Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Houston, we have a plan

The meeting with Maternal-Fetal Medicine was good. Better than I expected, in fact. So, here is the plan:

- If I get knocked up on my own, which past history indicates I can do, I will immediately start taking low-dose aspirin at the first sign of a positive pregnancy test – the risks are low, and the evidence is pretty good that it can help with hypertension and preventing pre-eclampsia.

- I’ll call Dr. Twitchy’s office (the RE) and see him for initial blood draws and weekly ultrasounds until I am 10 weeks along, and start zofran as soon as possible to hopefully prevent the hyperemesis from getting as bad as last time.

- At 8-10 weeks, I will have an appt with Dr. Special (the MFM doc) to go over the plan for the coming months, draw some baseline labs (liver function, especially), and do a baseline 24 hr urine.

- Dr. Special said that she thinks that, unless things change dramatically, she’d be happy for me to be seen by the hospital-based midwives. I didn’t ask about out-of-hospital birth – seemed like it might be pushing it.

- I will stay on the Aldomet unless (or until – it is a pretty weak drug) it stops working; Then I would be switched to Labatalol and possibly a diuretic, if needed. Dr. Special said that they would have a greater tolerance for my blood pressure rising, as long as it stayed below 160/100 – if it starts creeping up, they will just adjust/change my medicine.

- I will have more frequent ultrasounds than average – weekly for the first 10 weeks, then approximately monthly, and then weekly ultrasounds/biophysical profiles for the last month or so.

Continuing to lose weight will help all of this, so in that spirit K and I bought an exercise bike yesterday… We have a really small house and it is sitting in the living room staring at me, so I think we might actually use it. My goal is to use it at least during Jeopardy – what could be more fun than sweating while answering nerdy questions?!

My current BMI is 29.8 – or, Fatty McButterpants, put down that cupcake! (mmm, cupcakes…) I would like to get to 24.7, which is in the Normal BMI range and would require me to lose 36 lbs – 6 lbs/month for the next 6 months. Do-able, but I’m not going to like the process.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good plan. A BMI of 29 is really bad? I can't keep track of BMI stuff. Seems like most women have around 25, and 4 extra points is terrible?

Anyway, I'm going on too much about BMI, when I should be saying something like Yippee! A viable plan to make a baby!

Ruta said...

Hey Penny - Thanks so much for reading and commenting! It is so exciting to have readers!! :)

Yeah, a BMI of 25-29.9 is overweight, and a BMI of 30+ is obese...I'm tall, and I've never been super-skinny by any means, but I've also never been this big before. It's like after losing so much weight during pregnancy (I lost 25-30 lbs during the 1st trimester due to throwing up so much) my body is not going to let any calories go unless forced to, hence the exercise bike.