Time Flies When You Are Having Fun

Has it really been a whole year since I have made a post?

I used to think time flew and then I had my son and now it seems like I am going lightning speed. I have an 8 month old now!

My son, Everett, was born via crash c-section on June 4, 2014 due to a prolapsed umbilical cord. We both turned out fine and I couldn’t be happier with my life.

He has changed my life in so many ways and it’s been amazing watching him grow and learn.

I was so lucky that my PKD didn’t give me any problems. My blood pressure was great all through my pregnancy thanks to the methyldopa I was taking. I was induced at 38 weeks for my thyroid issues though. They were concerned the placenta would stop working by 39 weeks so they wanted him out before that happened.

I have a nephrologist and an endocrinologist appointment next month so I will definitely have to do some updates about them.

I am really going to try hard about blogging again. I don’t know of any other blogs out there like mine (having pkd and gone through pregnancy) so I want to be able to show others that it is doable and you don’t have to give up your dreams of having children just because you have PKD.

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Thyroid, Y U No Work?!

I am literate, I swear. If anyone looks at memes, there is a Y U NO _____ meme that is very funny. My husband loves looking at Reddit so I am very much familiar with the different memes.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. For some reason, my thyroid does not want to cooperate. My endocrinologist wants my levels to be between .5 and 2.5 and here have been my latest blood test results:

12/16 – 26 (yes that is a 2 and a 6 together, not a typo)
1/2 – .38 (yes that is a decimal before the 3)
1/13 – 7.07

Clearly my levels are all over the place and are anywhere but in the normal range. I wish there was something I could do other than take pills to make my thyroid better but there isn’t. I already eat healthy and exercise everyday.

I had an appointment with my endocrinologist yesterday and he put me on 200 mmg (micrograms) of synthroid and wants me to test my levels again in mid february. That will give me some time to let my body reset with the new dosage. It takes about 5-6 weeks for the thyroid meds to really go into effect.

Thankfully my levels will not harm the baby. Yes it is important to have my thyroid levels where they should be but the baby is already producing its own thyroid hormone. I was very relieved when he told me that.

Hopefully my next blood test reading will be in a normal range and stay there. So far I have felt fine so that is good. Unfortunately the symptoms for having a thyroid imbalance is the same symptoms pregnant women get so it is really hard to tell which is which.

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Halfway There!

I really cannot believe that this pregnancy is half over! It has gone by so fast which means this baby will be here before I know it. 

Despite all of my medical conditions, I feel fantastic. Hopefully this baby will be easy on my kidneys so I don’t have too many issues as it gets bigger. 

I have been keeping fit by walking 2 miles 4 times a week. That has seemed to be a perfect routine for me. I have only gained 5 pounds since I found out I was pregnant. I am hoping to keep my weight gain at purely baby weight. It is better for me and better for baby. 

Since I haven’t shown any pictures yet, I thought I would share some to see the progress so far.

 

 

Our dog, Medved, has been in most of my pictures. He has been very protective of me and has become my shadow. I am so excited to see how he is with the new baby. 

I have 2 appointments this week. One is my endocrinologist and the other is our anatomy scan where we will find out the gender. I will be doing another blog post next weekend to update about the endocrinologist and to reveal the gender. 

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So Many Doctors!

I currently have 4 doctors that I see. Technically it’s 3 because my PCM doesn’t really want to see me since I’m pregnant. That is still a lot of doctors and sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them. I have my PCM, my OB, my nephrologist, and now an endocrinologist.

I’ve been dealing with thyroid issues for over 4 years. I started with hyperthyroidism and now have hypothyroidism. I went from May until September of 2013 without a menstrual cycle because levels were off. I was going and having blood tests done every 6 weeks to check levels. In September I had a period and my PCM said my levels were normal so didn’t think was necessary test again for 6 months. I personally don’t see how 1 normal test constitutes gluing that long without testing again.

Well it just so happened that I got pregnant that one month of normalcy with my thyroid. It was definitely exciting to those 2 lines after going many months with negatives.

I now see an endocrinologist to keep my thyroid levels check because it is so important be stable during pregnancy. I’m currently up to 200 micrograms of synthroid. He wants to see me once a month for the remainder this pregnancy. It is normal for a woman’s thyroid medication dosage to be increased by about 25% when she becomes pregnant.

