It’s nice to be around other ladies that are pregnant and due within a month or two of me. I love getting to chat with them and share stories without feeling like I’m getting advice. Not that I have anything against advice, exactly. Anyway, my friends are just so good at being able to chat about pregnancy and the life of being a mother to a toddler to where it is enjoyable. And one of the best parts being that they don’t project pregnancy symptoms onto themselves. Just one example, many women know that your belly can get itchy during pregnancy, but just because you’ve heard women talk about it or you’ve read it in a book doesn’t mean that you have to convince yourself that you are experiencing it too. There’s actually a lot I could list here, but I’ll stick with one.
I generally do not share much about Spencer’s birth story with other people. I don’t care to bring attention to myself like that. Besides when I say I had HELLP people want information on it since pretty much no one has heard of it and doesn’t it sound so dramatic to say “It’s when your liver swells to the point it could rupture and your blood pressure shoots up so high you’re at a huge risk for a stroke and your blood vessels constrict so tight that your blood cells are shredded like playdough in a spaghetti maker and your platelets drop so low that you could bleed to death easily.” Yeah, I thought that sounded dramatic too. Not my style.
Anyway, there’s another girl in my ward that had HELLP with her son, though it was not so severe and presented no complications for her other than being induced a week early. Thank goodness for her! She has been caught in the same situation Kevin and I were in, how will it affect the growth of their family? Is it worth risking again? She’s pretty interested in how things are going with the doctors and everything. I’m hoping things go well (duh, of course) so that she can have some peace of mind.
I also was speaking with another friend, her daughter is SO adorable, who is on zofran. She only needed it during her first trimester with Millie and is hoping it’s the same way this time. So far I have had to continue taking the pills, wishing I didn’t have to.
Speaking of zofran, I skipped a couple of doses the other day. BIG mistake! First, I got a headache. Not just like any old headache. This was a migraine type headache. Now, I know how to handle these things, I’ve had doctors trying to shove pills down my throat for migraines since I was 12. But this was one of the worst I’ve had, I think. And because I’d skipped my medicine I was nauseated so I couldn’t say it was from my head or from pregnancy. Because of it though, my gag reflex was so awful and every time I’d gag (for no apparent reason other than swallowing) it would feel like my head was going to split open. Once I got home, after Kevin convinced me to eat some toast before bed, I just wanted to go to sleep so I could sleep through the pain and not deal with it. Haha, yeah right! My head hurt so badly it actually woke me up twice that night. I’ve had some killer migraines, ones that have caused me to throw up before, but I’ve never had one wake me up because it hurt so badly. Reading up on the medication, there were several complaints about “zofran hangovers.” So now, when I go to the doctor next week I will have to ask her how to tell the difference between a zofran hangover and a HELLP/Pre-eclampsia headache. I don’t think I need to worry this early in my pregnancy but we’re trying not to take chances this time.
Also, when I understood that this medicine would be playing with the serotonin in my brain I was concerned about my mental health. Low serotonin levels produce insomnia, depression, food cravings, increased sensitivity to pain, aggressive behavior, and poor body-temperature regulations. It’s hard to say if I have experienced any of that or not. Pregnancy seems to do all those things, except the depression, I’m not really a depressed kind of person. The increased sensitivity to pain might explain why the headache hurt so badly. Better get off this stuff before I have this baby! My thermostat has pretty much always been broken, so I don’t know. Anyway, I haven’t had the blues like I was first concerned about so that’s good news.
Oh, and if you want to know about food cravings, I’ve only craved things I am not supposed to eat and so I haven’t. Sushi is the biggest craving so far, really. What I wouldn’t give for a table covered in dragon rolls, caterpillar rolls, mexican rolls, crunch rolls, and a great dollop of wasabi next to a pile of pickled ginger. Oh man, I miss my sushi! I can have veggie sushi, but I don’t know if I’d have the self control to just get veggie sushi so I’ve just stayed away. The second craving being corn dogs. A delicious corn dog dipped in ketchup and mustard. But, I’m trying to listen to the doctors orders and stay away from them. Sad. Otherwise it’s fried shrimp with cocktail sauce. My friend was going to take me to Red Lobster for their all-you-can-eat-any-way-you-like-it-shrimp, but we never made it down for it. Oh well, I don’t think I could eat my money’s worth anyway so it’s probably for the best.
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