I'm here!

I didn't forget. Well, maybe for a day or two, but here I am! It's not like it matters at this point anyway - I don't even have any followers to my blog yet. I almost posted about this blog on Facebook the other day, to let my friends and family know it is here. And then I realized I'm not near far enough along in this pregnancy - which I've mentioned a few times now - to publish the blog there yet.

So... about my being pregnant. I am just over six weeks right now. Morning sickness (all day sickness) has officially kicked in. It has been steadily getting worse over the past few days. I'm down a few pounds, but I really think that is more from cutting out all sodas even before I found out I was pregnant. I haven't noticed any cravings yet, although I did see some awesome looking glazed donuts on a commercial last night and wanted one badly.

I am considered a high risk patient due to several things. 1st - my recurrent pregnancy loss. Three miscarriages in two years is not normal. 2nd - after my third loss, I was diagnosed with a clotting disorder (PAI-1 4g4g) and MTHFR. I am toying with looking up my research from right after I was diagnosed to discuss in a future blog post. Suffice to say for now that the clotting disorder causes my blood to clot too easily. There are so many small blood vessels forming in my uterus that even a tiny clot thrown in there could stop blood flow to the baby and cause another miscarriage. So, to counteract the disorder, I give myself daily injections of a blood thinner called Lovenox.

And my last reason for being high risk is my history of preterm labor and preterm delivery. When I was 32 weeks pregnant with Zane, I went into preterm labor unexpectedly. I wasn't sick or dehydrated nor could they really find a reason for my body to have gone into labor like it did. Zane was born at 35 weeks.

So, I'm pretty high risk this time around. I have my first ultrasound next Thursday, on 3/1, to determine 'viability.' Now, given my history, I know that seeing a baby and a heartbeat next week certainly doesn't guarantee me a baby in October. But it will be nice to know that the baby is growing and in the right place. My expected due date is 10/15/2012.

Did you catch that? This baby is due ten days after Zane's 2nd birthday. Then you have to consider that my OB is going to induce labor for me at 39 weeks because of the blood thinners I am on. (She doesn't want me going into labor on my own too soon after giving myself an injection because of the risks of bleeding out and because then I couldn't get an epidural(!!!)) So, at the latest, this baby will be here three days after Zane turns 2.

That should make for an interesting 2nd birthday. I will either be very, very pregnant or have a newborn already. I am still torn on whether to plan his birthday party really early or just have a small family get-together that we can play by ear.

Not to mention that my two kids will have birthdays in the same week. Potentially even the same day. I'm not even going to think about birthdays down the line. Joint parties? Have one on one weekend and the other the next weekend? That's too much to handle right now when I'm still in the precarious period of my pregnancy.

Here are my upcoming appointments:

1st ultrasound on 3/1 at 9am
Appt with MFM/high risk OB on 3/5 at 9am
Appt with my regular OB on 3/20 at 9:40am