Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

Here We Go!...or not

Well, today's been an exciting day. We went to Elizabeth's normal twice-weekly exam this morning (and I even got on-street, non-metered parking in Post Office Square!), after a weekend of reasonable blood pressures, rest, etc. They said that her spot-urine protein test was high, and a related test they'd done on Friday came back as not good, and her blood pressure was high (150/90, I think), so they wanted her to go to the hospital to be induced! We certainly weren't expecting that to happen this morning, by a long shot. In fact, we were not expecting it to such a degree that Elizabeth hadn't brought a book to read, and we hadn't packed the suitcase, or anything. Silly us.

Our hearts were racing a bit, and we were feeling dumb for having not packed the suitcase etc. We went straight to Brigham & Women's hospital and got set up in maternity triage. They put her on the non-stress test (NST) and collected some urine. Soon after they drew some blood for more tests. The NST looked good, the spot-urine looked better than the earlier one, and when the lab (blood) tests came back, they also looked not bad. So the doctors on duty decided to not induce Elizabeth. Instead, they wanted to admit her to the hospital. We relaxed at that point; it sounds like baby Dorothy will not be delivered 24 hours from now, but things could change.

So then we waited around for hours so that the ultrasound department to have an opening so that they could get Elizabeth in (oddly enough, a woman who's not even in labor yet is lower priority than people who might be dying). The ultrasound went great -- the baby is really kicking around and has good blood flow through the placenta. But boy is she HUGE! They said that her weight is 8 pounds 5 ounces, which is literally off the scales for a baby who's not quite 35 weeks yet. She's in the 100th percentile of weight. Now, the silly thing about reporting a weight that accurately is that we were told by one of the doctors last week that ultrasounds are only accurate to about 20%, so all these weight measurements they've been telling us are, in reality, only rough ballparks. But in any case, this is one big baby!

Finally, after the 9:30am medical office visit, the 11am trip to the hospital, and the ~5pm ultrasound, Elizabeth got checked in to a regular antenatal room around 7pm, so this has been a much longer day than expected. The doctors said that Elizabeth is probably not going home until she has a baby, but that might be in a couple of days, or it might be a couple of weeks. We'll see. But for now, I have to go pack a suitcase and get some sleep so I can go back to the hospital in the morning. We'll try to keep the details flowing to this blog as often as we can!