2.25.2009

Week 14: Positives and Negatives


So this week's entry has a bit of medical jargon, which may or may not be of interest to the reader. I wanted to add it to my journal for family medical history.
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On February 25th, I had my monthly check up with Dr. Partida. It was actually the first time I had met her since I only met with her nurse on my first appointment. It seems that everything is progressing as it should be.

I did, however, learn some interesting information. Evidently, I have a rare blood type of B negative (only about 2% of the population has this blood type). But even more interesting is what I learned about having negative blood (which only about 15% of the population has and probably only half of those are women). If a woman has negative blood and her baby ends up having positive blood (due to the father having positive blood, which is the case with Matt), there can be complications if the baby's blood enters the mother's blood stream (such as through miscarriage, some sort of accident or delivery). The mother's body will start to produce antibodies to kill the positive blood, thus killing the fetus. To hinder this, there is a fairly simple solution, which is to take a shot at 28 weeks and then again right after delivery to keep the body from producing antibodies. If the body were to learn how to produce antibodies, then during any future pregnancies it would immediately start to produce them, terminating the pregnancy. (This is not a concern for women with positive blood, because positive blood can be mixed with either positive or negative blood types.)

All this was a bit disconcerting to hear at first. But it seems that it can be easily handled if one is aware of the situation. Luckily any daughters that I may have, should not have to worry about this since they will inherit positive blood types from Matt.

On another note, Dr. Partida wants me to come back next week for a sonogram to definitely date the baby and confirm my due date. I can hardly wait to see my little one up on the big screen!
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The envelope (with the buttons glued on it) on the right hand side of the journal will include a print out from the internet with some more information on negative blood type for pregnant women as well as info on my parents' blood types. As soon as I learned this about myself, I was curious as to what blood types my parents had and whether my mom had faced the same thing. Evidently both my parents had positive blood types, and occasionally this can result in a baby with a negative blood type (me!). So it was not a concern for my mother.

2.18.2009

Week 13: New Duties

Much to Matt's chagrin, he is now assigned to cleaning out Dash's litter box. We had heard rumors that pregnant women shouldn't change litter boxes, but the doctor confirmed that there is a chance of transmitting toxoplasmosis to the fetus (even though adults generally develop immunity to it). When I first explained these new duties to Matt, he quite frantically exclaimed, "You're sh#!!ing me!" I'm not sure whether the double entendre or his disbelief was more funny; evidently cleaning his "stepcat's" litter box is the ultimate sacrifice.

Guess I won't get much sympathy for carrying our child for nine months!
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FYI: We learned this info a while back, so Matt has had this chore for a while now. I am just now getting around to giving him credit for it. Additionally, Dash thought he deserved a little credit too, so he stuck his head in front of the camera as I was trying to take a picture of this page. Cats have little humility.

2.14.2009

Week 12: Valentine's Day

This week I thought I'd add a little Valentine's Day card for the baby to be. Matt calls the little one his "Baby Button". So the valentine is addressed to Button. On the back, I wrote a note about what we did this Vday. It reads:

Originally Daddy and I had planned to avoid the crowds and spend Valentine's Day at home grilling a few steaks for dinner. But then as the evening progressed, we decided we might like to go to a movie and out to eat. We headed to Bellevue Square, bought tickets for Gran Torino which was playing later in the evening and then headed to Maggiano's for dinner. While sharing a spinach salad and baked ziti, we thought about what it will be like this time next year when you will be 6 months old!! We are so excited and anxious and really can't imagine what our lives will be like with you as a new addition. In the meantime, we were even more appreciative this Valentine's Day of our alone time together, just the two of us out for a romantic evening!

2.04.2009

Week 11: Telling Friends


This page is  a little busy, but there was a lot I wanted to convey. On the left hand side, I took messages that people sent me on Facebook and made a little list of their comments. It actually ended up being two pages long, so you can lift up the first page (from the bottom, lifting out of the photo corners) and read the second page. On the right, I journaled about spreading the news. It reads:

We finally decided to start spreading the news about you this week. Technically, we should have waited two more weeks (completing my first trimester), but we were getting too excited to wait. Almost all our friends live out of town (it's been a year and a half since we left Dallas), so spreading the news required many phone calls. Only after that did we post our news on a popular networking website called Facebook. Matt's status read: Matt is Stephanie's baby daddy. And mine read: Stephanie has a bun in her oven. Soon we were flooded with well-wishes and congratulations!