A little excitement

Yesterday Karen and I went to a breastfeeding class at the hospital, and now I feel a lot less anxiety in that department. The lactation consultant made it sound so easy. We'll see. I felt bad for the guys who were so supportive and excited to be there got dragged along. If you are pregnant and are planning to go to a breastfeeding class, leave your guy at home and tell him all about it later. Breastfeeding is not something they can really help out with if you ask me.

Today (34 weeks) I went in for my bi-weekly OB checkup. BP was normal, I'm still gaining a pound a week, urine was normal, abdominal measurement was about 2cm big (same trajectory). Then Mary the NP took the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler. And took it again. And moved it around. And took it again. Then she finally decided it was too low (115, should be 120-130 minimum) and had me go to the hospital for a non-stress test. I kept repeating to myself on the way over there NON stress, NON stress, NON stress. Yes, I was a little scared. I didn't call Steve because I wanted to make sure there was a problem before potentially stressing him out, and I knew that I would lose it if I had to explain the situation out loud on the phone. Something about verbalizing my thoughts makes things so much worse than just silently focusing on the experts.

So, up in Labor & Delivery Nurse Jill had me pee in a cup (again) and lie in a recliner-type chair on my left side, then strapped a couple monitors onto my belly. She gave me a clicker to hold and told me to push the button when I felt the baby move. Sensing my bewilderment, she then explained that when the baby moves there should be an increase in heart rate, like when we climb stairs. I lay there doing the pregnancy version of Whack-A-Mole for 10-15 minutes, then Jill came back with good news and bad news. The good news is the baby is fine and heart rate increased with movement just as it should. The bad news is I had ketones in my urine indicating that my body was starving and dehydrated. (Jill also brought graham crackers, peanut butter, and a cup of water for me to eat right then.) Then Dr. Averill came in to fuss at me; I think she actually used the phrase, "Your body is eating itself" to explain ketonosis. (I was secretly happy that something had finally concerned Dr. A because I was starting to wonder if she was just super laid-back or really didn't care about my concerns.) And I reassured them both that I actually eat a lot and perhaps my late lunch was to blame. Or maybe forgetting to take my prenatal vitamin & iron supplement for two days was more serious than I'd thought. Boy is this becoming a confessional.

Then I learned something else unrelated to my/baby's health but not yet public info that put me over the edge, so it was all I could do to get out of there and drive home. And after I unloaded on Steve he put me in front of the wonderful salad bar at Ruby Tuesday and now I'm stuffed to the gills with edemame! and spinach! and hard-boiled eggs!