I started out this week getting another chiropractic adjustment at the new chiropractor. It was nice because I was fully expecting an initial consult to go over everything and then I’d have to make a separate appointment to be adjusted, but she did an adjustment that day. Which was wonderful even if I needed to ice my crotch afterward because of the pubic bone adjustment. But that evening and all the next day, I felt more movements from Pokemon which means he equally enjoyed the adjustments and the roomier digs.
Baby kicks
In fact, I felt the first kicks from the outside on Tuesday, at 23w2d. I was lying in bed and when I felt him kick way down low, I stuffed my hand there and was met with a good firm nudge. The best part of pregnancy is the baby kicks. I wanted to wake Chris up, but I knew once I did and he put his hand there, Pokemon would stop.
Even yesterday, when he started kicking while we reading books to the kids, I had Emelia put her hand on my stomach, but then he stopped. And like the kicktease he is, as soon as she ran away, he kicked again. Olivia is determined to feel him herself and I said it was still really early and there’s plenty of time still.
The rest of the week varied in how often I could feel the baby. Some days I feel him less and some days there are a ton of movements.
Tonight, there was lots and lots of frantic movements. As in, sitting on the couch and pressing my hand into my stomach and feeling, not just kicks, but something slither past it. Which is both equally delightful and unnerving at the same time. But today, Saturday, was the first time Chris got to feel the baby kick when we were lying in bed in the afternoon and then again after dinner when the girls were in the bathtub.
The consult with MFM
In addition to two more chiropractor appointments this week, I also had a video consult with Maternal-Fetal Medicine. It went really well. I did some sleuthing while I was waiting for him to come onto the video and found out from his bio he specializes in hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. I found out a few days ago that I have some fatty liver, but the GI specialist isn’t sure to what extent since the results were likely skewed from pregnancy.
But MFM said it doesn’t increase my chances of preeclampsia with this pregnancy. Which is good because I have a lot of other things like a history x2 of preeclampsia and blood pressure issues.
I told him about the Procardia shooting my pressures up at 18 weeks and he thought that I shouldn’t have gone off the labetalol since that was keeping everything stable. Instead of stopping the labetalol and starting the Procardia, I should have added the Procardia. It can still be a part of my regimen postpartum if my BP isn’t managed on labetalol alone (which it probably won’t). But it was nice to have some sort of explanation as to why the Procardia failed so spectacularly.
He also didn’t recommend I go back on the Aldomet postpartum as I did with Emelia, since it’s notorious for increasing liver enzymes. It was a great medication for me to be on since it really helped stabilized my BP postpartum last time, but he did recommend I go on the diuretic, Lasix, for about a week postpartum and he thinks that should help with the blood pressure issues since the preeclampsia both other times made me retain so much water.
He explained one of the reasons he thinks I had trouble stabilizing my BP in the past was because I had too much fluid on board.
We also talked about the BPs I’ve been currently having and he said they were fantastic. In fact, he made heart hands and said he was in love with them. Which made me laugh and helped me feel so much better since my OB team had been making comments about my pressures and how we may need to have another adjustment soon.
But he recommended not increasing my medications until my BP was consistently above 140/90. He said BP naturally rises around 28 to 32 weeks, so I shouldn’t be surprised if I needed a medication increase then. He wasn’t concerned I was on 1,200 mg of labetalol daily, even if I was previously managed on 400 to 800 daily in the other pregnancies.
He told me they watch BP more closely now since the CHAP trials came out last year (which I ironically wrote about for Giddy). It found keeping BP in pregnant women below 140/90 reduces adverse outcomes and doesn’t increase the risk of low birth weight (which in my previous two pregnancies was a concern).
He told me I was one of those people that needed to be aggressively managed, but he also thought perhaps this time around I was being overmanaged by my care team. I was on 400 mg twice a day and because my pressures were in the mid-to-upper 130s systolic, I increased it to three times a day. It sucks that I probably didn’t need to have that increase because I feel like I’m taking these pills like M&Ms (I’m on 6 pills a day).
But he did make me feel better that it was not necessarily a bad thing I needed to go on meds so early compared to the other pregnancies. That managing the BP was more important.
He also cautioned that high blood pressure in pregnancy was a different issue than preeclampsia. That I could be perfectly managed on my BP medication until I wasn’t and it could shoot up and I could have preeclampsia.
And unfortunately, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it since it all was predetermined when the placenta was forming and because of my past history. I have a 5% to 10% risk of having severe preeclampsia and a 50% chance of getting preeclampsia in general.
While I don’t like those odds, I’m also preparing myself to have it for a third time. Hence, the need for a postpartum plan. I won’t need to see him again unless something changes, but that he was sending over all the recommendations to my OB.
And we got a van
And now that I’ve bored you completely with my blood pressure woes, if you’re still with me, we got a van. I, like 99.7% of van owners initially resisted the van. As in, ugh, I’m not going to be a van mom because it reminds me of a soccer mom which makes me want to roll my eyes endlessly.
But also because we had two kids and I love my CRV and we were going to be happy with that. Which is why we ended up selling Chris’s car and keeping the CRV in addition to the van because damn it change is hard and I love my CRV and I wanted to keep it.
But this van. I admit it’s nice. It’s very nice. The kids love it and Emelia wants to constantly turn off and on her light above her head and Olivia loves opening and closing the automatic doors and they love the DVD player that came with it even though we haven’t officially used it. I love the heated seats and steering wheel and don’t have to worry about Olivia slamming the door into someone’s car and it’s easier to get Emelia buckled and it has all these delightful little amenities and I could live in it.
I still feel like I’m driving a tank and I suck at parking and I get nervous driving it sometimes because I feel like I’m going to slam its big ass into something as I’m turning, but overall, it’s been pretty great.
