In Which I Speak of Titers

Last week, I went in for a regular ob check and ultrasound, and while I was there I had my blood drawn for my monthly antibody test. Tuesday I received a call from the lab informing me that unfortunately they had sent my blood in for a jak test rather than a jka test and I needed to come back in. Though I was slightly miffed, a dear friend reminded me that this was a very easy mistake to have made, so I sucked it up and my mom drove me back to the hospital on Thursday.

Yesterday I received a phone call from my obstetrician's office informing me that my antibody titers had gone up to 1:4.

This is still in the safe zone, and the baby won't have life-threatening complications from the current level of antibodies in my blood. However, every time the titers go up, they double, so the next place they could go to is 1:8.

1:8 is in the danger zone.

Now, the titers may never go there. I may stay at 1:4 until November and there will be nothing to worry about except for some jaundice to deal with when the baby is born.


If the numbers do go up next month, from what I understand, we'll be looking at two possibilities:

1. The baby will receive blood transfusions while he or she is still in utero.

2. If I am far enough along, it will be safer to deliver the baby and treat him or her outside of me.


Since we have treatment options (and my titers aren't there yet), I'm not panicking. However, this does raise our anxiety level a small notch. Please pray for this little one. Pray that the titers remain at 1:4 for the rest of the pregnancy and that we make it safely to 36 weeks or beyond.

Thank you so very much for lifting us up--we would not be this far without our prayer warriors.   

Two years ago...

Two years ago today, I woke in the wee small hours of the morning with some painful cramping. I'd had my cerclage removed the day before and was taken off of bedrest. However, I'd been cautioned that it's rare to go into spontaneous labor immediately following a cerclage removal, so I brushed off the cramps as nothing more than Braxton-Hicks.

Throughout the day I continued to have these cramps, and though they became more frequent and stronger with each passing hour, I vehemently insisted to anyone who dared suggest otherwise that I was not having contractions! Scott calmly stated that even though these were not contractions and I was clearly not in labor, he was going to stay home from work--just in case. I stomped around all day, franticly and obsessively cleaning and organizing the house. Every time a cramp hit me, I would double over out of breath.

Scott had tennis that evening, and we still didn't have a crib, so we decided that I'd go watch him play tennis, and afterward we'd run to Babies R Us to choose a crib. But on the way to tennis, Scott kindly suggested I time these not-contractions I'd been having all day, and we discovered that they were five minutes apart. Scott made a quick phone call to the tennis club and we drove straight the hospital instead.

The next day--almost twelve hours later--just as the sun was rising, our six pound, fourteen ounce little blessing made his entrance. He squawked once, then proceeded to look around the room wide-eyed. I remember asking the nurse if my baby was okay, because he was so quiet. But he was just taking things in--figuring out this strange new place.

His birth happened so quickly that the nurse plopped him on my chest and covered him with a blanket without telling us if he was a boy or a girl. Scott and I were crying and kissing and looking at our precious child, and for a few minutes we forgot that we didn't know if we had a son or another daughter. Finally, I looked up and said, "Wait! What is it?" The nurse laughed and said, "A baby!" Scott pulled the blanket off and checked and announced to the room, "It's a little boy!" And I said, "Well, hello, Caden."

Since that moment, we've had the most challenging, most rewarding, most precious two years of our life. I am so thankful that God chose me to be Caden's Mommy--he's a special little boy, and I've loved to watch him grow and learn. And I've learned so much from him as well.

Tomorrow we will wish you a very happy birthday, Caden Isaac. We love you so very much, and we are so thankful that you are in our life!

Big Blessing!

Yesterday we had a growth ultrasound and our regular ob check--everything looks great. I'd regale you with a list of all the things that are right on track (blood pressure, cervical length, yada yada), but you've all already heard it.

The only new thing to report is that they are currently estimating our baby to be 3 lbs 12 oz. That's big! According to babycenter.com, at this gestation our baby should be weighing about 2.5 lbs, so we're way ahead of the curve. I've been tested for gestational diabetes (one factor in producing large babies), and the test came back negative, so this is likely just a big baby. Scott and his siblings were all big babies, and both Caden and Isobel were big for their gestations, so I'm not surprised.

A few people have asked me if it makes me nervous that this baby is already so big, and the answer is no. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. To my reckoning, a 3 lb 12 oz baby seems so much more likely to survive if born now...not that we have any current indication that I'm in danger of delivering early, but still I feel more relieved with every ounce that this baby gains.

2. There's no way I'm going to carry this baby to full-term. I was reading an article on cervical cerclages and I learned that only 11% of women who have cerclages go into spontaneous labor in the 48 hours following the removal of the cerclage. I went into labor with Caden 15 hours after my cerclage was removed -- that puts me in the 11%. Now, I'm already aware that every pregnancy and every baby are different (believe me, I'm very aware of that fact). However, based on my history, it seems entirely likely that I will go into labor shortly after my doctor removes the cerclage. We are trying to schedule this for the first week in November, which would be 36 weeks gestation. Even assuming that my body surprises us and decides not to go into spontaneous labor, my doctors will not let me carry this baby to 40 weeks. There are too many risk factors with the size of the baby and the jka antibody I carry.

So, no, I'm not worried that I'll be having an 11 lb baby -- I'm pleased that this little one is packing on the pounds and getting bigger and stronger each day, preparing to be born. Grow, baby, grow!