26 Week Update

I had a routine doctor's appointment yesterday. I had to get there early to head over to the lab and drink some sugary, orange flavored drink so that they could test my blood sugar and check for gestational diabetes. My results were posted today and seem to be within normal limits. I haven't heard the official word from my doctor yet, but the numbers were all within the range they list as normal. Dr. Martin ordered a bunch of other labs while they were drawing blood anyway. She said they were more for a baseline so that they have a point of comparison for later on in the pregnancy. This was the second appointment my blood pressure has been a little high so Dr. Martin decided I needed to be put on blood pressure medication to help me avoid developing preeclampsia. We had known this was a possibility all along because my blood pressure has been borderline for awhile and I have a strong family history of hypertension. It had been fine during the pregnancy up until recently but Dr. Martin felt given my history it was pretty likely I would develop preeclampsia if untreated. I am now on an extremely low dose of a blood pressure med that she assured me has plenty of data supporting that it causes no problems to the baby. She listened to the heartbeat during which the baby protested as usual by giving a nice hard kick in the direction of the doppler machine. It is kind of funny feeling the baby kick at the same time as hearing it on the machine. The after visit summary they printed out had a note on it about doing daily "kick counts" if you aren't feeling the baby move much. I laughed a little about that with John and said we definitely don't need to worry about that right now. I hope it stays that way because I like having a little insight into what the baby is doing in there lol.

After the doctor's office, we had another exciting appointment... to pick up our new car! Yes, the time had come to say goodbye to my Altima. It had been making noise and when we brought it in for an estimate, they said the parts alone would run us between $700 and $1000 and the labor would be $105 per hour. We had been thinking of trading one of our cars in for something a little bigger and more reliable anyway, so the decision of which car was kind of made for us. We were debating between new or used but because I'm eligible for a discount through Ford since my grandfather worked for them, we ended up getting a blue 2010 Ford Escape. It has four wheel drive, 6 months of Sirius radio free, a sunroof, and a sync system that you can hook your ipod or cell phone to and activate them using voice commands. I am loving it already and it came just in time since we are supposed to be getting about 2 feet of snow this weekend. Of course it was sparkling clean for less than 24 hours before it is getting buried in snow, but it is worth it. I feel a lot better now that we have two working cars and we have something with four wheel drive in case of an emergency. I have never had a new car before and I am totally appreciating every bit of it.