Baby Penelope - Pregnancy

Okay so basically I haven't posted since before I found out I was expecting so here is a quick / in-depth run down of my pregnancy.

In March I had a crazy medical problem, it is called costochondritis. Basically all of the symptoms mimic a heart attack for a woman. And I thought to myself I'm not even thirty this can't be a heart attack but it was incredibly painful. So I was on meds that you shouldn't take when pregnant and since Nathan and I wanted to have our entire pregnancy in one insurance year I figured we'd have to wait until year end to try again. Little did I know Heavenly Father had different plans because about 2.5 weeks later I got incredibly sick and thought I then had the flu. It aggravated the costochondritis and I was super annoyed. Until I looked at my calendar and realized that I should take a test and yep I was pregnant! I was really excited and also nervous since everything had been so scary with Elenor's pregnancy. So I taught Elenor to say, 'I'm going to be a big sister' and texted Nate a video of her saying that to tell him about the baby. We told our families by getting a Big Sister shirt for Elenor and just taking her to Mother's Day dinner and dessert. My mom noticed right away and was really excited. Nate's family took a little longer.... in fact after being there for over an hour we were getting ready to leave so Nate pointed it out to everyone. :) The funny part was that three years earlier on Mother's Day we had announced that we were having Elenor.

Fast forward to our 20 week appt. We went in to find out if we were having a boy or girl. Nate again was positive that we wee having a girl. I thought it was a girl but I try not to get set on one or the other because I don't want to be disappointed. Elenor was there and was excited. We found out we were having a girl and Nate immediately started teaching Elenor that her name was Penelope. I was wanting to wait in case we felt that wasn't her name but once the 3 yr old knows that baby as Penelope it was a done deal. Elenor was so excited she calls her Nelope and would tell me how 'when she gets to come home she will love me' 'Nelope needs to come home in 20 minutes' 'I was a baby in your belly too and then I was born like Nelope' She loved when Penny would kick her because that's how she knew Penny liked her. It was adorable and made me even more excited. She also had me buy binkies really early in my pregnancy because she was worried we wouldn't have any for her to give Penny when she would cry. She is such a great big sister though I will post more on that later.

At 29 weeks I had a blood pressure scare. I had a mild headache and then saw floating spots, the combination of those two is usually a sign of high blood pressure. I went into the hospital in a complete panic. This was almost 3 weeks earlier than Elenor and I didn't want to have the baby yet. I went in and was observed and had lots of tests. laying down had seemed to lower my blood pressure so bed rest began. I had a headache that slowly got worse for the remainder of my pregnancy. I would go to the hospital two more times as well for spikes I couldn't control but was able to get it down each time. Though on the third time they decided to give me steroids for the baby's lungs just to be sure she would be ready if she had to come early. I felt so much relief after getting those shots. And each day I was still pregnant made me feel so much better. When I hit the day I had delivered Elenor I felt like I would be able to handle it if I had to just because I was in familiar territory.

At my appointment with the specialist the next week he was concerned about my blood pressure and told me that at my next appointment on Nov 19th that if my blood pressure had not gone down we would need to talk about delivering the baby. I was excited that he thought there was a chance I could make it that long. I continued to have issues and was put a strict bed rest. my headache got worse and worse until I started to have a major migraine that no amount of Tylenol could touch. Finally On Sunday Nov 17th I went to bed in a lot of pain and woke up in the middle of the night several times from the pain. I called the OBGYN the next morning and they could tell I was in a lot of pain so they sent me to the hospital to be observed. The rest is really the deliver story so I'll post that one seperate. :)