Lots to post about

So, the good news first - at my appt yesterday, the baby's heartbeat was still nice and strong and healthy sounding. I gained a little more weight than I would have hoped, but the doctor wasn't concerned about it. My blood pressure is still good and my tummy seems to be growing at a normal rate.

They went ahead and drew blood for the quad screen. I won't find out the results until early next week, so everyone please pray that it doesn't show an increased risk of any chromosonal issues. If it does, it is by no means diagnostic, but we'll do a more detailed ultrasound and check for other soft markers of problems. If not, we'll just do the normal ultrasound at 20 weeks. It has been scheduled for March 3rd! And if I haven't said it before, yes!, we will be finding out the gender. I will be sure to post when we know!

So, the not so fun news is that I've had some strange pressure in my lower abdomen. I had it over the weekend, so I called the oncall doctor but she wasn't too concerned unless it was accompanied by bleeding (which it was not). She did suggest the possibility of an UTI, so I did run to a nearby acute care and get checked. The dip stick test was negative, but they did also run a culture. Yesterday I found out it was positive for a small amount of an unidentified bacteria. They said it was most likely that something got in there when I was giving the sample. I was feeling better, so I wasn't too concerned. I told the doctor about it and she agreed that it was probably okay, but she told me to call if it happened again.

Well, this morning I woke up around 2:30am with some pain in my right side, but I also was feeling some tightening or something like that in my abdomen. By this morning, it was definitely that same pressure feeling, so I called the doctor. She decided to go ahead and prescribe an antibiotic for the unidentified bacteria just in case, plus she sent me to the hospital to be checked out. They monitored me for contractions and checked to make sure I wasn't showing any signs of dilation. Thankfully, both tests were just fine and I'm not showing any signs of pre-term labor. The doctor still felt a little concerned about it, so she decided to err on the side of caution and put me on bedrest until next Tuesday. At that point, I'll have another appt and she'll decide if I can go back to normal routine or if I need to stay on bedrest. I am allowed to work from home this week as long as I keep my feet up and don't get too stressed, but lets hope this bedrest doesn't go any longer than this week. I have a long way to go until my due date! I will do whatever it takes to have a healthy pregnancy, but I really would love to avoid long-term bedrest.

So, that is all the news here. I was planning on posting a little more information about the quad screen, but I think this post is long enough. I will post about it later this week or when I get the results back.