I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find
But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind

America – “Sister Golden Hair”

I’ve not posted much recently. Doesn’t seem important.

My daughter is in week 32 of her pregnancy. There’s an issue with high blood pressure and they are considering having her deliver at 34 weeks. When she rests, it hovers around 135-150/90 but when she stands up is spikes to 180. (Normal for her is 120/80.) Later would be better but 34 weeks is still safe. For comparison, an average pregnancy lasts 39 weeks. Mandatory bed rest until she delivers and for a few days after. May need blood pressure meds. Perinatologist believes there is potential to affect the baby but he is also concerned about the harm from the high blood pressure.

Mandatory bed rest for at least 2+ weeks is enough to drive anyone crazy. We are not designed for such inactivity. We’ve told friends and family to stop calling her because all the anxious calls drive up her stress level. All the info is available on FaceBook, so call us or go to FB but leave her alone.

She has had headaches almost from the beginning. That is a symptom but the doctors she had were pretty much ignoring them. Headaches have always been an issue for her. There are lots of causes for headaches and most are unrelated to pregnancy. But now there’s the high blood pressure and she’s showing a bit of protein in her urine, so it is time for her to stay in hospital until a few days after delivery.

We worry about preeclampsia. She’s now on a low-dose aspirin regimen. Aspirin is the only therapy with robust evidence supporting its use to reduce the risk of preeclampsia in high-risk women.

The baby – pre-named Morgan – will probably stay in the neonatal ICU for a month. That name was picked because it is appropriate for a boy or a girl and my daughter wants to be surprised. It came up because that was the name of a dog she loved as a little girl. Yeah, we’re dog people thru and thru.

The worst thing is that I cannot visit her. She is only allowed two people as visitors. Logically that’s is her husband and her mother. It is what it is.

For the last few weeks, I have been doing almost nothing at all. No hiking, no travel, watching some anime, but little writing. My own body has been preoccupied with aches and pains. I even missed the WNBR-LA after looking forward to it for a year and a half because I hurt too much.

This month, in particular, has made posting on the blog seem like a particularly useless activity. I have bigger fish to fry.