gestational thrombocytopenia

Don't you just love when I decide to give you a lesson in fantastic potential disorders and complications of pregnancy?

I know that you're missing hearing about my decaying face... :p Which, by the way, I have a derm appointment for on Monday, THANK GOD, because I went to a derm conference for work last weekend and am now convinced I have some sort of crazy disease that's going to kill me. Sometimes knowledge isn't power. Sometimes knowledge is scary. :p I'm going to see if I can convince this derm to stick with me and check out some of my moles because I've now become a paranoid and am convinced I have melanoma. :p My sister will love this as I usually make fun of her for being convinced of her own melanoma.

Anyways. Thrombocytopenia. That's me. Low platelets. I mentioned that during my last visit, it turned out that NO I didn't have gestational diabetes like I assumed after getting "the call" post diabetes workup. I have low platelets... clotting factors in my blood. Apparently the "norm" is 150-400, and mine started at 155, was at 140 last time and I just had blood work done on Monday and turns out now I'm 112... n.g.

Apparently, my doc tells me, that low platelets can be a sort of autoimmune response of the body during pregnancy... this is also what some docs/friends have mentioned when talking about my eye skin condition. So it kind of makes sense that if my immune system is weak because I'm pregnant, tired, etc. that all these stupid things are happening to me. Lets hope that it's because my body is focusing so much energy on building a sweet, healthy babe! :)

Anyways. Next step? More blood work. I forgot to mention, during my blood work this week, the nurse told me I had "three beautiful veins"... to which I responded "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a long time and, at this point, probably the ONLY thing beautiful going on here". Tee hee hee. So, back for blood work Monday so they can track the platelet count to see if (1) it stays low or (2) drops. My understanding, if I remember the conversation at all, is that if it stays above 100, we'll just continue to monitor it every week. If it drops lower then I have to see the hematologist who will put me on one of two things to get my clotting factors back up - oral steroids or IV something. I have no idea what either of those things mean. I have no idea if they are 100% ok for baby but I assume the "risk will outweigh the benefit" in this case. And I was freaking out about taking stupid benadryl for a crappy cold a few months back. Along with the blood doc, I get to see the drug doc... and by the drug doc, I mean the guy with the good stuff. Because, apparently, if my platelets are too low - no epidural for me. Who here thinks I can make it through natural delivery?

No one?

Not one person?

Yup. Me neither. I don't want to try to make it through natural labour! That's not something I want to check off my list!

Apparently, I'm not at serious risk until my platelets drop below 50... so, lets pray that doesn't become an issue.

They checked back on my last labour and my platelets were 121. SO, they were low then too. But, apparently, they didn't track platelets or something throughout pregnancy then so they have no way of knowing if I fluctuated or what my levels were throughout pregnancy number one. And, during labour number one, no one even mentioned to me that my platelets were "low". So, I'm hoping that the 112 is just a low "fluctuation" and next week I'll be closer to 120-140ish.

Ok. Now that I've shared a bunch of boring, nonsense, numbers with you... here's the good news. Apparently, only 1 out of the 10 of you who are pregnant or planning to get pregnant will have to care at all about this post. So, you can thank me later for this vital information. :p

Anyways, everything else is great with the baby so far. LOTS of movement, good heart rate (which also freaks me out) and measuring good. I say heart rate freaks me out because when I was preggers with Jane, during one of my later appts the doc checked her heart rate and it was like 105, so I got admitted for monitoring for two hours. Turns out, Jane just didn't like it when I lay on my back. Well, you can imagine how that's affected me this time. I NEVER lie on my back and freak out when I wake up at night and realize I've been sleeping on my back, imagining that I've been cutting off the oxygen supply to my baby for the last, God knows how many, hours. Every time I lay down for them to check the heart rate (on my back), I'm waiting to hear that "slow" gallop in fear that I've done it again. ARGH.

I'm telling you. Pregnancy number two is so much more stressful than number one... for me at least. With Jane, I was naive enough to think, if I did everything "right", everything would be fine. Well, this time, I feel like I was so blessed with pregnancy number one that I'm not deserving of an ideal pregnancy number two. I know, I know. Tell me to calm down. Whatever. It's not going to work. I'm not like seriously stressing or anything... that's just not my style. But it's a constant, weak, thought in the back of my mind. Like I'm just waiting for something to go a little bit wrong.

Ok, I have to go to bed. Jane had a crappy night's sleep last night and, sure enough, I woke up this morning and my eye skin was itching all over again! ARGH! So, even though I'm not ready for bed, I'm going to bed.

Seven weeks and counting baby. Seven weeks.