Thoughts on This Pregnancy...

I just finished writing an email to my lovely friend, Miss Emily Ricks, and then remembered that I haven't written about all the "excitement" this pregnancy has brought! So, I hope Emily will forgive me, but I've pretty much copied and pasted what I wrote to her here:

So this pregnancy has been the most wonky of them all! It's been really weird to have a "problem" pregnancy, after three completely healthy, normal ones. It all came about after having constant pain in my calf for a few days. From my nursing school days, I knew pregnant women are more prone to blood clots and knew that calf pain is one of the warning signs. SO I reported this to my doc and they told me to watch for any redness or swelling in that area. And also if I experienced any sudden onset of shortness of breath and/or heart palpitations that I should go to the ER. 

So Mother's Day Sunday, right after we sat down in the chapel for Sacrament Meeting, all of sudden it got harder to breathe and I could feel my heart pounding. Went out to the foyer and had Jonathan get a med student and a medical resident to do a little foyer "consult" and they both felt it would be best to go get it checked out at the ER. One of them said he and his wife would handle our kids for us. 

So after 9 hours in the ER, which included blood tests and an MRI, found that I did indeed have a few smaller blood clots in my lungs. I stayed a few days in the hospital and got started on a blood thinning medication called Lovenox. I haven't experienced anything like that since starting the meds. I inject it two times a day in my belly, rotating sides. My belly is nice and bruised, after two months of injections! But I have now found the (ONLY) upside to stretch marks: The injections tend to hurt LESS when I inject through them! :) So the injections haven't been a big deal. 

The biggest issue this has brought up, for me, is having a medical indication to be induced. Again, after three spontaneous births and knowing that my body does VERY well all on it's own...it's been a hard "pill" for me to swallow, having to approach this delivery in a different way. I don't argue the legitimacy of needing to induce; bleeding out is a VERY scary risk of delivering while on the blood thinning medication. But...it's still been hard to come to terms with this. I have done LOTS of research and consulting with different medical professionals and have a pretty good plan in place that I feel comfortable with. I will stop taking the blood thinners and then about 18 hours later will start implementing a plan I got from a 30 year midwife of natural induction methods. I will do this at home for 8 hours prior to my scheduled hospital induction. This allows for enough time for the blood thinners to get out of my system. I am hoping this plan will get things going and feel good about trying this first. 

I would LOVE to avoid pitocin, if at all possible, because with pitocin comes a bunch of other interventions (being strapped to the fetal monitoring continuously, IV fluids, being put on a 12 hour "time table," etc.) that will greatly limit my options for birthing comfortably and with the least amount of interventions as necessary. 

I realize that to many people my issues with inducing may seem overly dramatic but this has really been a big deal for me. My sweet sister-in-law, Allison, told me something that was really comforting: She said that even if this may not be important to other people it is important to ME and thus it is important to Heavenly Father. I really feel like Heavenly Father has been aware of my struggles and concerns and has directed me in finding ways to help me feel at peace about this. So....baby will be arriving at 38 weeks, around September 13th! 

And the gender is a surprise! It's been fun to do that this time! We think it's a boy though. :) 

So...now I have that down for posterity. 

The beauty of copy and paste.