34 Weeks and Counting

Finally, as requested, I have posted a photo of "the bump" for all you to see. This was actually taken several weeks ago but I keep forgetting to put it up on the blog.

Yesterday we had our 34 week appointments with both the specialist and the regular doctors. At the regular doctor's office, in typical fashion, I was hooked up to the baby monitor/torture chamber and left alone in the usual discomfort. After a much shorter time than usual, the doc comes over, proclaims that the baby's monitoring is very satisfactory. I chalk this up to Ty & I finding the right chair/body positioning and adjustments of the monitors into the correct places that the staff could not seem to manage! He then proceeds to tell us that we could deliver in about 3 weeks, but being as adamant as I am that Lucanne should come into this world in her own time, this news not sit well with either myself or Ty. When asked by Ty about methods, the doc said that we could start by him manually breaking the water and wait to see what happens and if that doesn't work we could use meds to induce labor. Surprisingly c-section was not in his vocaulary at this time! Ty then asked him why we would induce labor and the doc's only response was to say that since we have worried about her this long why should we prolong the worry for the final 3 weeks. He did preface all this by saying that it really depended on what our fluid levels were doing.

I am sure some of you are asking , "Why wait for nature, when you have a doctor ready, willing and heartily able to speed things up for you?!" Well, the truth of it is this...babies know when they are supposed to come into the world. Besides, studies are now saying that labor induced by a doctor manually breaking the water tend to be more uncomfortable and are far more painful on mom; plus more medications are administered and these drugs can actually slow down the natural laboring processes. On average, induced active labor can be 3-4 times longer and harder than in a natural occuring labor. It is amazing what you can learn about when you have been on bed rest for nearly 5 months and have access to all the books Amazon and Barnes & Noble can sell you online!!

Immediately following the first appointment we went over to the hospital to see the specialist and have another high resolultion ultrasound. Right off the bat we see that Lucanne still looks to be right on target with her growth and all her organs appear to be functioning as they should. She now weighs in at 4lbs, 12ozs. I get nervous abouth the fluids, but am relieved to see that we are at 10.73cm. While this is actually lower than 2 weeks ago, it is only by 1 cm and to still be in double digits is a good sign. The specialist walks in and says she loves it when a baby proves her wrong like this!! She says we can safely consider this pregnancy a huge sucess, we should have no worries about carrying to full term, and she doesn't see any point in us continuing to go in for weekly monitoring. Both Ty and I chime in saying that our OB just advised us to induce in 3 weeks and ask her to make a point to tell him her opinions. She said it would be "ok" to deliver the baby at 37 weeks, but thought we were better off to "let her come on her own time". It is that time in pregnancy where I would normally be going in for weekly check ups and I am hopeful that we will now have some leverage to skip the weekly monitoring from here on out.

We feel it is good news all around at this time. Its playoff season for the Mammoth (LaCrosse), the Avs and the Nuggets and while they are are in good standings, we are in the home stretch and I am starting to get more and more excited to meet the little sparkplug that has been fighting against all the doctors' odds!

32 Weeks...only 8 more to go!!!

I apologize to all of you who were waiting to hear what has been happening with the pregnancy! I've been slacking on my blogging duties in order to take care of things that needed to be done in March. In the weeks since my last blog I've been relegated to returning to the specialist every 2 weeks for fluid measurements and weekly visits to the OB for baby monitoring. The monitoring is still just plain awful. My visit two weeks ago consisted of 45 minutes in the torture chair with a brief 20 second pop in of the doctor. In that 20 seconds he said that the pain I have been feeling whenever I move my left leg for the last several weeks could be a strain, sprain, dislocation or broken bones in my tailbone. Nothing to be done in any case but suffer through the pain and hope it gets better. It isn't uncommon for a baby's position to cause problems in the "S.I. Joint". And baby, let me tell you it isn't fun! That visit also didn't provide good test results, whether that meant that things looked bad on the results or that the results just didn't come out clear enough to make the doctor happy I still don't know. The week before that, at 30 weeks, we went to see the specialist and he had bad news. We dropped from 11 cm to 8 cm of fluid and they were starting to worry again.

