Status Update

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, just a regular check-in. I love my doctors, as I've mentioned before, but my check-ups are always a little roller-coasterish just because of the various complications fate has seen fit to send my way. This one was no exception. Here's the rundown:

- I'm still losing weight - over 15 lbs since I first got knocked up. Who knew pregancy could be such a successful diet plan? While this isn't ideal, my doctor says she's not going to worry about it too much as long as my belly is growing, which it is.

- My blood pressure was down some. Normally, it gets taken two times: once sitting up, like normal, and then when that reading is so high it's stupid, they have me lie down on my side and take it again that way. The last appointment I had, my sitting-up reading was something like 165/105 (normal is 120/80, for context), and even my lying down reading was 130/95 or something. NOT GOOD. This time, however, my sitting-up reading was 140/74, and my lying-down reading was 115/56. This made my doctor very happy. If it stays in that range, I won't have to go on blood pressure medication, which would be nice. The (slightly) ominous bit: when my second reading was so low, my doc joked, "can you just lie down for the next 20 weeks?" To which I joked back, "if you'll write me a note to get out of work, SURE!" To which she responded, seriously, "That may happen." Erk. I'm pretty good at amusing myself, but bedrest for any longer than a week sounds sort of really awful. We'll hope it doesn't come to that.

- The docs are still quite worried about the possibility of me developing preeclampsia. Actually, I believe my doctor's exact words were, "you're pretty much set up for it." Preeclampsia, for those of you who aren't undergoing a stupid high-risk pregnancy, is a serious medical condition where your blood pressure goes out of control, your kidneys get overwhelmed and you start leaking protein in your urine, you swell up like a balloon and rapidly gain weight. If it advances it can even be fatal, although this is rare. The only "cure" for it is to deliver the baby, so the tricky bit is if it sets in too early for the kid to survive outside the womb. Now here's the fun part: some of the risk factors for preeclampsia include first-time pregnancy, obesity, elevated blood pressure, and diabetes! Check, check, check, and check! So you can see where they'd want to keep an eye on me for that. Frankly, preeclampsia scares the bloody bejeezus out of me, so I'm just trying to forget I even know what it is. Keeping the blood pressure down will help a lot, so I'm doing all I can to make that happen. Now if I can just convince Mr. Squab that this is a legitimate reason to get weekly massages ...

- Interesting tidbit: gestational diabetes has a tendency to make the fetus grow too big (the baby gets fat from all the extra sugar in your blood), but hypertension can have the effect of making the baby small. So ... here's hoping for a happy medium?

- And finally, we're going in for a level II ultrasound next week. Should be fun to see Hoss again, and hopefully we'll get to take home some pictures. If we do, I'll post them for you all to see.