Halloween Prenatal Visit!

October 31st we had our very first prenatal appointment with my new doctor! Believe me, I was excited and so nervous at the same time. I have access to the Internet way more than I had 6 years ago while I was pregnant with Hailey, so I was preparing myself for any thing that would come up. Luckily the baby was just perfect, measuring in at the size of 4cm and looking like a little gummy bear! It had a good strong heart rate of 145 beats per minute and my dates were measuring up at exactly what I thought they were 7 weeks and 3 days. My official due date is June 16th!

I am very pleased with my doctor. She is pretty straight forward, put everything out on the table for me regarding my health, and let me know what her plan of action would be. She seems to be very proactive on making sure I get the best care and catch any issues that may come up as early as possible. I am a high risk pregnancy since I have issues with my kidneys and chronic high blood pressure that is hard to control. We doubled the dose of medication I am taking because though it was just a little over normal blood pressure, it is still running to high considering pregnancy normally drops your blood pressure. The biggest concern is preclampsia which puts both baby and I at risk. Right now I am starting out with my normal 4 week appointments. I have to do a 24 hour urine catch to get a baseline for my kidneys and the amount of protein in my urine (lovely right?!), but she said that it will allow them to monitor me better. Also since I have the genes for diabetes and have an immediate family member with it, I will do the glucose testing at both 16 weeks and 28 weeks. As long as nothing goes wrong in between now and 32 weeks, it will be fairly normal. Starting 32 weeks I will have weekly sonograms to check the baby. She said starting then she will have to decide if the baby is fine to go another week or if they need to go in and take the baby. She said the goals is to keep the baby in as long as possible, but with high blood pressure my placenta will not be functioning like it needs to, so the longer the baby stays in the more problems may occur and the more chances I will have of a stillbirth. She said I will not be allowed to go past 39 weeks. So even though the due date is still June 16th, s/he will be here between the very end of April and June 9th.

I am concerned about the outcome, but right now I just need to do what ever it takes to keep healthy and happy. I am glad she told me everything of what to expect and how she plans to handle it. So I am pretty much going with the flow! Kenny went with me to the appointment and though he wasn't thrilled at how long we had to wait and everything took, he said he is very comfortable with the doctor and feels I am in good hands.

I got two tiny pictures from the sonogram and I showed Hailey as soon as she came home from school. Of course it is close to impossible to see it, but she still was excited to see "where it's living" and that it was in there!