Pregnancy Moan

This might be my first real moan with this pregnancy so I can't truly complain as things have been relatively smooth with this one. As some of you may know, I have high blood pressure when not pregnant so it becomes a real concern during my pregnancies. So having high blood pressure, coupled with preterm labor with my previous 3 pregnancies then I usually don't enjoy the whole pregnancy process.

This pregnancy has been very smooth and I made it through 5 months without ever changing my blood pressure medication. This is unheard of! I am normally upping my meds every 1-2 weeks to combat my blood pressure. Well, two weeks ago my pressures started spiking and we started to battle them with increased meds and that worked fairly well. But along with the increased pressures came edema. Edema is swelling from fluid accumulating in body tissue. Usually my ankles and feet puff up and sometimes my hands will swell, but this time my hands got really swollen and my arms would go numb from the simplest of activities (typing, knitting, holding a book). Even sleeping became really uncomfortable as I would have to hang my arms off the side of the bed to get circulation going again.

I had a Dr appt on Tuesday and had to take my girls with me. They were so well behaved until the moment the Dr stepped into the room and then they were ripped coloring books from one another's hands, screaming, "Mine!" "No, mine!" over and over. I tried to settle them as best I could without being disrespectful of the Drs time. After asking how I was doing and I replied with the swelling info he continued with, "How much help do you have at home?" I had heard this before and knew what was coming...the dreaded words....bed rest.

However, I do like his approach to bed rest more than the last time I was put on bed rest. With my 2nd pregnancy at 28 weeks my Dr said, "Strict bed rest, you can get out of bed for bathroom, meals and a shower a day, otherwise you're horizontal." This Dr said, "48 hours should be enough to relieve the fluids and then you can resume minimal activity until we need to do it again." So for 48 hours I'm suppose to lie down, elevate my feet and not do anything. With three kids, even having help from my mother-in-law and husband, I find it hard to lie down all day and do nothing. I did fairly well this first day...my husband would argue, he's quite strict about the whole process. He did catch me walking through the kitchen with my 3 month old niece in my arms...man, was he mad at me! She was crying and no one was around and she wasn't happy just being held so I had no choice, Al did not agree.

Anyway, so I'm on minimal activity after the next 24 hours of bed rest so you may be hearing from me more often as I'll have more time to sit down and blog. I'm 31 weeks so we technically have 2 months left but we're praying for just one more month.