Blake Update

We are officially at the 32 week mark and holding strong. That crazy little antibody that we feel sure came from one of the blood transfusions I had after Grant was born is a non-issue and according to the doc would have been an issue by now if it was going to cause a problem. So thankful!

My blood pressure which went crazy and threw me into that HELLP Syndrome with Grant is holding on fairly well. It is starting to creep up but only slightly. My doc and I reviewed the timeline of everything that happened with Grant and it seems at 33 weeks with Grant my BP was perfectly average. When I went back at 35.4 weeks I was in full-blown, acute, do-something-now HELLP Syndrome but was not having any other symptoms besides super high blood pressure (at least not until they admitted me and then I suddenly felt worse than I've ever felt in my life....organ failure does not feel good folks). So things can go badly very quickly without much warning.

The hope is that with me taking my BP at home twice a day and seeing the doc every week now (which I've been doing since 28 weeks.....slightly annoying but I guess it's worth it) we will know the instant something starts to go south and hopefully be able to deliver before I get so sick. Obviously we are still very hopeful and the odds are good that my blood pressure will stay down and we will make it to January but I will tell you that the bags are packed. ;)

I knew it would be this way, but this 3rd trimester does have us a bit on edge. I think we are trying to prepare for the worst but expect the best. As we get closer to the number of weeks at which things got bad with Grant, I think we are both having some unpleasant memories flood back that we thought we had gotten past. If you've had a difficult or scary experience with child birth it just seems to color your view of things a bit. We certainly know how blessed we were that Grant was so healthy even though he was early and that I did recover without any lasting effects so in the grand scheme of things we got off pretty easy. There are many others who have much worse stories to tell.

Blake appears very healthy on all the sonograms with a very strong heartbeat and lots and lots of moving around during the day....and night. He is much more active than I remember Grant being when I was pregnant with him. At this point I have gained 25 lbs. and was hoping to stay under 30 lbs. but that may be hard to do given the fact that we have 6 or so more weeks to go.

So, that's where we are at this point. Haven't set the delivery date in stone yet but it's looking like it will be somewhere around January 20th if all goes well.

Thanks for the continued prayers. We appreciate it!