.

Baby, per normal, has been great and active. I had a few too many contractions during a monitoring session last night but we think I had been dehydrated. I pushed more water today and haven't felt any nor have any clear ones shown up on my monitoring strips. My sciatica is back a little bit and I've had some minor nose bleeds due to the dry air in my room and the hospital in general but I really dont have any physical complaints.

Our visitors continue to keep us going and keep us somewhat sane, bringing baby clothes, toys, food and drinks for us, and toddlers for entertainment.

I'll hopefully update in a few days with some new info or something exciting. Maybe tomorrow we'll have a new ultrasound picture, Tuesdays are our BPP days and we'll get a better idea of how big the baby is.

Hope all is well with everyone.

~Matt, Rach, and the nameless baby

Friday night

Aside from not being able to get my sushi myself, thanks Martha, our Friday night is shaping up to be pretty close to Friday nights at home.

Hot Tub Time Machine, boys in recliners, popcorn, sodas, candy. .........The only real difference is the guys are sharing the popcorn in an emesis basin. This stuff doesn't phase me, we used to make "ER dip" in kidney basins with salsa and sour cream and it did look pretty questionable, but thats half the fun. Perhaps that'll be our appetizer in a few days.For future reference or if anyone gets stuck in a hospital,  kidney basins are good cereal bowls, and the pink pitchers that are all over hospitals are good for distributing salad dressing or sauce on tuna poke, sterile cups are great for snacks when you want to watch your portions, they're also great for travelling, good seal for shampoos and conditioners, and best of all, they're sterile! If you're really twisted, pour apple juice in a sterile cup, and unscrew it and drink it in front of your nurse in case you want to mess with her, it looks just like urine! Ha! Its all about being resourceful and a little bit adventurous.

babybel cheese wax wrapper, Matt knows how much I love clowns..... I'm pretending he's being Rudolph instead

its popcorn, not puke. Boys are funny.

Feng Shui, Routines, and Restistance Training via children

The days have long since begun to blur together in the 10 days we've been here. Each day has settled into a pretty decent routine. I get up for the day between 0900 and 1030, depending on when the doctor's round or when visitors drop by. Matt normally heads in around noon or 1300. I laze around for a bit before showering, doing hair and makeup, getting dressed and tidying the room. Visitors begin to trickle in normally around 0900. I get visited by my many specialists through out the day but at this point since the insane tests they've run have come back negative, they're really more of social visits. I'm certainly not their typical patient in any sense of the word, but I think its entertaining for them to care for some one as stubborn and challenging as me, but someone who is also a challenge to figure out medically. That being said, I'm likely the healthiest severly preeclamptic patient they've ever seen. Particularly GI and ID, they really do see sick people of all ages but GI said he enjoys me because I'm not demented..... we're waiting on a second oppinion.

Today begun like any other, lab came in bright and early and stuck me. I got my monitoring out of the way, stayed up a bit and went back to sleep. I was pleased to hear that my LFTs went down a bit, but still not within clinically significant ranges. Even if the labs continued to go down, they'll still keep me here and continue with delivery on the 25th because the labs are quadruple what they should be and incrementally, they wont go down enough before delivery, should the trend continue. My platelets were lower than normal today, which is more consistent with normal preeclampsia, so that prompted MFM to draw a second CBC this afternoon to check my platelets again. Per my normal lab anomolies, this afternoon my platelets were once again normal. They didn't run any LFTs on the afternoon labs which I was disappointed at as I wanted to see if they still trended upwards in the evening. They seem to like the consistentcy of morning labs so they can see trends and make sure my labs are back before everyone rounds. As far as some of the send out labs that ID ordered, they all came back normal which continues to point the finger at preeclampsia for my diagnosis. My ID doc, Dr. Reido, continues to think I look too healthy to be here and says he'd send me home but no one will let him.

Dr Shumate came by this morning, and its pretty pathetic when you get happy to see "your" doctor after he had been off for a few days. He continues to be baffled by me and like so many other of my specialists, he can't answer the many questions I have about after delivery, so much is dependent on how the baby does. We did chat about her size and I was hoping she'd hit 5lbs but he is thinking 4.5 since at this stage, babies only gain .5lb a week and with 2 weeks to go, I dont think she'll make the 5lb milestone while in utero. Everyone continues to say that 4 something is just fine and I'm learning to accept that. Funny how I had been freaking out the entire pregnancy that I'd have a baby as large as I was (9.4) and I'm definately not having that same worry now!

Other than routine visits, my activity of the day was rearranging our room, its very feng shui now! Nathan and Makayle ever so graciously lent us a flat screen so we've opened a lot of space in the room by moving the bed and my monitor so there's room for xboxing! Matt may never go home now that I have our laptop AND the xbox.

We had some fun visitors today per normal. An old friend from the ED came by and it was great to catch up. Candice brought the kiddos over and brought us some adorable baby clothes. Matt seemed to enjoy playing with Elijah and Ari. He had Elijah whipping my resitance bands at him and holding him and trying to get him to run. You want an extra challenge with bands? Put a 3 year old on the end of them! We had a few injuries during the visit, nothing overly worrisome, no blood loss, and like Candice said, he cried for one entire minute and moved on. Its amazing what distractions and graham crackers will fix. Matt spent part of the day at home getting laundry done and tidying (I think/hope) at home. He's been awesome about getting the random things I demand and bringing tons of stuff back and forth.

