Then and Now

It really is amazing how quickly your babies grow up. This idea is shamelessly stolen from another preemie blog -- it was such a fun idea that I just had to do it too!

This is Max a year ago on his first public outing (his own baby shower) -- what a little pudge ball:



And this is Max today:



Oh, no, my baby is growing up!! We finally did confirm the source of Max's recent bouts of crankyness and restless sleep -- he is getting his molars. We didn't get visual confirmation, but when I stuck my finger in his mouth I could feel a new tooth poking out of his gums.

He finally figured out how to clap the normal way (although I almost miss his nonchalant, one-handed clap ;) and he's picking up speed with his walking. He's decided that crawling is mostly for babies, so he's toddling all over the place now. I've heard him say "Ba Ba" for bottle a couple of times now and he's doing a lot of pretend "talking," so I'm sure he'll be adding a lot more words to his vocabulary soon.

Speedy Test Results

I had my follow-up appointment with my OB on Thursday. Everything still looks fine, which is good news. I had my first fetal fibronectin (early labor) test as well. Although the doctor said it usually takes 1-2 business days for the results to come back and that they'd only call if the result was positive, she called last night to tell me that the test was negative (she didn't want me to spend the holiday weekend worrying -- major brownie points for her). A negative result means that you almost certainly won't deliver in the next two weeks, which is a nice thing to know! Based on that info, my doctor is switching my medication today (from indomethacin to nifedipine) and I won't have my next ultrasound until the week after next. Gee, I'll have a WHOLE week with no doctor's appointments ... of course, that also means that I'll have NO excuse to get out of the house. :P

I hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing holiday weekend!

We Like Good News

I had my weekly ultrasound checkup at the hospital yesterday -- happily, my cervix is measuring even longer than last week! They did a "pressure" measurement as well (they push down on your belly and see what cervical length they get when it is under stress) and even that was a nice, normal measurement. The fluid levels around the baby are still great. Little miss apparently was not too pleased when the tech pushed on my stomach, because the little saucepot kicked her back. That's my girl! ;) I spoke with my doctor today and she said since the indomethacin appears to be working well and not causing any problems, we'll probably take the medication issue week by week and see how things go. I have my next appointment with her on Thursday, so we'll discuss it more then. I know it isn't good to stay on the indomethacin for too long if you can help it, but I'm a little loathe to rock the boat right now.

I'm glad the bedrest and meds seem to be doing the trick -- it gives me some good motivation to stick with it and behave myself. It's hard being stuck on the couch all day, especially when the weather is as nice as it has been lately. Sheesh, I never thought the idea of vacuuming the house would sound like great fun ... but the idea is becoming more appealing all the time. ;) Aunt Anne is down this week helping us out (thank you!!!!!), so Max is spending some quality time with her. She knows how to make a mean grilled cheese sandwich -- a skill of which Max greatly approves!

Right on Track

Max is 16 1/2 months old (13 1/2 corrected) and is doing great! It seems we've finally kicked the Zantac habit -- Max has been Zantac free for about a month and seems to be doing well without it. Max had his developmental clinic and baby IQ test a couple of weeks ago. He's 16 months old now (13 adjusted), so this was his 12-month clinic. Everything went well and the doctors said he looks great and is right on track. They had the psych test first (thankfully) -- basically, the pediatric psychiatrist played with him for about a half an hour to check his cognitive, fine motor, and gross motor skills. She did things like have him turn pages in a book, put toy blocks in a cup and take them back out, find a block that was hidden under one of several cups, put a peg in a hole, bounce and throw a ball, crawl, walk, etc. They wanted to know how many words he knew, if he pointed things out in books, etc. He did almost everything -- there were a couple activities that he didn't do, because he was more interested in throwing the toys on the table to see what noise they made (his new favorite game) than doing what he was supposed to be doing with them (even though I know he can). So, on paper, he scored on the slightly low end of normal for his adjusted age, but the doctor said that that was only because of the couple things that he wouldn't do right then -- she thought he was right on track and didn't have any concerns.

The developmental appointment was the shortest yet -- they asked a bunch of questions, played with him a bit, watched him walk, and gave him a brief physical. He weighed 22 1/2 pounds, but was still measuring at 29 inches high. They didn't have any concerns and said that he doesn't have to come back for six months. If he checks out fine at his next appointment (they mostly want to assess his language skills), then he'll graduate from the program! Max was a very good boy, even though we were there for a long time.

