Monthly post

Since it's the last day of April, I guess it's time for the April summary. Hope I can remember back that far...

Sometime at the end of March I found out one of my best friends, Jen, and her husband Chris are expecting their first in November! I had a feeling that before I was done being pregnant, she would be.

We spent Easter with Nate's family in Eau Claire. Jacob got royally spoiled by the Easter Bunny once again. Thank God he'll have a little brother or sister to split the booty with next year. We still have candy in the house.

I had a wonderful bout with a cold/allergies in mid-April. Missed a little work and felt pretty much like crap for about a week and a half. Nate ended up with it too and Jacob had some sniffles. I'm glad to be past it.

I had three doctor's visits this month, two scheduled and one not. At my early April one I gained too much weight in my opinion (doctor didn't say anything) and my blood pressure creeped up more to 136/81. At the second visit, I did the glucose tolerance test to check for gestational diabetes, and as predicted, I digest sugar like a pro. I also lost two pounds between visits (again, no comment from the doc) and my blood pressure actually fell, a lot. It was 98/62. I asked the nurse if that was right.

Then comes the fun stuff. This past Sunday I started having low back pain and in the afternoon it became a sharp pain in my side. I thought here we go again, since with Jacob I had to spend the night in the hospital for a kidney infection. I wasn't running a temp at all, so I waited to call the doc until Monday morning and they had me come in right away. First I did a screening for a UTI, which came back all normal so no kidney infection. After feeling around my right side and checking my blood pressure which was even higher again at 140/81, my doc said it was probably one of two things. The first was HELLP syndrome, a serious liver condition which would require immediate delivery of the baby. (&*$!@#^&*). It made it more possible because high BP makes pregnant women more likely to get it. All the needed to confirm it was a little blood. The second was a gall bladder disorder which could be diagnosed with an ultrasound and how to treat it would depend on how bad it was, but basically surgery is the only cure for that.

So I did the blood test and worried about having an infant 10 weeks premature in a NICU. About half an hour later, the tests came back that it didn't seem to be HELLP so I was not having a baby that day. I went in for the gall bladder ultrasound Tuesday and got the results this morning. Meanwhile, the pain is now nearly gone and I'm feeling lots better. It turns out I don't have any gall stones, but the test showed the walls were thickened meaning I do have an irritated and inflamed gall bladder. Basically, that means pain control when I need it with hopefully just tylenol and try to cut as much fatty food out of my diet as possible. If it gets worse or I get a stone, then I might have surgery. If it doesn't go away after the baby is born, we'll talk about having it removed.

So that's pretty much all the excitement for the month. In May I'm hoping to do a little traveling and visit some friends before I can't go too far for a while. Plus I'd like to recruit some help to get some plants in the ground and my flower beds looking nice before I get too huge to move. Two months to go!