Nothing overly exciting test or visit wise is planned for the next few days and into the weekend. I dont have another BPP until Tuesday. Matt's off for the next week and will return to work for 3 days and then begin his time off. At this point with not knowing how long baby will be in NICU, we're not sure how long he'll take but are very thankful that he could take 12 weeks if he wanted or needed to.

Here's a few pictures from the last few days that might entertain. Hope everyone is well!

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!

Negatively Positive

You know you've been hospitalized too long when not only does your husband decide to graph your upwardly trending labs on an excel spreadsheet, but you both find it entertaining to try and predict the next round of numbers. Comical, yet more so pathetic. My ALT (red line labs) continues to beat itself for personal best each evening, last night Matt even guessed spot on what my number was. We're considering buying a loto ticket or betting on horses. Although the AST (blue line) hasn't been as dramatic, indicated by our handy dandy little graph, it too is on the rise.

my little liver


Matt seems to think that based on our "data collected" that we can predict with this trend what my labs will be in a week. While the evidence is clearly in front of me, I'm still hoping for a significant enough drop that they might trend downward. He's not as optimistic. With the recent spikes in my ALT, I've been expecting the attendings to be more proactive and potentially aggressive with decision making but they simply continue to monitor me as this is some odd mystery that isn't automatically medicated. Hard to medicate when you dont know what you're trying to treat or prevent, and when all other determining labs are wonderfully at their baseline.

From what I gather, it sounds like decision making about decisions will be late Wednesday or Thursday, thats not at all saying I'll be heading home on those days but maybe we'll have a plan of attack. Today, once I wake up again after my morning awake time and going back to sleep time, I'll have a BPP done with MFM. I know you guys love all the random letters, half of the time I use them, I dont know what they mean. BPP is biophysical profile and its essentially an ultrasound that collects multiple pieces of diagnostic info and gives the baby a score, out of 10, based on what has been collected. Baby will get a score based on her tone, breathing movements, body movements, reactive heart rate (whether she's having normal accelerations and decelerations within range), and measuring fluid levels. The first day here we had a BPP and I dont know what the score was but she did well. I was in my mag-coma so I didn't know that we were doing anything other than a routine ultrasound so I wasn't paying attention. I did hear them say 70% percentile and looking good though. The attending physician has once again become my favorite person and is ordering my 3rd 24-hour urine collection to test for proteins as well. It seems like the team of OBGYNs will let MFM (maternal-fetal medicine) guide them as to what to do from here based on the BPP, next 24 hour urine (results would be Wednesday), and my consistently inconsistent labs. I'm honestly not sure how long they'll keep me in the hospital for this monitoring. I agree and appreciate with the need to be cautious as this can turn bad quickly but I can still have all of this testing done outpatient and only need to do office visits 3-5 times a week for my labs, NSTs (non stress tests, essentially sitting with baby on the monitor), and a once weekly BPP, thats component is an NST so I've already killed 2 birds with one stone on that one.

Baby has continued to be solid as a rock in terms of her monitoring and activity. I haven't contracted (that I felt or was monitored) in a day or two. Relatively no physical complaints on my part either. Every now and then I get headaches that I report to my nurse and each time, my BPs been fine. I had a very sore back yesterday, and thus far, back and musculoskeletal pain has been more painful being here than anything else. I can't wait to take NSAIDs like advil again, Tylenol just doesn't do the trick. I get occasional RUQ pain as I've blogged before but its infrequent for the most part and practitioners can't quite decide if my liver is flaring, considering my enzymes are so high, or if its because baby's head has been near my liver and gallbladder causing discomfort. Particularly with today's BPP, I'm interested to see if she remains breech or if she's turned. Its very week by week with this young lady, on a lot of levels. She has 5 or so more weeks that she can turn multiple times, so whether we're looking at a c-section or normal vaginal delivery, I don't know. They both are scary to me, but for some reason I'm more "okay" with the idea of a c-section because its planned and I dont have to labor for it. People think its funny that I'm less afraid of major surgery than normal delivery, but its just how I feel about it. Clearly the baby will make the decision on that by turning or not turning. They have been impressive about convincing me that I do get to gym sooner after a normal delivery than a c-section, and get to go home sooner post partum.

I'm entirely optimistic that they will let me go home at some point, but my midwife and OBGYN and I are in total agreement that once I'm home and I'm in for one of my newly routined activities like BPP or a lab, something will be off kilter enough for readmission and delivery. No one has any idea when this might take place. Clearly we want the baby to stay in as long as she can but we've made good progress and have bought her a week since arrival so she's more equipped to handle the outside world now than she was upon admission.  I'm just not sure how long they'll allow my LFTs to escalate for my benefit. I need my liver to function, I have Uncle Dan's sangria to drink when the baby is finally born!

We'll see what today brings in terms of any potential answers! I've given up on good news which is a little sad but we're so used to hearing, you look great, you feel great, your levels are terrible but we're not going to do anything for them, baby's great, but you can't leave. Matt gets a "break" tomorrow and he'll work his 1 scheduled shift for the week. He had planned his annual guys trip to Crescent Bar so he took 3 work days off to go over to Eastern Washington, but with everything so up in the air, I can't convince him to go, although I think he needs the time away from the hospital and the monotony here. He'll work Wednesday and presumably spend half the day here anyways! Since he was scheduled to be off work for the duration of his work set, we'll be able to have some time to see what decisions are being made before he heads back next Thursday. The PD has been great about being accommodating for him, if decisions get made about when the baby will come, he'll begin is FMLA then, until that time, its a day by day experience.

How we pass the time in the hospital......

No officers, friends, family, or children were harmed in the taking of these photos, just posed and humiliated.