We decided to wait a couple weeks to tell our parents, just to make sure everything was ok. However my mom called me a couple days after we found out I was pregnant and asked me point blank if I was pregnant!! She apparently h ad been having dreams that something was going on with me and even dreamed that I was going to have a baby! We have a very strong bond apparently! I had no choice but to confirm that, indeed, she was going to be a grandmother, but to please keep her mouth shut so we could share our good news. A couple weeks later we did tell the rest of our parents and grandparents that we would be adding to our little family.
Not long after I found out I was pregnant I started feeling very nauseas and started vomiting. The dreaded morning sickness hit me and hit me hard! Except it was like morning, noon, and night sickness. My first doctor's appointment wasn't scheduled until the beginning of September, but I was feeling so weak and ill by the end of October that I made an appontment then to see if I could get some medications to help. I was found to be quite dehydrated and was sent home with home health to start on IV fluids and IV anit-nausea medications. This was certianly a sign of things to come. I ended up back on IV fluids in the beginning of December, and in February. My nausea and vomiting was not letting up after the normal 3 months, and I continued to lose weight. By February after 3 rounds of dehydration so severe I needed IV fluids and continued nausea, vomiting, and weight loss despite medication, my doctor took me off work until delivery and sent me to a GI doctor to evaluate my nutritional status and to see if I needed IV nutrition.
My GI doctor discovered that I had a few gallstones (that could have contributed to my nausea and vomiting) but that my nutritional status was not severe enough to outweigh the risks of IV nutrition. So I continued on! The condition I had was called hyperemesis gravidarum. It is extreme, persistant nausea and vomiting and is not the same thing as morning sickness! It can lead to dehydration and weight loss (check and check) and can be very debilitating and make you extremely weak. During the dark days of my sickness I probably didn't even take in 500 calories a day. Before I got pregnant, I had never heard of this condition before. The first several months when I was going through this I continued to try to work and all the while just thought I was being a big baby and tried to snap myself out of it. I thought I was just going crazy! But this is an actual medical condition, and you can't just make yourself not have it.
Eventually, with medication and an extremely limited diet, I started feeling a bit better by mid-March. And the last month of my pregnancy I actually started to eat a bit more and actually had two doctor visits where I gained weight! Granted it was one pound and four pounds, but still! It was the first and only weight gains I had had through my pregnancy! I ended up with a net weight loss of about 35 pounds. Who knew after all those years of dieting that all I needed to do was get pregnant!
The last few weeks of my pregnancy I was feeling better but a few other complications were arising during my doctors visits. My blood pressure started to go up a bit and I started having protein in my urine, which can indicate preeclampsia. I started going to the doctor twice a week and got weekly ultrasounds on the baby. On the ultrasounds Ava was measuring on the small side and the amniotic fluid was also borderline low. All of the time I was sick and worried about me i thought "at least Ava is doing ok". It was quite stressful to think that something may be going on with her! But in the end everything turned out fine and Ava decided to make her appearance ten days before her due date, on May 5 and was absolutely perfect! That story will be continued on the next post!
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