Well friends, I thought this time would never get here. I'm finally in the home stretch and everything about pregnancy has been amazing...until now. Not that I don't love being pregnant and carrying a wonderful, mysterious, precious baby in my tummy, because I certainly do. And I know that things will still be fine because God will never give us more than we can handle. But, we have been thrown some curve balls the last few weeks and suddenly, it's not all about material things anymore...such as nursery furniture/bedding/adorable outfits/etc.
Now our biggest concern is keeping baby Titus in the womb for as long as possible, because it seems like he wants to make an extremely early arrival. My doctor has been seeing me weekly because I've been having some pre-term labor. The contractions have been very frequent and although they are pretty painless, they're pretty uncomfortable at times. Braxton hicks is what I passed it off for, and I'm sure that's what they started out as but unfortunately Braxton Hicks doesn't force your cervix to thin and shorten, and that's what mine has been doing. It should measure about 4cm long/thick but it measured 2.4 this past week and 2.8 the week before. So I'm almost 50% effaced at 26 weeks pregnant which equals not good.
The good news is, my doctor put me on medicine (Procardia) to calm down/stop the contractions, she's monitoring it weekly, and she also wants me resting as much as possible. The Procardia should take care of the contractions, it hasn't yet but I'm sure it will whenever it gets in my system good, however it has lots of side effects. It's used normally on high blood pressure patients to lower their blood pressure, but since my BP is normal, it's making mine go really low. So there's headaches, excessive swelling, dizziness/lightheaded, and then I just feel drained of energy. YUCK! Some people aren't able to get used it, I hope I'm one of the people that can, and if not then I'll just deal with some yucky side effects! The resting should help take some of the pressure off my cervix, because him laying right on it isn't helping matters at all (he seems to be stubborn like his mama!). It's just so hard to get rest when you've got a million and one things to do.
On a more positive note, I know that he is getting stronger by the not-so-gentle kicks and punches he's been throwing around. We might just have ourselves a black-belt on our hands! ;)
We'd love it if you could keep our little family in your prayers. We have faith that everything will be just fine, and we are willing to take every precaution possible to keep him baking for the next 3 months! At this point, it's our number one priority!
With love,
The Lasseter's
