38 weeks

Two weeks until your due date!

Today is also my last day at work, before heading out for maternity leave. I'm definitely ready to be done with work. Things have been so hectic, prepping for my leave. And the last couple of days at work have been full of last minute, unexpected things that have distracted me from getting everything done that I wanted to get done. At this point, I'm just going to have to accept that I can't finish it all.

Hopefully you're not planning on coming within the next couple of days. I have a mile-long to-do list I'm hoping to make some progress on in the next few days or so, in preparation for your arrival. Plus, Daddy decided now would be a good time to tackle a big remodel project in the master bedroom (ripping out walls, doing a whole bunch of electrical work, and then putting everything back together again). I'm feeling kind of anxious about it... but I've decided to just step away from it and let him do his thing. I'm sure it's his form of nesting!

In other news, we got a little trial run to labor & delivery on Wednesday. I had been feeling some sharp pain in my upper right abdomen starting Tuesday night, sometime after dinner. It lasted through the night and into the next day at work. We had an appointment with the doctor that night, so I figured I'd wait and talk to her about it then. But, in the afternoon I got a call from the doctor's office that they needed to cancel my appointment because she had to go to the hospital to deal with multiple deliveries. I ended up calling back to talk to the advice nurse, and told her what I was experiencing (the sharp upper abdominal pain and a duller pain in the same spot on my back). She told me to go to the hospital's emergency room and get checked in to labor & delivery. She said it sounded like it may be a gallbladder issue, but that I should get checked out, and since there were no doctors in the office (they were apparently all at the hospital delivering babies), I needed to go there.

I tried to maintain my calm, and headed home from work a little early. The whole ride home on BART I researched gallbladder issues and pregnancy, so I could mentally prepare. It seemed pretty spot on, symptom-wise, which both was disappointing (because there's really nothing that can be done at this point, and it seems like the common "cure" is surgery to have the gallbladder taken out, which seems awfully extreme as a first step), and somewhat reassuring (because there are much worse things that could be happening). When I arrived home, Daddy was on the phone dealing with an important work matter, so I took a few minutes to (finally!) start packing a hospital bag. I only threw in what I figured I'd need if they admitted me over night, and left everything else at home. I was not planning on having you that night, and if by some chance I did, I figured we only lived 10 minutes from the hospital so we could easily arrange for someone to go get whatever we needed.

Once we got to the hospital they checked me in and wheeled me upstairs to labor and delivery, and got Daddy and I settled into a room. They hooked me up to the fetal monitor and a blood pressure cuff that went off every 15 minutes. They also had me give some urine, and drink some water and apple juice. They seemed mostly concerned with checking me for signs of pre-eclampsia. I guess I had a trace amount of protein in my urine, and the abdominal pain is something that can occur with pre-eclampsia. But, my blood pressure looked fantastic, and I wasn't having any other symptoms, and they did blood work to check my liver and everything came back totally normal. (They checked my platelets too, and it dropped a little bit in the last month from 115k to 107k). The nurse also checked my cervix, and it was "soft" but fully closed. So, no baby that night! Although, I know better than to take that as a sign that we're nowhere near having you (since cervical checks are a poor predictor of labor). Dr. Pham-Thomas came in and released us to go home, and said she suspects it is my gallbladder acting up. She said there's not much to do about it now, except to avoid fatty foods (and then she said "like fried chicken"... and wouldn't you know it, I've been craving fried chicken now for the last couple of days!), and then if it continues after you're born I can look at getting surgery. In the meantime, I'll be researching other ways to deal with the issue.

The pain is still continuing today, but the intensity seems to get better/worse. I've been trying to monitor it a bit, and I think it seems to act up the most about an hour or so after eating. I also have found I can't really lie on my right side anymore, because that seems to hurt it (I'm guessing that it puts pressure on it, making it hurt), and sometimes you'll be pushing around up there and it seems to hurt more then too.