Oh, PE (preeclampsia), how I loathe you! I’ve suffered through you for two pregnancies and here I was in the last bit of my third pregnancy thinking that I was in the clear. NOPE! For those who don’t know PE or preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and signs of damage to another organ system, often the kidneys. Preeclampsia usually begins after 20 weeks of pregnancy in a woman whose blood pressure had been normal. Even a slight rise in blood pressure may be a sign of preeclampsia.

Left untreated, preeclampsia can lead to serious, even fatal, complications for both mom and baby. With preeclampsia, the only cure is delivery of baby. Last Tuesday I spent eight hours in Labor & Delivery having conversations with doctors about delivering early, NICU procedures and what all this meant for my baby and me.

For the first 32 weeks of my pregnancy I hadn’t had any issues but it seems now that PE is rearing its ugly head and compounding. Right now I’ve been given a blood pressure medication to help curve my pressures downwards and asked to do as much bed rest as possible. That might be a little hard to do with two toddlers running around but guess what, it’s better than being in the hospital on bed rest. Which is the only other option if I can’t keep my pressures under control.

So for the next few weeks we will be living week to week. Every doctor appointment could be a trip for admission to the hospital. I will be seeing both my standard OB/GYN and Perinatal doctors to monitor my pressures, baby movements and do weekly if not twice weekly bio-physical and anatomy ultrasounds. But for today we’ve dodged the bullet and I get to be home with my family!

With all the craziness we will be putting the nursery together a lot sooner, packing hospital bags and finishing the search for the perfect baby bag (that ever elusive search). I really appreciate and have been touched by those who have reached out to check on us. Hopefully we can hold off baby Caleb’s arrival a couple more weeks. I doubt we will make that 39 week mark like we had planned but anything between 36-37 weeks would make this momma very happy!