Needless to say, little Lucanne had something more to prove to the doctors at 32 weeks! When we went in on Monday for our 32 week visit to the OB she kicked and bucked and probably would have hollered and screamed if she could be heard and the readings were more to the doc's liking. Minutes after leaving the doc's office she had more to say to the specialist! She had an increase of fluids to almost 12 cm and we were able to see her taking "practice" breaths on the ultrasound. It is such an amazing thing to watch that little lung expand and contract inside your own body. I have to admit that while all this bed rest has been a pain, both literally and figuratively, it has been well worth it to see the things we have seen in the ultrasounds!! We have seen the brain, all 4 chambers of the heart beating, the kidneys, the liver, and now have gotten to see the lungs actually working!!! I cannot begin to tell you all how that makes me feel. I had been worried about the fluids for two weeks and almost dreading going to see the specialist as much as the monitoring torture chamber at the OB's office. Our little miracle girl is proving to be such a fighter and I just know that despite all the OB's concerns about this, that, and the other thing, Lucanne will prove him wrong and we will make it all the way through to term without having to have a surgical delivery. My friend said today that karmic-ly I am on my way to an easy and swift delivery and easy first few months after all that I have been through with this pregnancy. I sure hope she is right!


Several people have been asking me about the baby's room and colors. We received a wonderful dragonfly crib bedding set from Herb & Kelly. We are still planning on painting the room in a Camelot Castle theme, but are adding the dragonflies to the design because castles were so hard to find where they didn't look like Disney cakes! (The crib bedding is cream with chocolate brown stripes and dots and light granny smith apple dragonfly bodies.)

Kevin & Kim have loaned us the bassinet that Kevin made when Hailey was born (and their Winnie the Pooh bedding set). We will be using the bassinet for at least the first few months so I won't have to run downstairs every 2 hours!

People are also asking about registries already. We are registered at www.jcpenny.com and www.babiesrus.com.

We are anxiously counting down to June 1 and pray that we have enough ticks left in the clock to prepare ourselves and the house for the coming of our little miracle baby. In the meantime I will try to be more diligent about updating the blog!! As always thanks to every one's support and good will!!!

Week 28

So yesterday we had an appointment with my regular OB doctor. I drank 6 ounces of what tasted like a flat cola but had the punch of a full pot of coffee after not having much sugar over the last 6 months. This vile liquid was for the gestational diabetes blood test that takes them a mere 6 seconds to do...but the sugar lasts for hours, and hours, and hours!!!

First, I must say that in typical healthcare fashion, we are made to wait for what seems like 20-30 minutes (after blood is drawn for the diabetes test) before we even hear the doctor's voice. When we do finally hear his voice in the hall we hear him say that he wants to do an ultrasound on me. The nurse's aid comes in and I emphatically tell her that we just had an ultrasound at the specialist's two weeks ago and don't understand why this doc would want to do another one when that doc said no more for a month. AND we were only scheduled to do a glucose test and a non-stress test. Of course she hasn't a clue, but more on that later...after several more minutes the doc comes in and moves us over to the non-stress test chair area not mentioning that he didn't remember why he asked us to schedule this appointment in the first place.

I am then told to sit in this torture device to have a baby monitor strapped to my belly by the world's most inept nurse's aid. This chair they put me in reminded me a bit of a dentist's chair, as it reclined backwards just enough to make me severly uncomfortable, but instead of a leg platform to elevate your legs this one had these leg braces placed at uncomfortable angles just like the stir-ups on the doctor's exam table. Add a lumpy pillow at my lumbar to push the belly outwards and the overly tight straps that are supposed to "hold" the monitors in place, if the nurse's aid had the slightest clue, and you have one very uncomfortable pregnant woman who just wants to poke the nurse's aid in the eye, run a marathon and/or jump over multiple story buildings from the excess sugar in her system! So here I am pushing the heart rate monitor into my belly with one hand while holding a plastic baton, similar to a nurse's call button on hospital bed, in the other hand with the expectation that I press this every time I feel the baby move and the nurse's aid has the audacity to ask me if I want a juice to help "activate" the baby some. What this uber-twit failed to tell me was that this was a fruit juice, with an additional 24 grams of sugar, not some medical miracle that stimulates a baby's movement for this test!!! (But, hey, she did say she actually saw my belly move with a kick from the baby.) All the while sitting in the corner of a dead-end hallway with just a flimsy cloth screen to block out the view from passers-by, my belly exposed with smears of blue goo from where she slid the monitor across (up and down, from side to side, trying to find the baby's heartbeat) rapidly cooling in the open air, listening to the chatter of the incredibly ignorant employees yucking it up and talking about the other patients and acting ridiculously unprofessional. Feeling terribly frightened that the future of our world lies in the medical hands of kids like the girls hired to work in my doctor's office.

