Jen, Baby Q, and how Nick is the best hubby ever!

We have been busy this week getting the house ready for Christmas. Nick put the lights up on the house while I gasped and sighed and handed him the light clips! Needless to say, he didn't get hurt or fall despite his precarious perches. The lights look very nice! We like to keep it simple.

The inside of our house is also simply decorated, and I love it. We have our six foot fake tree, and some decorations. I got some new candles this year, and they make our mantle sparkle.

So, after getting all this finished this week, we were ready to settle into shopping and shipping off Christmas cards and gifts. The cards are in the mail! The gifts will have to wait. We have been sidetracked for what could be a very long time.



Thursday morning at around 2:30am, I woke up with some severe abdonimal cramping. They felt kind of flu like one minute and as if I was suffering from extreme hunger the next. So, I got up and went to eat something, hoping that would help. It didn't. Around 4am, I began to wonder if there was a pattern to this pain I was feeling--I have never felt contractions before, so I started timing them. I did that for about an hour before waking Nick up and filling him on what was going on. We called the on-call nurse around 5:30am. She thought I might have the beginnings of a virus that is going around, so her advice was to take a warm bath and try to get my stomach to relax. If that didn't work, then we should probably head into the hospital to get monitored.



At this point, I am 32 weeks pregnant, and up to this point, I have had a happy pregnancy. I sleep a lot, but I was lucky enough to not get morning sickness. We had some spotting issues, and while scary, they eventually went away. My weight, my blood pressure--everything has been great until lately.



When we checked into Triage and the nurses started checking things out, their first worry came because my blood pressure was REALLY high. 212/96 is not healthy. It came down in small increments, but it still isn't great. My last blood pressure reading was 141/72. My labs came back with elevated liver enzymes and protien in my urine. This was the expected result. All this does is comfirm what we alreay know. I have preeclampisia/PIH/toximia (it is known as all those things). If the protien levels in my urine spike out of control--to the 3000 level or above--then we will talk about getting baby out soon. We are not even close to that yet.



Honestly, I feel really good. I am tired, but otherwise, I feel very peaceful right now. I haven't felt this at peace for a while. In fact, for the past few weeks I have been very anxious about this pregnancy. Now we know why. And in thinking back, at the beginning, I was given a very wonderful blessing and felt a deep impression that the trials we were facing that day when I was afraid we were losing another baby, would not be the only trial to come--that before this baby came, we would have another curve ball thrown at us. Now we know why. Last week I was offered a week long sub job for this week, and I told Nick that I really wanted to take it, but something was holding me back--I just felt that it was a bad idea. Now we know why. I know that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and knows me and who is with me every step of the way right now. I feel His influence constantly around me and through the prayers of others. We want to thank you all for that. Thank you for thinking of us, calling, checking in, and coming to visit. We are so amazingly blessed by those around us!