I had my doc appt today, after being on bed rest the past week. My swelling has mostly gone down, but my feet start swelling pretty quickly after being up and about for an hour or two. My blood pressure was 140/80 today, which is a little higher than last week. I've had a couple headaches this week, which is another symptom. This is all officially labeled as hypertension right now, still a precursor to pre-eclampsia. But the doctor is afraid that sending me back to work will send my blood pressure shooting up, possibly fairly quickly as hypertension/pre-eclampsia etc is kind of unpredictable and can worsen in a matter of hours. She wants me to get to the 36 week mark safely and not have to risk delivering him before that if the blood pressure was to get too high. She also ordered steroid shots to better ensure that if we do have to deliver him at 36 weeks, his lungs will be mature.
So after the doc appt Sean and I went over to the perinatal assessment clinic at St Joe's and I got steroid shot #1 of 2 - stings a good bit, feels like a tetanus shot. I have to get the second one 24 hours later, so I have to go back tomorrow afternoon. Then we went to the lab; the doctor ordered the same labs as last week (hypertension related stuff, liver levels etc) to ensure nothing has changed (they were normal last week). And I have to go in to see the doc weekly now, so my next appt is 6/18.
I was so hoping that last week was a fluke and my blood pressure would be totally low and normal today, like it always used to be. Bed rest is really mind-numbingly lonely and boring, plus now we have to deal with the financial aspect of me not working much sooner than we thought. I have enough extended medical leave to cover for another couple weeks, then after that, no pay check if I can't get back to work. Plus I feel bad about leaving my boss and coworkers in this position; we thought I had a couple months left so I really hadn't started training anyone else or anything and I have a lot of cases that everyone is having to try to take care of now. UGH. I am still fairly young and healthy and just didn't expect anything remotely like this during pregnancy! The worst I was concerned about was gaining too much weight and maybe having to deal with post-partum depression.
But as unexpected and difficult as this is, I am glad my doctor wants to be cautious and ensure the baby gets to full term gestation and is healthy. I would feel horrible if I went back to work against her advice and ended up having him pre-term, with him probably having to stay in the hospital for weeks etc. This bed rest stuff may be no fun for mom and dad, but it will be well worth it if I can get to 36 weeks or beyond and deliver a full term healthy baby. I have no doubt that it will be worth it. It's just a little overwhelming at the moment. ;p
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