All the while Ty is sitting in a chair next to me wondering why the doctor would say that he disagreed with the specialist's theory of "alls well that looks well" in the ultrasounds, and is now implying that these non-stress tests will show more than the all high resolution ultrasounds we have been subjected to for the last 2 1/2 months! He says the heart rate measured against the movement monitor will tell us more about the baby's condition and now he wants to have us do this WEEKLY because while these tests are so telling, they are really only good for telling a story of about one week at a time!!!!!

The doc comes back after 20-25 minutes of what amounts to pure mental and physical agony for me and says the measurements are positive and that we appear to even be getting the desired increase of 10-15 beats in heart rate when the baby moves (I can see with my own eyes that it isn't every time she moves, but he doesn't say this to us). So they send us on our merry little way and Ty heads out to work while I try to figure out how to counter the sugar high I am feeling...something not easily accomplished as I have now injested over 75 grams of sugar substances in a 2 hour period.

I try to counteract the sugar with a high dose of protein, but that just makes the baby kick, jump and move all around like a super athelete in my belly. I try going to the store to burn off the sugar and get a bit of shopping done, but that just makes my feet tired and my back ache even more than it did earlier in the torture chair. I try to crash on the couch hoping that the sugar will eventually wear off and I will go into the obligatory coma after ingesting so much sugar, but all that happens is that I feel edgy and annoyed from inactivity and the baby continues to do ballet twists and hockey splits all at once! The baby never did quiet down and I lay awake feeling the miraculous movements I had only guessed before to be baby movements, until well after midnight.

The good that came of this appointment...I can honestly say that Baby Lucanne is officially freed of whatever restraints she had previously for movements. She is still as active today as she was last night. And we did find out that she is still doing what she is supposed to do by having the increase in heart rate when she moves (this officially means that her neurological functions are appearing to be increasing as normal).

Of the bad that we came to realize with this appointment...our doctor hires complete morons to work in his office, doesn't have a clue what he is scheduling appointments for and obviously doesn't read his notes or charts prior to seeing his patients. He continues to give us the worse case scenario treatment and we are now feeling that he is doing a lot of covering his butt for any potential mishap that could befall our little princess. We definitely feel like his goal is more to keep us (as fairly well informed parents-to-be/medically trained professionals) from suing him for medical malpractice by making us come to town so often and implying that nothing is as good an indicator as whatever next step he has in store for us. And we experienced first hand the fact that "No Child Left Behind" meant only that we will continue to push uneducated morons out of the school system without them ever learning how to be anything more than moronic teen-twits well into their 20's.

We are both more than just a bit annoyed, but as I told Ty yesterday I will allow him two more non-stress tests until I see the specialist at the end of the month. If at that time all still seems to be progressing well, I will suggest to the OB that these non-stress tests feel like a waste of time for me and if he isn't seeing any negative changes that I will not continue to come down every week just for his whimsy. While I do enjoy seeing and hearing my baby I am willing to wait until she has decided to join the world at large rather than continue to line the doctor's pockets!

26 Weks!

Today marks 26 weeks...only 14 more to go!

Today also marks the best news we have had in a while with this pregnancy! We had both our regular 6 month appointment and another appointment with the specialist this morning. We were supposed to hit the regular appointment and then head over to the hospital for the specialist, but my doc had an emergency and had to reschedule for later today...hence me not starting this until nearly 4pm on Wednesday! We had a wonderful, leisurely breakfast at a diner downtown and then headed over to see the specialist. The ultrasound showed that the baby is still growing well and is still right on target for her size measurements. And best of all it showed that the fluids increased again! We increased by 2 centimeters this time, not as much as I was hoping for, but still a good increase. The technician says the normal range is between 8cm and 20cm, but the doc says normal is 15. On one and a half months of bed rest we have increased from 6.2 to 11.5 and that was enough encouragement for the doc to say that we don't need to keep coming in every two weeks. He thinks the progress is indicative of a positive future and now we only have to go to the specialist once a month!!! This guy also gave me permission to do some exercises to stretch (yoga exercises) out so I won't be as sore and even gave me permission to drive myself to the pool so that I can do a full immersion soak 2-3 times a week (basically just keeping the bulging belly underwater because the tub isn't nearly deep enough to cover this thing!). I cannot tell you how excited I am to be able to get out of the house a for a couple of hours a week! Whoo hooo!!!

After that appointment we headed over to my office to pick up my personal belongings. I'm pretty much over my frustration on how my office manager called up last week basically telling me I was terminated, without using the words fired, or termination. However, I do have a problem with the way the whole thing was handled on their end and I cannot begin to tell you just how livid Ty has been over this. So we picked up my stuff and and headed for our second appointment.

