The High End of Normal

I got my results back from my 24 hour urine analysis. Dr. V.'s nurse told me over the phone that the results were "good," then followed that up with "but when they did the hour-by-hour breakdown, your level was .17, and .15 is the high end of normal." She went on to explain that .02 higher than the normal range isn't anything to be concerned about. She said it's so insignificant that they don't even consider it abnormal.

I'd like to be happy about the results, and the part where she said they were "good." Here's the thing. I am having an issue with "the high end of normal" part of this. Everything I experienced in my HELLP pregnancy was like that. My blood pressure was never technically hypertensive until my 40 week appointment when it was 140/92 (and hypertenive = 140/90). Well, I guess that's just one example, but the overarching issue is that I always "seemed good" and I really wasn't. So this test result does scare me. 

The positive thing that I'm holding onto is that I stopped in the middle of a 3 mile run to answer the nurse's phone call, and then I kept running when I got off the phone. I just don't want to fool myself into thinking I'm healthy like I did last time. But I am also sensitive to the power of thoughts. I just got the book The Genie in Your Genes at the recommendation of my monitrice.

I will see Dr. V. a week from Wednesday so I will learn more about the results and what they mean at that time. 

In the mean time, I will try to take the advice from my wise self and try to be my usual playful self, without being so serious and focusing so much on all of this medical stuff. I'll let Dr. V. do her job. 

I'm also working on trying to connect more with the baby. I know I avoid doing that sometimes because it's easier to escape from the anxiety and fear than to work through it and get to a place of perfect calm. The thing is, when I really let myself connect with the baby, I do go to a place of perfect calm. 

Oh, and one more thing. At my last appointment with Tanya, during the hypnotherapy portion, as I was connected deeply with the baby, I had a vision of a heavy load of dark muck lifting from my belly and rising into the sky, leaving behind a beaming white light that shone out from my belly. Through this light, I could see the baby and I felt this very strong sense of trust.

Lighting up the Dark

A lot has happened since my last post. We had our 12 week appointment with Dr. V. on Friday and Brian got to meet her, and liked her a lot. It seemed especially poignant that Friday was Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, and Dr. V. was dressed in a beautiful green shalwar. She talked about how Diwali is the celebration of lighting up the dark and celebrating new beginnings. I love thinking of lighting up the dark, and there has been this Chinese proverb on my other blog since I started it almost a year ago - It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. So I am using this as one of my guiding images for this pregnancy. I want to always be focused on the light, the positive, the hope. 

We also had our first appointment with Tanya, our monitrice (like a doula) on Sunday. She is very loving and healing, but she also suggested that we are making our choice for medical care from a place of trauma. Part of me is like "Of course we f-ing are making our choice fromm that place. We don't want to be in the same traumatizing situation that we were in last time. And I don't want to die!" But I realize that she means that she wants to help us integrate the trauma so that we can honor our true feelings, instead of operating within the trauma. We are going to work with her on healing our trauma as much as we can in the next couple of months. We are so sensitive to being caught in the middle of the sort of midwifery vs. western medicine divide, which is where we spent our horrific HELLP birth. It was just awful to be stuck like that between two places, neither of which seems to really see the woman that was suffering between them. Tanya seems like a balanced yet nurturing healer who will help me listen to my body and my baby. 

She was sensing a lot of fear in me, which she felt the baby was picking up on, so she had us do a wonderful little exercise in which we both thought of a very happy thing for a couple minutes. The energy in the room changed and she said she felt the baby pick up on that happy feeling and shift. It was hours later that we both revealed we had thought of the same thing, our wedding. I know of prenatal psychology, but it's just so hard to be mindful of the baby's feelings all the time. I am working on changing my awareness so that I can be more positive in my own mind. She also said that processing negative feelings with the baby will help when they do come up.

In other news, Tanya picked up on a strong boy energy. I've been sensing that same thing myself lately, and Gavin has been claiming "his baby" is a boy for weeks now. (It started off as a girl [gwirl] for him.) 

She also asked me to do some cognitive exercises to help me with the trauma healing. Many of us who have had HELLP had a similar experience in that one day we seemed like healthy pregnant women, and the next we were being told that our blood and organs were breaking down and our body was in crisis. This certainly shifts the world view many of us had prior to getting sick with HELLP, and I know that I struggle with trusting my body, especially with regards to pregnancy. I have had a host of physical symptoms and pain since my HELLP experience that was preceded, I'm sure, by a sense that things can go wrong inside my body at any time and without warning. Tanya asked me to create a list of:

• the ways my body is healthy
• the ways I've witnessed my body heal
• the ways this pregnancy is going well

When I actually try to do this, the effect of the trauma on my cognitions is so evident. It is soooo nearly impossible to think of my body making it through this pregnancy without any problems. I nearly hold my breath before every blood pressure check, even though it's been exceptionally great this whole time. This will be hard work. I am trying to add to these lists every night in my pregnancy journal. As I look back at this post, I am thinking I will have to add candles to my nightly ritual. Lighting up the dark....

Thanks for being out there!