The Alien Within

Kid #2 is trying to kill me before he/she is even born.

That sounds fairly dramatic but I'm about 90% sure it's true. I don't have easy pregnancies. It's a fact but this one has taken the cake. I'm ready to be done but sadly I'm only 17 weeks along so I've got quite a ways to go. With the boy, the nausea wasn't fun and didn't end until around week 26 (yeah and it was worse in the 2nd trimester...I'm one of those special women). My heart was the big problem with the boy though. For those of you that don't know, I have what is essentially a very minor heart condition (as heart conditions go). It's called SVT for short. You may have heard of it because it's not terribly rare for pregnant women to develop SVT for a short time during their pregnancy. I've had it or had the diagnosis of it for just under 10 years. Long story short, it's an electrical problem and my heart beats irregularly. Mostly, it just causes a lot of pain and can lead to preterm labor if not properly monitored and controlled. So with the boy, I was placed on a couple different drugs...if you're really curious, it was digoxen and a beta blocker but most likely anyone reading this won't know or care what they are. They helped and the boy arrived right when we wanted him to arrive but it wasn't easy and it freaked out my husband more than I think I realized at the time.

Before I whine anymore, let me first clarify that I find pregnancy to be truly a gift from God and the most miraculous experience a woman can have. For me, it's just a gift that kicks my butt (hopefully) for 9 months before I can actually enjoy it.

As for this pregnancy, my heart has been great. That's about where to good times end though. The vomiting is worse...yeah. I didn't really think that was possible but for my first two OB appointments, I showed a fairly significant loss in weight instead of a gain which wasn't a surprise because I was essentially throwing up 5-7 times a day every day. Like with the boy, I tried everything to make the morning sickness go away. I started with the old school natural routes...real gingerale and crackers. Nada. In fact, real gingerale really burns coming back up. I've come to judge food and drinks by more than how they taste just going down but I won't gross you out further with that information. I quickly moved onto drugs. Finagrin was a waste of time and actually made me feel kinda loopy. My OB had me try it in EVERY form...oral pill, wrist gel (that stuff's weird) and the shot. Again, nada. Nothing helped until zofran. I love zofran. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a drug primarly used to treat nausea and vomiting for surgery and cancer patients. Zofran managed to cut the vomiting down to only a couple times a day, 3-4 days a week. Not fun but totally manageable. Until the day I apparently threw up one time too many. I tore my esophagus and began vomiting blood. NOT FUN. So we took a trip to the ER and thankfully for a tear in the esophagus, it "wasn't bad." Oh good.

There have been other complications which have caused me to get a few shots in the bum and random pelvic exams that really aren't much fun but right now the priority, no matter how un-fun, is to keep the kid in.