Grace and Hazel

• Cooking time: 30 Weeks and 1 Day
• Current Status: In love with her iMac
  
• BIG Goal: 41 Days to Go!
• Next Major Milestone (32 Weeks) : 13 Days to Go!

I thought I would take a moment and let you know how she is really doing. In official medical terms, it would be called “pretty good”. Doctors come in every day and seem to agree that there is nothing that has them worried having to go in after Grace anytime soon.

That said, there are ups and downs. The ups include great blood work, a healthy galloping Grace and a mostly comfortable Jenn. The downs include an elevated and occasionally spiking blood pressure, some random ocular migraine-ish things and an occasionally bored Jenn with atrophying muscles.

We are waiting for the end of her 24-hour urine catch to see how much protein is in there. That is apparently one of the bigger indicators of impending Grace. The numbers are inexact (to me) but its ok to have as much as a cube of tofu, but more than a free range chicken and we have a problem. So far, her protein levels have been tofu-good and we want to watch for her starting to trend towards the chicken.

As for the list of bad things…we watch the blood pressure and relax her and let the doctors think about whether to medicate it, hope the migraine things don’t get bad, give her a computer to fight the boredom and stretch her out so she has enough power to push when the iMac tells her to.

The current feeling is universally optimistic for 32 weeks and decidedly mixed on the BIG goal. We will keep shooting for it and plan accordingly for Grace being an Aries or a Taurus.

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IMG_0090, originally uploaded by Lincoln Topliff.

The only other thing that Jenn wants to spend more time with than me arrived yesterday to keep her company…her iMac. Honestly, she couldn’t have been happier if I had enrolled myself in sensitivity classes and professed a desperate desire to do round-the-clock laundry. I don’t think she will be needing me much for the next few weeks. If I can write iDeliver, a program to tell her to breathe and push then I can go take our honeymoon.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, she got a new, more modern table to put it on and a new bed. The new bed is significant because it doesn’t have stirrups subtly tucked beneath it. It is apparently much more comfortable and, more importantly, it doesn’t constantly suggest imminent baby.

Also pictured is Debbie the fabulous night nurse. Sadly, we won’t have her for ever because Debbie is a “Strike Nurse”. She is only here until Wednesday, helping out while the CMPC regulars are out fighting THE MAN for 401K matching and the need for qualified available staff so they can take lunch and know that their patients are as safe as when they are lording over them like mother hens.

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Jennbrad_387.jpg, originally uploaded by Lincoln Topliff.

• Cooking time: 30 Weeks and 0 Days
• Current Status: In the Hospital-ity Suite
  
• BIG Goal: 42 Days to Go!
• Next Major Milestone (32 Weeks) : 14 Days to Go!
  

It seems like only yesterday I married this beautiful girl. By now you are aware of what happened the next day – she came down with whopping case of Grace. One of the symptoms (of pre-eclampsia) is swelling. The hands (bye bye wedding ring), the feet (holders of the toe-sausages) and, of course, the face (did that nose come with the glasses?). As a weekiversary present to my beautiful wife, I promised that I would post a “before” picture since you will be seeing so many “after” pictures here. Congratulations on getting out of your twenties, Jenn & Gracie!

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Since we can’t have the LCD Big Board on the wall telling us the latest count, this board is all we have. We capture all the latest stats:

• First, Room 231 so we know where we are.
• Next, the count-up time marking the approximate time, a few days after our wedding, that it took to our little zygote to settle in. (aka conception) 29 6/7 weeks.
• The Date (I know its not Monday anymore…this was at 6am!)
• The Nurse (Debbie is a fantastic LA girl transplanted to Enterprise Alabama…aka mid-nowhere)
• The BIG countdown goal!
• The next major milestone (we are still going to celebrate 30 weeks tomorrow, though)
• The phone number (which shouldn’t be used before 9am or after 9pm)

Now you can picture one of the first and more exciting moments of the day! 43/15 go Grace go!

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That’s right, the groundhogs came out and saw their shadows so we are going to be spending the time to the next milestone in the CPMC Riviera suite. The doctors would like to have a better picture of what is going on in the land of the pre-eclamptic and they need more dots on their graphs to see it. That means they want my lovely wife to be pampered and loved by CPMC nurses until we see the other side of 32 weeks. Although home sounds pretty nice, we have to admit…it is safer in the pen, so don’t be too disappointed.

The good news is that all the labs are looking stable and low levels of the things that they don’t want to see. Jenn’s blood pressure is pretty good (still elevated but stable) and she is currently beating me in our game of Scrabble. She did score extra points for putting down “boredom” and I couldn’t counter with “get over it” because that is more than one word.

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IMG_0072, originally uploaded by Lincoln Topliff.

We have started taking pictures of our nurses. Meet Susan. She’s like 38 or so, I forget exactly but she can’t be much older than that, look at her. She’s a CPMC nurse and was so incredibly helpful in our first scary days in captivity because she clearly cares so much that nothing seems like its unsurmountable. She’s back today and taking care of Jenn right now, which makes me feel better.

