My Watchtower

When you are a Mother or an expecting Mother, you are constantly on guard.  You look out for your child, you look ahead to make sure they are on the right path, you look out for dangers or problems coming up so you can tackle them before they get too big.  You are in a watchtower for the rest of your life.  I don’t mind this job at all, in fact the more years that go by of being a Mother the more confident I have become.  I have learned that you need to listen to that little voice in your head, that feeling of something is just off and react.  No matter how small it is…….please listen and respond.  I have learned this over and over with my kids on anything from a tugging at the ear that was an ear infection when they showed no other signs and people thought you were being silly even wasting your time at the doctor.  To listening to your newborn baby cry every night and nurse inconsolably and all the other little signs that lead my to realize something is not right,  only to find out that she has an acid reflux problem and with the correct medication was a happy baby. 

I am telling you this because I want to remind you how important you are as an advocate and protector of your children.  And also to have faith and confidence in yourself that you know what to do. 

I have had to bring both my kids to the doctor and E.R. in the last couple weeks.  I made the call enough is enough and brought them in.  My son had Pneumonia and my daughter had Serum Sickness.   Click here, about serum sickness, if you want to read what that is all about.  It is an adverse reaction to an antibiotic she was on.    I don’t have the energy to write about it and I sincerely hope that you don’t ever have to deal with this issue with your child.  It is horrendous. 

I started my Monday morning with a call from the doctor.  She had the results of my tests for Gestational Diabetes and for Anemia.  Good news is I don’t have either of them.  Bad news is that my platelet count is low.  I had to head off to the lab again for a bigger round of blood work and liver function testing and am scheduled with a Hematologist for later in the week.  She didn’t really have too much information for me on the phone except to say that the normal range is 150-400.  My numbers at the beginning of this pregnancy were 150 and they are now 111.  A number of reasons could be the cause and this will need further testing.  She also mentioned that if my number remain low I will not be able to get an epidural.  Besides the scare that when you platelets are low you have trouble clotting or healing, this is horrible news given the history of my last two births, the placenta did not deliver naturally and they had to manually extract it.  The pain of that is beyond words and one of my biggest fears.  With my son,  the epidural worked only on half my body and the pain was so intense I seriously thought I would die.  The birth was nothing compared to that.  And it was no easy one either having to use a vacuum to get him out.  With my daughter’s birth,  I was aware that this could happen again and when the 1^st epidural didn’t really take, I had them try again and that was exactly what prevented me from feeling the horrible pain of pulling the placenta from my body again. 

I was super angry yesterday.  Not fearful but mad.  How much can one person take?  As if my pregnancy wasn’t complicated enough already…..now this!  Come on!  And then after being angry I got scared. 

Today is a new day.  I am going to push that anger and fear aside and move forward.  I will have faith that my platelet number will go up, have faith that my health care providers with do what is best for me and just like, Bob says “ Every little thing………is gonna be alright!”  And also on the bright side of things, when I was in my watchtower looking out for this new baby I  mentioned to the doc about my extreme thirst.  This  caused her to do  the Diabetes test a month earlier that normal is what brought us to find this out.  So that little thing that you know is not right and you think “aw it is nothing”………….please don’t ignore it.  Speak up.  For some reason or another it is a sign.  We found this out a month ahead and will have a month more of getting those numbers back up where they need to be. 

My Mother is going with me to the appointment on Thursday.  She is still up in her watchtower for me and I totally appreciate that.

“Don’t worry.  About a thing.  Every little thing….is  gonna be alright.”