It was actually better seeing my regular doc after having seen the specialist. Good news is better to have before you get not so good news. My OB wants to continue seeing me every 2 weeks so he can do non-stress tests on the baby. Basically what this amounts to is me sitting in his office for a 1/2 hour every two weeks with a fetal monitor strapped to my belly. He wants to get info on what the baby is doing and how much she is moving. I still don't feel a whole lot of movement with her, and a lot of the time I am not sure if it is her moving or gas bubbles in my intestines. I think what I feel is her, but he is worried that the smaller amounts of fluid may make it harder for her to pull a good enough punch to feel it on the outside and he just wants to make sure that she is moving. It's all just precautionary and I don't feel that there is a thing wrong with her. I am bummed that I have to go down there every 2 weeks still, but I will do whatever is required. Everything I had concerns about the two docs dismissed as normal and said not to worry. They said I should be expecting to get more tired, more easily, and to expect other changes, physical as well as emotional. So I will keep up the bed rest, but add in some yoga and some pool time and maybe just a little cleaning around the house (if I can get away with it).

So that is the Indian Hills News for now. I am off to find a maternity bathing suit so I can get to the pool as soon as possible!! Oh, and thanks to everyone who comments on the blog. I read them all and I do appreciate hearing from you all!!

Week 24

Last week we had our 24 week appointment with the specialist. She was shocked to find that baby is growing well and is on target for her June 1 due date as well as showing an increase in fluids. We went from a paltry 6.2cm of fluid just two weeks before to 9.2cm this visit!!! A 50% increase in fluids!! This is great news and if we can continue to have this sort of increase we should be at the normal and acceptable level within one month!

So my goal for now is to keep following the doc's advice and hopefully continue to see improvement. I am still going to have to see the doctor every two weeks at this point, but if we continue with improvement perhaps I won't have to increase those visits and admittance to the hospital will be out of the doctor's vocabulary until May/June!

To top the day off, we got word that I may be able to put together a show with the photos I took of the wolves in December. The place who makes our prints said that they really like the shots we sent to them to try a new mounting process. Apparently the previous work they had of mine was a huge hit at their "First Friday" opening of their new location. My work wasn't on display, it was in their processing room which happened to be open to the public for their opening and people were commenting. This interest generated enough intrigue that they started talking to Ty about having me do a display in their studio. Can you believe it? I cannot!!! Who would have thought that a gallery in one of Denver's hottest areas, The Golden Triangle, would want to hang my work?! I think it would be amazing to have my work in a real gallery and not just hanging in a restaurant showing. WHAT A DAY!!

We are starting to play around with other middle names for Lucanne. While we originally envisioned a female derivation of Christopher, we are starting to think that we need to find some derivation of "miracle" for her middle name. Any suggestions will be appreciated!

Later in the week though I got a call from my office basically saying that they had to terminate me because I wouldn't be able to return to work due to the pregnancy complications. This wasn't entirely unexpected, I cannot expect to keep a job I cannot make it to, however the timing and delivery wasn't the kindest. I cannot blame them for needing to find someone who can do what I do and I feel sorry that the person won't have the benefit of me training them. I wasn't well trained and had to learn most of the tricks of the trade on my own. I had always intended that when I went on maternity leave I would be able to train my replacement so she wouldn't have to struggle like I did. The office manager said she missed me both as a friend and as an employee and that did take some of the sting out of blow. I do feel more free now and don't stress about who is doing what at my desk. ;~)

So that is Week 24 in a nutshell. We hope you are all well and look forward to updating you all again next week when we make it in for our Week 26 appointment. Love to all!

Nearly 22 weeks and another sonogram

Tomorrow marks week 22. 18 weeks left!

Yesterday we trekked into town for our follow-up with the specialist at the hospital. Basically the word was "no change" and continued bed rest for mom. By no change, she meant that the amniotic fluids have not increased. They actually have decreased a bit, but not enough for her to worry any more. She is calling it a stable environment for now, but suggested that Ty and I start considering the worst case scenario she laid out for us. She suggested that we start considering a date in which we agree to do a c-section and put the baby on medical life support until she is ready to come home. My answer to her was 40 weeks. I'm not sure she a) took me seriously, or b) believed my conviction when I assured her that through all our positive support, love, prayers, and my positive thinking and actions this baby will outdo their expectations. I hold to the firm belief that this little girl will be just as strong as her parents and family and she will continue to grow strong and healthy.

