An analyst at heart

While I’ve been on bed rest, I’ve had the opportunity to think A LOT. Thinking for me pretty much always leads to analyzing things, in this case, others.

I’ve never had any sort of medical problems. (I know, poor me, right?) To be honest, for a while I was quite scared for my baby’s life. After having this scare of our baby being born very prematurely, I’ve gotten all sorts of reactions from people.

Those who call 2-3 times a week to see how I’m feeling.

Those who ask me how I’m doing and want a sincere answer

Those who bring me books and flowers

Those who offer to bring food to our home

Those who bring me things to do with my hands (sewing)

Those who offer their dog for comfort

Those who call after they heard the news to find out what’s going on

Those who tell me “don’t worry, we’ll be able to go shopping in a few weeks.” Though they have no idea if      it’s true

Those who offer their prayers

Those who offer to make me food to be eaten in bed

Those who don’t talk to me at all about what’s going on, but continue to have a conversation like everything    is normal.

Those who ask me a million questions to understand what’s going on

Those who talk to nurses to get some more “insight” as to what’s going on

To all of you who have done these things, I thank you. It would be really easy to read our blog or hear about our situation and think “that stinks for them”. But to you who have taken the time to pray or/and do something to support us, I say thanks times a million. I hope you know your kind actions and prayers were felt. Because of your prayers I have literally felt more at ease with what’s going on.  

Thanks times a million

Jess

To start this post is not meant to elicit feelings of pity of sadness for our situation. We feel so incredibly blessed for the wonderful opportunity we have been given to become parents. With that in mind here’s the low down. A few weeks ago we visited our doctor for a routine checkup. We initially had a sonogram to check on the health of the baby and to take some measurements in order to monitor things. Our sonogram tech was oddly quiet and didn’t say much, this was a little odd at the time. Once we were done we went in and waited to speak with our doctor. As soon as she entered we were told that there was good news and bad news. Good news, the baby was healthy. Bad news, Jess apparently had what is called a dynamic cervix. For those of you who don’t know, the cervix is the muscle that keeps the baby inside cooking as long as possible. The case with a dynamic cervix is that it changes lengths randomly, this can create serious problems if not dealt with. We were told to immediately go to the hospital and get a steroid shot to assist in the baby’s lung development and the following day were scheduled to go see a specialist.

The specialist saw the same thing as our regular doctor and prescribed a regimen of hormone treatments to help the issue. At this point Jess was told to be on modified bed rest, meaning that she could walk to get around the house but could not stand for extended periods of time or do household chores. Basically she was ordered to lay in bed and watch Netflix, read books, and do other things that are possible when in an extremely reclined position. To me this sounds awesome, but it eventually drove Jess out of her mind. We had a follow up appointment with the specialist the following week to monitor things. Jess was totally a trooper during this week and did exactly as she was directed by our team of medical experts, I’ve always wanted to say that we had a team of medical experts…awesome. We show up for our follow up and the specialists sonogram machine was busted, we sat in their office for an hour and a half before we were told anything. We kindly informed them this was a special visit and that we needed to be seen by someone. I had the brilliant idea that we could go to our regular doctor since we were just down the street.

Eventually we got in to see a doctor and things had improved dramatically. The dynamic issue was not evident during the scans that were done, bed rest was ordered to continue as was the hormone treatments and we had another appointment for the following Tuesday. We go in for our second follow up visit and the improvement trend continued. To stay on the safe side bed rest was once again continued as were the hormone treatments.

So, everyone is all caught up now. Despite all the poking and prodding Jess is great, our sweet baby girl (Codename Peanut) is healthy and strong, right where she should be as far as development and size. I’m not going to lie it was a scary few moments for us but now it seems the worst is past us and that things are holding steady, which is awesome. Jess and I both had our freakout moments but thanks to a competent and caring medical team we are doing just fine. Everything is awesome and we are prepping to meet this little girl (Codename Peanut) in a few months.

Michael