Home Again

After a day and a half in the hospital, multiple monitoring of the babies, a 24-hour urine test, multiple blood tests, I have been sent home with the same diagnosis I walked in there with: pregnancy induced hypertension.  Yes, it keeps getting higher, but they can’t find any evidence of pre-eclampsia in my body.  So very good news!  I have been cleared to go home and wait a little longer.  I have a renewed commitment to bed rest.  I have to admit, I’ve been doing too much cleaning and stuff at home.  But I really need to focus on laying down as much as possible, and just being okay with living in a shithole of a place.  It’s really not dirty exactly – every two weeks, I have a housekeeper that comes and cleans.  And it appears the dishes get washed occasionally.  But there is stuff everywhere!  We still haven’t unpacked completely, and my husband decided to get some boxes unpacked this weekend.  But his idea of unpacking is take stuff out of the boxes and spread them all over the house.  There are pictures propped up in rooms all over, but not actually on the walls.  There’s a huge pile of stuff at the top of the stairs to the basement – things that need to go downstairs – but haven’t actually made it down there.  And every counter in the kitchen is covered with stuff.  Because he also did the great thing of going to the grocery store, but he didn’t actually put away the non-refrigerated stuff!  Why oh why? 

I’m trying to chill out and just accept things for awhile, but it truly drives me nuts.  I know that if I just get up and take care of it, it would only take 1-2 hours to do it, but I also know that it would start a chain reaction in my body – contractions, higher blood pressure, and maybe another round of hospital checks.  So I lie down, and try to ignore it when I make my slow little trips to the kitchen to get food.  At least there is food in the house – right?  He provided that, so I need to just be okay with it. 

I go back to the doc on Friday for another growth scan.  It will have been 3 weeks since the last scan, and I think I’m most worried about that.  All this distraction about my high blood pressure and possible pre-eclampsia seems to have taken the focus away from the true worries – my little guys growing.  Last time one of them was down to 10.8%, and that was down from 48% only six weeks prior.  We have been on a bad trajectory for both of them, so I would not be surprised if it’s even worse.  From what I’ve read, high blood pressure doesn’t help with growth either.  I have been pounding the protein shakes, and trying to eat  as much as possible.  The weight for me has definitely gone up – I’m definitely following if not exceeding the weight guidelines for twin pregnancies.  But I’m afraid it’s not translating to appropriate weight gain for the boys.  I don’t know what else to do – I guess just lie here as long as possible. 

I’ll be 34 weeks on Saturday, which my doctor is very happy about.  She says that 34 weeks makes a big difference for the babies, especially regarding NICU time and care that is required after birth.  I’ve taken the steroid shots, and she moved me from Lovenox to Heparin, to be ready for a quick delivery if necessary.  I guess all we do now is wait.  I don’t think she’ll let me go past 37 weeks, so 3 weeks max after Saturday.  I’m hoping that we schedule a 37 week c-section date on Friday, just so we have something to focus on.  The nursery isn’t ready, and I don’t have a hospital bag packed.  I just can’t get too excited about all that stuff.  All I want is to stay pregnant for a few more weeks to give these boys the best fighting chance possible.  The rest will all fall into place.