More Happy Day news!

Today is a very happy day. Robyn just read 41 pages of Are You my Mother? without needing very much help and no freaking out! Wahoo! Grace has been wearing big girl underwear all day - the same clean pair! Double Wahoo!!!
The best news is that my midwife just called and I don't have to go to the specialist just yet! My titer numbers went down to normal - no problems! Triple Wahoo!!!

She called me last Friday to say she was referring me to a Perinatologist or some such thing - a specialist in Maternal - Fetal health because my blood work from five weeks ago showed antibodies to Rh+ blood cells. She sent the records over, but the ladies at Maternal Fetal health did not get it reviewed in time for me to get any information before they all went home for the weekend. Needless to say, I spent last weekend trying not to freak out as I studied all I could about Rh disease and all the horrible things is can do to your baby. On Monday the ladies from the office called me to set up an appointment for an ultrasound and a consult. I do not like ultrasound because the studies have not been done to see the ultimate effect on the fetus. I did not get any ultrasound with Grace - no fetal imagining, no doppler (we used a fetoscope to hear the heartbeat), and no external fetal monitoring device. I just barely read an interesting article called "Questions about Prenatal Ultrasound and the Alarming Increase in Autism" by Caroline Rodgers in Midwifery Today Winter 2006 issue. Then I spent the weekend reading that the doctor was going to do up to 17 ultrasounds to monitor the blood flow through my babies brain starting around week 20. I asked the ladies what the ultrasound was for because you cannot monitor Rh disease by ultrasound until at least 18 weeks and I am only 16 weeks along. They told me they like to just check everything, not just what was referred to them. That is fine and all for the rest of the world but not me and my baby. I still have a 50% chance that this baby is Rh- and will not be bothered at all by my antibodies and here they wanted to start off cooking his brain! I went ahead and made the appointment like a good patient. Then I freaked out. I immediately called my current midwife with the information I had gathered and we decided to do another titer before the appointment to see what was going on with the blood. I would have been perfectly happy to go straight to the specialist if they had made the appointment for a blood titer (which would be useful to monitor the condition at hand) and a consult. Then I emailed the midwife I had with Grace and she went above and beyond the call of duty to get me nutritional information and what has worked for others. What a woman! I started the periwinkle tea right away and was already doing everything else she found. I had more blood drawn yesterday and my midwife just called to say the number has dropped by half back into the normal range and we can go ahead and just monitor with blood titers monthly for the time being. Wahoo! Needless to say, the appointment has been postponed indefinately.

Thanks to the Grandmas for thinking of putting my name in at the temple and all of Robyn's prayers since the beginning of this pregnancy.