I'm pretty sure the doc walked away thinking I was a naive and silly girl for not listening to her warnings. Truth is I know the possibilities of being wrong. I know what to expect of the future if I am wrong and I appreciate her straightforwardness, but I also believe in the power of positive thinking and the strength of all your prayers. I believe in the strength of our families and I believe this child will prevail! In our efforts to try everything in our power to better the chances the docs have given us, we spoke with a spiritual healer over the weekend. She thought that this child's soul was very strong and destined for greatness. She suggested that there was similarities in this child's soul to that of Quan Yin, the Chinese Bodhisattva of Compassion or Goddess of Mercy. While I don't necessarily believe in all this healer's methods and proclamations, I do believe that she was on to something here. I feel that this child is definitely no ordinary being and deserves the faith I have in her proving the doctors wrong!

So keep your positive thoughts and prayers coming and we will keep you updated. We can expect follow up visits every two weeks and I will keep adding to this blog to let you all know what is going on.

Week 21...Or an oh, so long week.

Two weeks ago we had an ultrasound done which revealed a couple of things to us. First the good news...

A brief glimpse told us that the baby was most likely a girl developing well and true to medical standards.

And now for the not so good news...

In the ultrasound a couple of dark spots were seen in the placenta. Ty spotted them before the doctor, or at least said something long before the doctor did. These spots, commonly called placental lakes can be no big deal and are often very common. Despite the baby's apparent good growth the OB still wanted me to see a specialist over at the hospital to make certain they were nothing to worry about. The hospital has better equipment and at least two doctors that specialize in taking excellent pictures of babies. I had already been there once for the screening that determines likelihood of Downs Syndrome.

So last week, at our halfway point of the pregnancy, we went to see the specialist (cue daunting music). The utrasound concluded 100% that the baby is indeed a girl. What great, clear pictures this ultrasound can take!! Not only is it a girl, but she is developing well and is right on target with her "age" in every measurement. "So what about those spots," you ask? Well, the doctor there saw only one placental lake and after several angles and slightly painful prods with the ultrasound wand determined that it is, in fact in the placenta and not something else blocking a portion of the placenta from view. This alone isn't much to write home about. However, this is not the only thing that the doctor found. She also determined that the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby is considered low for this stage in the pregnancy. Still, not too big of a concern on it's own. Finally, she listened to my uterine arteries and discovered a wonderfully strong and healthy sound from the right side, but not such a good sound from the left. Put these three things together and you are looking at a not so encouraging picture anymore. Despite the baby meeting her targeted growth there is some concern that the lack of maternal blood through the artery may be causing the placenta to potentially not function properly, therefore causing the decrease in amniotic fluid. What does this all mean?

Well, for starters it could mean that the baby is not getting enough amniotic fluid surrounding it which could cramp her style a bit. This could lead to clubbed or webbed feet. It could mean not enough cushioning and floating room. On the more dire side, it could mean that the lack of fluids available for her to swallow could impede her lung cell growth. And most dire of all is that without the appropriate fluids, will the baby be able to survive until the safety zone of 28-32 weeks when she can be prematurely c-sectioned? Are there any real answers in medicine? No, of course not, there are no definites in this fine art of practice we heavily rely upon that we call medical care.

So the specialist's answer to all my questions and concerns is "BED REST". My personal doctor put me on bed rest and a baby aspirin a day to thin my blood to help get better blood flow. He has also okayed an increase in Iron and Magnesium supplements (suggestions from Ty and a friend who did some medical research on what hospitals and doctors do for preeclampsia). I've had many people ask to what extent is this bed rest. Well, it isn't total confinement. I can still fix my own meals and take baths or showers, but no exercise, no house work and NO work. I don't even have to be in a supine or laying position (thank heavens or my second cold of January would probably suffocate me!), which means I can sit on the couch and knit, or sit at the table and scrapbook or make cards...maybe I will actually get a head start on all of my card needs for 2008! Drivng is limited to necessity (meaning only to the doctors appointments), but I can still get out of the house as long as I am mostly off my feet, no running errands. I'm to avoid stairs as much as possible as well.

So I sit here, take my vitamins and aspirin, drink mounds of water and await the next appointment (1/28/08) in hopes of better news. Meanwhile, both Ty and I will continue to accept the mountains prayers, well wishing, and positive thoughts and generous offers for companionship, help, shopping trips, etc. from family and the friends we have made within the fire department as well as all our other friends. We'll keep up the positive thoughts and do uttmost our best to bring forth a very desired and anticipated little beauty into this world and hopefully on her own schedule!