Friday, April 10, 2009

What's Going on in There? At 7 weeks





So time for an update since breaking the news. It is seeming more real and Alan has been wonderful!

Baby Changes: Week 3-4 it was the size of a poppy seed, now we have a blueberry! Week seven: Baby's brain -- both hemispheres! -- is growing fast, generating about 100 new cells every minute. Arms and legs are emerging as joints start to form, and a permanent set of kidneys (baby's third!) is now in place.

Morning sickness: dry heaving has gotten worse over the evening, morning sickness isn't just in the morning, it starts when I wake up, in the afternoon I am ok, but the evenings are the worse, I am tired, hungry and nothing sounds good. I come home from work, fall asleep on the couch, wake up have some dinner and do things around the house and then go to bed by 9:30.

Foods I'm in love with: plain bagels with plain cream cheese, crackers with peanut butter, any type of fruit, raw veggies dipped in ranch dressing (well, that was last week, not so much this week), coke a cola (never really liked it, but now the regular is my favorite) and yes I can have 300mg of caffeine a day, coke only has 34 mg for a 12 ounce can. I am in love with the blue frost gatorade. I have been craving eggs and bacon, haven't actually had any yet, so that maybe a different story. Anything plain. Except for BBQ sandwiches, I wish Brian (Alan's brother) could come back up and make me his BBQ it was sooo good! Pickles, yep love them, couldn't decide which type to buy at the store so I bought the sweet and the dill. Oh, cream of mushroom soup, you know the stuff you mix in with green beans? I love it. Weird.

Foods I've broke up with: anything spicy, anything that's complex, its hard to describe, but for example I made pasta with chicken and tomatoes with Alfredo sauce, ate it one night and now can't even watch Alan eat it. Anything with a taste, is on the makes me sick list. Yogurt, I used to eat it every morning, not anymore. Basically, if its not a carb or fruit I don't want it.

Body changes: my work pants are tight and I unbutton them, jeans nope not fitting at all. Another weird thing I have developed in the past few days, very vivid dreams. Not scary, but just very real and they are usually about food. I tend to get hungry in the middle of the night or and have dreamt for the past few nights that I am eating goldfish crackers, or eggs and bacon, cucumber salad, or potato skins. It is so real that I wake up in the morning and think that I actually ate those things!

How Daddy is doing: wonderfully. In the mist of one of my dry heaving spells, he says to me "you know I am a sympathetic puker" I laughed and gagged and laughed and gagged. I have yet to actually toss my cookies and Alan has kept his down as well. He will also be doing the grocery shopping, I went to Kroger for the last time this past week to get bagels and cream cheese and the smell of all the bread was making my dry heave in the store.

First prenatal appointment: We love our doctor, Dr. L is wonderful, laid back and funny. He asked us if we figured out how it happened and Alan said, "insert tab A into slot B" Dr. L laughed and said "yep, you got it!" Dr. L answered our questions and felt my uterus and said that it is measuring 7 weeks. He said that he wants to do an NT scan in 5 weeks (I'll be 12 weeks along) to check to make sure we are measuring correctly since I was on the pill. I got my blood drawn and the results came in three days later, with perfect results. I am A- which means I will have to get the Rhogam shot. It is explained below: www.rhogam.com

Being Rh-negative means you don't have a certain protein ("D antigen" or the Rh factor) on the surface of your red blood cells. If you do have it, you're Rh-positive. So the terms “Rh-negative” and “Rh-positive” are really just terms that further define what type of blood a person has, beyond the general blood type categories of A, B, AB, and O.

Being Rh-negative is neither good nor bad, but it can become a serious issue if you’re pregnant by or planning to have a child with a man who is Rh-positive.

WHEN NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE MEET AND MATE

If you're Rh-negative and carrying a baby who is Rh-positive (like the baby’s father), your baby may be at risk for a serious disease. When your immune system (which fights off invaders to keep you healthy) is exposed to your baby’s Rh-positive blood, it will begin producing antibodies that are sensitized(designed specifically) to destroy these “foreign” blood cells.

If this is your first pregnancy, chances are everything will be fine. These sensitized antibodies are typically not dangerous until subsequent pregnancies, when they've had time to grow in strength and number. However, all subsequent pregnancies would be at great risk. That is why you must act now to prevent your immune system from being exposed to Rh-positive blood.

CONSEQUENCES OF HDN FOR UNPROTECTED BABIES

If your immune system is not held in check by a product such as RhoGAM® Brand, sensitized antibodies programmed to recognize and attack any Rh-positive blood cells are waiting for the next pregnancy. The antibodies then begin to destroy the red blood cells of the baby, leading to complications such as jaundice, anemia, mental retardation, and heart failure1. This condition, known as hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN), can be fatal in the most severe cases—the infant would typically die during pregnancy or shortly after delivery.

Prior to the introduction of RhoGAM® Brand in 1968, HDN was a major cause of infant mortality, responsible for an average of 10,000 deaths annually in the United States2. Since the introduction of Rh immune globulin products, like RhoGAM® Brand, the incidence of HDN has been virtually eliminated in most developed countries.

So looks like I will be getting a shot, unless we find out Alan is also negative.

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