Word got out that we were in the building, because two of Max's former doctors and the head social worker stopped by to say hi and visit with Max. After the appointments, we stopped by the NICU to visit some of Max's former nurses. Everyone was happy to see him and amazed at how big he was. They had some photos of Max up in one of the display cases -- one of him on the day he "graduated" from the NICU and some from his previous visits to the NICU. Even I forget how small he used to be!

He had his well-baby check the following day -- he weighed in at 22 1/2 pounds and 31 inches tall. Since they measured him at 29 inches at the developmental, somebody's measurements are obviously off! He usually measures short at the developmental appointments and tall at the pediatrician's office, so I'll split the difference and say he's about 30 inches tall. ;) His lungs are all clear and his ears were normal, so he successfully recovered from the bug he had a few weeks ago. Since he handled the virus so well, the pediatrician thinks his lungs are fine and that we can pretty much consider him a normal little boy from here on out. We did find out that our pediatrician (who I really like) finally took a job up at the hospital, so he'll be leaving the practice. The good news is that the person who is coming in to replace him, while young (not too far out of med school), has done a lot of work with preemies and special needs kids. So, we'll try her out and see how we get along with her. Max got his MMR as well -- he gave a couple good howls and shed a couple of tears, but was pretty much OK as soon as I picked him up.

Max is walking all over the place and getting steadier on his feet every day. He's trying to go faster and faster, which is funny to watch (and makes for a fair number of wipe outs). His favorite thing to do right now is to go "walking" on the sidewalk in front of our house (he thinks the grass is kind of strange). Dad and Grandma took him on his first trip to the shoe store and bought him some big boy shoes. Apparently he thought the hard-soled shoes were strange to walk in and was lifting up his feet really high when trying to walk. We're working on some baby sign language, which has been fun. Max learned "more" pretty quickly and has already adapted it in ways I didn't expect -- he'll ask for "more" of a certain game or "more" of a certain toy, in addition to asking for more food. It's nice to teach him ways to communicate other than whining -- now when he tries to mooch whatever food Mom or Dad is eating, he can do so politely! We're working on "milk," "all done," "up," and "down," but so far "all done" is the only one that he seems to be starting to understand.

Max is still quite the chow hound -- we've been working through the remaining stash of baby food in the freezer, but I haven't been making any more, since he's doing so well with table food. His latest favorites are raisins and frozen blueberries and he's even been enjoying some raw tomatoes (he wasn't as enthusiastic about the cucumbers). He still LOVES grilled cheese sandwiches, so we've been trying out different ingredients in those (whole wheat bread, pumpernickel, swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, apples, tomatoes, etc.). I've been trying to not fall into a rut of feeding him the same stuff over and over and trying out new things, but sometimes it is hard to be creative! We probably need to start introducing utensils in earnest, but right now he's still more interested in throwing them on the floor.

A few new photos have been posted on Flickr, although Max is still too quick to let me get many good shots. He suspects the camera might be the most fun toy of all, if only Mom would let him get his hands on it!

Better News!

I had my appointment up at the hospital on Monday and finally got a little good news. It looks like the bedrest and the indomethacin is helping! They gave me an average 3.2 cervix measurement today, so that's a nice improvement! The lowest measurement wasn't much under three, so I feel a heck of a lot better about things than I did last week. They also checked the fluid around the baby to make sure that the levels were still good, since the indomethacin can affect the fluid levels. The fluid levels looked great, so that's good news also. The baby was bopping around and it was fun to see her. She is apparently sitting on my cervix right now (thanks kiddo!) and we could see her stretching out her legs and playing with her toes. Too cute!

I saw my regular OB on Wednesday to go over the ultrasound results from Monday. Since the baby's fluid levels are fine, she's going to leave me on the indomethacin for another week, then switch me to nifedipene or procardia. Since the ultrasound results were good and the contractions still seem to be under control and nothing seems to be going on, she didn't give me a fetal fibronectin test. I half wanted it and half didn't ... well, honestly, I only wanted it if the results were going to be negative, because two weeks of worrying over a positive that was most likely false would drive me nuts. Hopefully, next week's checkups will be as reassuring as the ones I had this week.

As you might expect, bedrest isn't much fun, although I keep reminding myself that it's the best option I have available to me right now. Only 12 more weeks to go! :P I finally signed up for Netflix (which is even cooler than it sounds), so I've been watching some movies to pass the time. Mom came down to help us out this week -- what a lifesaver! Of course, Max decided that now might be a good time to develop some separation/stranger anxiety, so he wasn't too keen on letting me out of his sight. I actually owe a proper Max update, since he had his developmental appointment the other week. So stay tuned for more exciting Max news and some new pictures!