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This whole thing is going to be about Milestones. 36 Weeks is a BIG milestone (45 days away) and some of our experts don’t believe that we will get there and it doesn’t really matter to them because they are pretty happy with a healthy 32 Week old or a 34 Week old and that is all they want to talk about. Get to 30 Weeks (3 days away) and then look toward 31 Weeks. Every single day, Grace gets bigger and stronger and more ready for a grand entrance. I guess it really just depends on whether you like to see the finish line and aim there or the stepping stones along the way because they are more manageable. I think we will be doing both…aiming for 36 and celebrating all the little successes along the way.

Tonight, we hit our very first milestone. 48 hours after the steroid shots into Jenn’s behind, the steroids have had a chance to work on Grace’s lungs. If she absolutely had to come out, she could, with a decent chance of normal lung power. The final shot came on Friday at 8pm…48 hours ago!

Of course, Jenn is still doing well and Grace is galloping away on the monitor as I write, so we look to the next milestone. Wednesday marks 30 weeks taking us officially out of the 20′s!

There is controversy at the moment over the likelihood that Jenn will get to enjoy her holding pattern from her own bed or the one that is lorded over by nurses. We are hoping to get a better indication of the doctor’s intentions when the latest labs come back. Stay tuned!

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Today’s lesson from the Christians…you can’t keep a good man down.

You can’t keep a good woman down, either. On Thursday evening, Jenn was terrified but she held herself together like a champ. Three days later, she is currently attached to the following: Grace’s heartbeat monitor, an inflatable cuff on each leg to keep the swelling down and an IV plug in her wrist (no IV at the moment). There are 4 cords and tubes that have to be detached every time she gets up to pee into a collection container (which is often). When she is done, the urine is tested for protein, measured and dumped by the nurse and all those things have to be reattached. Almost every time, the monitor has to be adjusted to find young Grace again so we can hear her heart beating 130-150 beats per minute, which sounds like she’s on Paul Revere’s ride. If she moves and monitor loses track of her and the horse, the nurse comes bounding in to see what’s up and to readjust. For some reason, whenever Jenn is in her most comfortable relaxed position, lying on her left side, Grace decides that things shouldn’t be that easy and moves somewhere else, and in bounds the nurse…no matter what the hour.

Through all of this, Jenn manages to get a few hours of sleep and when she is being jostled, prodded, checked for vitals, detached and reattached she keeps the nurses laughing with her goofy little jokes…and they are all in love with her. Me too.

Can’t keep this girl down!

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Here we are. Waiting. Waiting to not have a baby. Keeping Jenn pregnant is the goal. She was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia yesterday. Currently this is a mild form of a mysterious disease that could turn into a severe form with little notice. There is only one cure. Having a baby.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining pre-elcampsia here but 10%+ of pregnant women get it and, when they do, they try not to have a baby.

We are told that our ultimate goal is to get to 36 weeks. As of today we are at 29 weeks and 3 days. That means that we have 46 days to go before we really want to bring Grace into the world. We call this our Grace Period. Of course, she would be fine (after time) if she came out tomorrow but she would be very sick for probably a few months…things get better for her everyday she stays cooking…46 more days in the oven and she is essentially as healthy as she would be if she lasted the whole 40 weeks.

If you are reading this, it is probably because you know us and you want to follow along in our hopeful quest for 46 days. I am not sure what will follow here but probably our thoughts on the medical situation and probably the psychological one as Jenn goes slowly crazy on bedrest (and takes me quickly with her). I imagine there will be a certain number of random thoughts too. We welcome your comments, random or otherwise.

We truly appreciate all of the good thoughts, prayers and help that our friends and family have offered so far. Keep ‘em coming.

We realize that there are lots of people in worse situations than we are and with a little luck and a lot of rest, we fully intend to keep it that way.

Grace, this is your Mom and Dad speaking. Stay right where you are. You can kick, you can punch but we don’t want to see you come out of your womb for 46 DAYS! Or you will be SO grounded.

Stay tuned.

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Hi all-

Quick (probably) update.

Jenn is still doing really well. As expected, we are still here in the hospital watching and waiting until Wednesday.

We haven’t had a lot of doctor activity in the last day or so, which is good. The opinion appears to be that home is the best place for us in a few days unless some of these numbers that we are following change significantly for the worse. There have been few changes and those are probably just the last bit of what went on at the start of this working itself out.

The main thing now is that Jenn’s blood pressure is doing well without any outside influences (drugs). We will try to keep this up for the next 46 days.

Why 46 days?
According to our resident experts, 36 weeks is the moment when Grace is perfectly ready to come out with no more risk of complication than if she went the whole 40 weeks. We are currently 29 weeks and 3 days (4 days in about half an hour). That makes 46 days until she is fully baked. So that is where we will aim. I believe that will introduce Grace around May 7th, if our 46 day plan works.

They key to making it is going to be Jenn in a relaxed bedrested state at home or the hospital (we find that out Wednesday). Cross your fingers for home.

Since we have stabilized, I don’t think that daily updates by email are necessary. So in 21st century style, we have started a blog. You can visit http://46daystograce.blogspot.com/ to follow our progress, health reports, pictures etc.

Let me know if you want email updates if you don’t want to remember to check the blog for new stuff.

Thank you all for your support over the last few days. Your thoughts and prayers have done wonders for both of our spirits. Wish us luck for Wednesday for going home.

Love to you all,

Brad and Jenn

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