It's a girl!

I'm titling this blog with the good news of this week, although most of you have by now probably heard the not-so-good news that we're not in Florida; we're at Marquette General Hospital. Here's what happened: Thursday night, I noticed that my left ankle was sort of swollen. I didn't think much of it; I looked it up in my pregnancy books, and of course swollen feet and ankles are a very common pregnancy symptom. Still, at work on Friday, the ankle was on my mind all day. I showed it to a few people and sort of joked about my "cankle" - it looked like an old lady's ankle. Then I showed my coworker Grace, who is a nurse. She looked at my ankle and said "how far along are you?" I said "six months", and she was like, "why don't you come down to my office and I'll check your blood pressure?" So I did, and she did, and I don't think it was that bad, but she said maybe I should call my doctor, just in case, especially since I was leaving on vacation the next day. That was Friday morning. I debated about it all day and finally called Dr. Hafeman's office at about 2. I ended up going in, and after Dr. Hafeman checked my blood pressure and my pee, she started to act serious. Apparently I had protein in my pee, and my blood pressure was somewhat elevated. She sent me back over to the hospital for some more tests, and next thing you know, I was admitted, then they told me I had to spend the night. Josh went home and took care of cancelling all of our flight/hotel/campground reservations. Saturday, they did some blood tests, and apparently some numbers had taken a turn for the worse, which prompted an ambulance ride to Marquette. So here I sit.

What I have is called preeclampsia. My body is basically rejecting the pregnancy, and the only cure for it is delivery. This condition is much more common in later pregnancy, and I think a lot of times when women get it at 32, 34, 46 weeks, they just go for delivery. But, obviously Baby Jenson is only 26 weeks, so she would really benefit from a little more time to grow and mature. So I guess it's a sort of balancing act between my health, and keeping the baby in there as long as possible. But I feel quite well, and so for now it's just a waiting game. Basically, I'm on bed rest here at the MGHS OB department. Every day, they check my blood for the platelet level, and they check my pee for the amount of protein and just how much I am peeing. I have to pee in this thing so they can save it all-ew. They also check my blood pressure several times a day, as well as the baby's heartrate. So they look at all these numbers, and basically if the numbers go bad then I have to deliver; if they hold steady, then Baby J gets another day to grow. And the doctors say delivery could be tomorrow or it could be in 6 weeks; it just depends...on all these random numbers that I can't control. So, it's just a waiting game now.

We did decide to find out the sex, and we've got a little girl! Totally the opposite of what we thought, from the peeks we had at that second ultrasound. That was very exciting news. We really had no preference, and it's fun now to call the baby "she" rather than "it"! Also, the fact that she's a girl helps her prognosis, because apparently girls who are born premature do better than boys. In addition to that, they gave me some steroid shots (in the ass-ow!) that help develop her lungs. So hopefully these things will help. No matter what, though, it seems that I'm in Marquette for the duration, because they have a NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) here.

Whew, this was a long post- lots of information! And it's taken me forever-I've typed the whole thing with my left hand because my right one is hooked up to an IV. I'll probably be doing updates more often now, since I have nothing else to do! Thanks to everyone who's called, sent flowers, emailed, etc. We really appreciate it. Here's a new photo, of me looking hot in my hospital bed! The notebook in front of me is a list of baby girl names - we have it narrowed down to 12 now. We'll be in touch...