29 Weeks (Fat Feet and Sausage Fingers)

Over the last week or so my symptoms have increased dramatically.  If I stand for more than 10 minutes, my fingers and hands swell and turn bright red.  Moving too much brings on contractions.  I've had to give up piano because my fingers are so sore and swollen that it's more frustrating than soothing.  Breathing feels like a workout.  Every joint in my body is aches.  Getting up from a sitting position or readjusting in the bed causes me to groan and lose my breath, which stinks because I have to get up every 20 minutes or so to go to the bathroom.  I can't eat more than a couple of handfuls of food in a sitting.  I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep because I can't breathe and I'm sore.  So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm starting to feel like I'm pregnant with triplets.

This past Thursday I had a doctor's appointment that left me feeling completely deflated.  It's not that things are going horribly with the pregnancy right now; I'm just not the triplet mom rock star they told me I was for the longest time.  It's like being an A student and all of a sudden getting back a big paper with a B- on it.  It's not like I failed, but I'm still not particularly happy. Let me preface this by saying that according to the ultrasound the babies are fantastic.  They are perfectly happy in there leaching all of mommy's resources and leaving me a hot mess.

Of course, the doctors and nurses noticed the swelling at the appointment.  It's pretty amazing.  Also, they took my blood pressure and it was significantly elevated.  It went from 96/68 at my first appointment to 140/80 on Thursday.  This caused them to worry about preeclampsia (more commonly known as hypertension of pregnancy).  Oh...skip to the next paragraph now if you don't like medical stuff or details about lady parts and pregnancy.   Preeclampsia is usually diagnosed using three factors:  fluid retention, elevated blood pressure and protein in the urine.  Since I definitely have the first two symptoms, they checked my urine for protein.  Unfortunately,  I was too well-hydrated and, therefore, it was too dilute for them to detect any protein.  Don't worry, the protein check is not over yet.  I get the joy of doing a 24-hour collection beginning Sunday morning.  I have to collect every drop of urine I produce for a 24-hour period and submit it for testing.  Fun.  They will also do a blood test on Monday morning to check for additional protein.  Finally, just to be on the extra safe side they did a Fetal Fibronectin Test and checked my cervix.  Fetal Fibronectin is a protein that is released when the amniotic sac begins to detach from the wall of the uterus.  If it is detected, there is a 40% chance you will go into labor in the next two weeks.  If not, there is a less than 2% chance of labor beginning.  Fortunately, that test came back negative.  I probably won't be going into labor in the very near future, but that does not eliminate the risk of preeclampsia which can lead to emergency delivery of the babies if it progresses to a certain point.  Finally, the cervix check revealed that my cervix was not dilated, but it had softened and shortened.  This earned more strict bed rest than I had previously.  I'm not particularly excited about that one.

I should have more information about my risk for preeclampsia on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.  In the mean time, I will be "enjoying" more strict bed rest.  Next week we will have a growth scan to make sure the babies are growing at an appropriate rate and they will give us the estimated weights.  Last check, each weighed over 2 lbs with our boy being the biggest.  We've also just about finished the nursery, so that will be coming soon.  Until then, here is a long awaited picture of the bump.  I'm currently measuring almost 42 weeks and carrying an extra 47 lbs.  I am currently larger than the average full term mother and I still have 7 weeks to go (if we're very lucky).

29 Weeks with the Manning Trio