It's all good

On TLC right now, they're showing one of the "Night of Medical Mysteries" and I can't help but watch. Typically, I'm on restriction from these shows-- pregnancy related or not-- but tonight I figured it was fairly safe. I saw this one before I got pregnant so I know that none of the "mysteries" on this particular show really have anything to do with where I am now. One has to do with a woman who carried an ectopic pregnancy through to late second term and gave birth to a healthy baby growing in her stomach cavity. Her odds were 1 in 60 million that she would die. She lived and so did the baby. The second story has to do with a woman who was pregnant with TWINS and did not know until she went to the hospital thinking she was DYING and instead gave birth (I don't know what it is about that one-- it makes me kind of laugh every time...). The final one was about a woman from India who miscarried but never delivered the baby because she was horrified at what she saw happening to women in the hospital there. At 70-something, she went through a surgery to have the baby removed and it was completely calcified. A "stone baby" they called it.

Wow.

These stories put my pregnancy into perspective. Briefly, I'm sure, but still. I went to the doctor last week and my blood pressure had shot through the roof-- my blood pressure has never been high in my life so it freaked me out some. Which probably relates to why it didn't come down that fast. A friend of mine called it "white coat syndrome": my heart starts to race when I know I'm going to be at the doctor's office and that I'm going to have my blood pressure taken. I always have to have it taken twice at a visit and the nurses in that office know it by now (they are fantastic nurses). But this time when they came to take it again, it remained high. It had come down quite a bit but was still many points higher than it normally is. They decided to put me on blood pressure medicine and to have me do a 24 hour urine test. Great. I didn't want to take medicine and UGH, a 24 hour urine test???

All of this on the same morning that I was doing the glucose screening test and an ultrasound.

I want to stay low-maintenance, at least at the doctor's office. I am just fine being high maintenance at home (sorry honey)-- Don has the most beautiful servant's heart and he has taken such good care of me in spite of the horribly messy house and my mood swings (which, according to him, are not so bad)-- but I don't want to be high maintenance anywhere else. I don't want to be on medicine and I don't want to be scheduled for a C-section and I don't want to have to be monitored closely.

But now I have to go see the specialist on Thursday after school and I have to take my pee to the doctor's office during my planning period and I'm still waiting to see if I have to take the second, ickier gestational diabetes test (please don't have it, please don't have it-- my mantra) which involves blood-sucking every three hours and I CAN'T miss more school! And then, of course, a dear friend suggested the possibility of being put on bed rest, which is not a restful idea to me....

Meanwhile, collecting urine at this stage is like performing acrobatic routines on par with Cirque du Soleil. It's kind of funny in a really embarrassing kind of way. I'm completely grossed out, collecting my urine. My friend Paige is totally unimpressed-- she likes to describe puss balls she finds during surgery that are "the size of your fist," in addition to telling us about puss balls that shoot across the room when perforated. Nice. I have nothing so glamorous. Anyway. So tomorrow, my pee will be in the back of my car on ice until my planning period in the afternoon. It makes me feel like I'll have a dirty little secret... I should put some juice drinks in the cooler alongside the orange container, labeled "Swaney Urine," and send one of my kids out to the car to get one for me! OH NO!!! That would be horrible!!! Trust me-- I won't do it. But I'll think about it.

Anyway, I'm trusting the Lord that this will be a week of good news-- or at least, peace if there's not so happy news. If I do happen to have gestational diabetes (I have no symptoms, but you can't ever tell), I will trust the Lord that He has me well in hand. I will trust that my little baby boy will turn around during the ultrasound on Tuesday and let us see his face (we're doing 3D!). I will trust that all my numbers for whatever tests I have to have on Thursday afternoon will come back normal. But again, I will trust that, if they aren't, the Lord has me.

Because when you think about it, this baby isn't in my stomach cavity (even though he's squishing it up there!), he isn't undiagnosed (um, didn't she feeeel those babies kicking???), and he isn't calcified. I'm breathing, I'm happy, I feel great, I'm not growing hair on my back or the tops of my feet. So I figure, dang. I'm cool.


Philippians 4:8

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.