Here We Go Again ...

Well, it seems like I just can't do anything the easy way (warning: lots of pregnancy details to follow). I was hoping to sail through this pregnancy without any problems, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. I started having some contractions the Monday before last and went up to the hospital to get checked out. They couldn't pick the contractions up on the monitors and all my labs and tests came back normal. They sent me home and told me to take it easy and follow up with my doctor at my regular appointment in two weeks. After a week went by and I was still having the contractions, I called my doctor's office and told the nurse I wanted to talk to my doctor -- they put a message through to my doctor's partner, since my OB was on call up at the hospital. He called me right back and he agreed that we needed to call my doctor and figure out what to do. They got back to me in a few minutes and said that my doctor wanted me to come up to L&D and get checked out again, run some more tests, and talk about if we needed to change our game plan. Since she was the on call doctor at the hospital, I'd be seeing her up there.

So, I trotted off to Labor and Delivery (again) -- this time the monitor was picking up some contractions and the irritability that I've been feeling. The ran a couple of labs again, but all my labs from the previous week had come back clean, so I didn't appear to have any infections. They sent me down to the perinatal assessment center to look at the baby and to get another cervical length. Baby looked great -- she was bopping around in there -- no boy bits to be seen, so we're still about as sure as we can be that I'm having a girl. She's a good size for her age -- measuring in at over 23 weeks (I was 22 weeks at the time) and they estimate her to be about 1 lb., 4 oz. They had a resident do my initial cervical length check and at first they thought the measurements hadn't changed. But, after showing them to the head doctor, the head doctor came back in and did them herself -- the resident wasn't measuring the right place, so I was actually quite a bit shorter than the previous week. No funneling and no dilation (and, as per physical exam earlier, cervix is still nice and hard and closed). My cervix also appears to be dynamic at this point, so it's kind of changing back and forth all the time, possibly due to the contractions. Since this was a change from a week before (even though I think the scan from a week before was probably off, since it was done with the wheel-in little ultrasound and the specialists didn't do it) and it was in the low normal range. My OB, my perinatologist, and another big dog doctor (forget the specialty) had a pow-wow and they decided to keep me overnight for observation and start me on some meds.

They put me on indomethacin, stuck a fluid IV in my arm (it literally took them 45 minutes to get the IV in -- it was awful), and stuck me in bed. The meds seemed to help settle down the contractions. They took another cervical length the following morning and it was the same as the day before, so they consider me stable at this point. I was discharged Tuesday afternoon. They sent me home on indomethacin every six hours and fairly strict bedrest (lying down as much as possible, avoid going up and down stairs as much as possible, no baby lifting, no toddler chasing, etc.). They want me on the indomethacin until about 24 weeks -- at that point they'll probably switch me over to nifedipene, since long-term indomethacin use can cause problems (decrease of fluid around the baby, PDA issues for baby, etc.). I'll be getting weekly cervical length checks for now -- at 24 weeks they'll start the fetal fibronectin (early labor) tests and reassess the situation. If things look at all dicey, I'll probably get preventative steroid shots -- if things look more stable, they'll try to hold off on steroid shots for a while, since they think they are more effective at later gestations. Thankfully, I already had a contingency plan in place for my work, so I'll be able to work from home while I'm on bedrest, as long as my condition and the doctors allow it.

Being in the hospital stunk, although I'm glad I went and I'm glad the doctors are being very proactive. I forgot how uncomfortable the hospital beds are (I have bruises on my hips!), how awful the food is, how impossible it is to sleep, and how much of a drag it is to try to use the restroom while dragging around an IV trolley and a monitor cord. I was only gone 24 hours, but I missed Max so much! It is the longest I've been away from him since he came home from the hospital. He didn't want to go to sleep for Dad the night I was gone and the following morning he was banging on the doors and calling for "Ma ma." It was so nice to be able to come home and see him and read him his bedtime stories.

We going to have a rough couple of months here, even if everything goes well. We're already mustering all the help we can get, since we're going to need some help taking care of Max and the big kids while Dad is working. The meds really seem to be helping, which is a good thing. With all the preventative care, I'm still hoping to keep this baby cooking for a long time. I go back to the hospital on Monday for another cervical length check -- hopefully there will be no change (unless it's for the better, which can happen).

So, for a while this blog will probably be more about me and less about Max. ;) I'll send out notifications for the Max-related posts or major news, but probably not for my trivial or day-to-day posts. You can always check back here for updates if you're interested. I have to spend the next few months on the couch or in bed, so I'm going to have some serious free time to spend blogging. ;)