Pre-Baby Making Appointment

At lunch, before the appointment.

I never thought that having a baby would be easy for us, but I never thought it would be THIS HARD. We have seen so many doctors this year, all in hopes that we will find the missing piece to help us have a healthy and full-term pregnancy. On Friday, we saw a new Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor in hopes that he could suggest some new treatments. We were really impressed with him and the whole hospital. For the first time I felt like we had found a doctor that was going to be there to help us.

We talked about so many things, and before we knew it, we had been in his office for an entire hour. We went over what happened during our last pregnancy with Malakai and what we hope will happen next pregnancy. I will try to update you in the most easy to understand format.

http://www.astepinthejourney.com/2011/07/few-printables.html

1. IVIg treatments were one of the first things I wanted to talk about. He said that they may help, but there is a lot of evidence that it could increase my chances of getting pre-eclampsia again. I also thought that it was really interesting that the antibodies are not just in my blood, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. In every little tissue there are anti-bodies. His explanation was great and it went something like this: The anti-bodies carry around little bar code scanners and scan everything. When they get to something, say the pregnancy, they scan the barcode and it comes up that it is broken. Since its coming up that it's broken my body then starts to attack it like its something making me sick. The best thing to do is to reduce any factors that would make me have a lupus flare up. Lucky for me, my lupus is very quiet. He said that it will be important for me to listen to my body and when I am tired, take a nap. Don't over do it.

On our way there.

2. My kidneys. The most he said about my kidneys is that as long as I am stable and not spilling protein, now is a good time to try. He focused less on the kidney function and more on stability. He really emphasized eating a very healthy and balanced diet. I have been doing so well on my diet and he said it's great that I have been able to reduce my blood pressure so much; it will help us next time.

3. Lupus and Auto-immune stuff. I am going to stay on the Plaquenil which will help reduce flares and help the pregnancy. This is a new thing since I have never taken if before in a pregnancy, so I hope it is a big help. I am also going to increase the aspirin I take everyday which will help reduce clotting and take blood thinner shots 2x daily.

After we discussed everything we asked if we could go tour the NICU. He called up there and arranged for us to meet with one of the NICU doctors and we talked with him for at least 30 minutes and then toured the NICU, Well Baby nursery, and Delivery ward. The NICU doctor was funny and said that Prayer is the Best Medicine. We really like everyone we met; they were all so nice and confident they could offer us great medical care during our next pregnancy. It was like they really wanted to see our dreams come true and they wanted to help us do it.

Found on pintrest. Source unknown.