My nephrologist now wants to see me every 3 months instead of 6 while pregnant to make sure everything is going well with my kidneys.

Then I see my OB every 4 weeks for now. I haven’t been to happy lately because the doctors don’t seem to look my chart before coming to talk me. It’s rather frustrating to have to recite my medical history every month.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep them all straight and I’m so glad my husband has been able to go to every appointment with me.

Ah the joys of having a chronic illness and be pregnant. Now it’s not just me I have to be concerned about.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

My husband and I had a wonderful Christmas together. It was the first Christmas since we have been together (since 2009) that we weren’t around family. I was kinda sad but it was also kinda nice for it to be just us since it was our last Christmas as a family of 2.

Christmas day we were able to sleep in and open presents at our leisure. Later in the day my good friend and her husband came over to cook dinner and then we watched the Dr. Who Christmas Special and it was awesome!

The 27th, my mom and grandma came to visit and it was so great to see them! They stayed until New Year’s Day and it was awesome ringing in the new year with them 🙂

I am so excited to see what 2014 has in store for my little family!

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I’m Growing a Person!

Whenever my husband shares our good news, he always says I am growing a person (hence the title). That is right, my husband and I will be expecting our first child next June! We are so over the moon excited.

We found out we were pregnant a week after the triathlon. I was technically 4 weeks along when I completed the triathlon. My husband was very excited right off the bat but I was very nervous. With all of my medical issues, I was nervous how this pregnancy was going to play out and how my health was going to be affected. It was a very long first trimester keeping my fingers crossed everything was going ok with the baby and it was developing how it was supposed to.

I am currently 15 weeks 2 days and everything has been going great so far! I have been feeling fantastic. I haven’t been sick a single day which has been awesome. I was very, very tired at the beginning. I would sleep for about 10 hours at night and then come home on my lunch and take a 20 minute nap. It was insane. I had no energy to do anything. Thankfully I have a wonderful husband who helped more around the house and even made dinner a few nights because I was just exhausted.

So far everything with my health has been great. I see my OB every 4 weeks, my nephrologist now wants to see me every 3 months instead of 6 months and he also wants me to see an endocrynologist once a month to make sure my thyroid levels are where they are supposed to be. Having my thyroid levels in a normal range is very important while pregnant because it can affect the development of the baby. I am going to be having a lot of doctor’s appontments throughout this journey but that is fine with me to make sure me and baby are doing well.  

I probably won’t be doing weekly updates on here like a lot of people like to do with their personal blogs. Instead, I will be doing updates when I see doctors to let everyone know how my health is doing. There will be a baby update at least once a month so you won’t be missing out.

I have yet to find a blog about someone with PKD who has gone through a pregnancy so I hope this will help some women dealing with PKD see my journey. A lot of people with PKD choose not to have children because there is a 50% chance of passing on the disease to offspring. That is not enough to keep me from having children because I have always wanted kids of my own.  

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Too Long

Has it really been over 2 months since I have made a new post? I swear time has just gotten away from me these days. I always say I will sit down and do this or that but then I blink and 2 weeks or more have gone by. Why is it that when we are younger, we want time to go faster so we can be older but then when we are older, we want time to slow down?

Everything has been great here. We have some big news that will get a post of its own.

I have just been working like crazy lately. We usually have 3 accounting techs in my office but we are down one so since I have the most experience, I have been taking a lot of the slack. Having to do 2 jobs while only getting paid for 1 is not very fun.

My husband had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends. My leave (paid time off) was not approved in time for us to travel anywhere so we stayed home and had Thanksgiving dinner at our neighbors house with another couple. It was a very nice evening.

We got snow (yes in New Mexico) that hung around for a few days in November, which was nice. Growing up in Las Vegas, it was very rare to see snow. We got about 3 inches here at our house and it was so pretty. Our dog loved it! I was like a little kid seeing snow for the first time haha.

For a while I had been slacking in the recipe department and have been making things I have already made before which is so not like me. I have found some really good ones lately that I am excited to share with you all.

Well as you can see I live a fairly boring life haha. I will keep this update short and sweet. My next post will be coming soon with our surprise.

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My First Triathlon

On the 5th of October, I completed my first triathlon. It was a sprint and a reverse. We started with a 5k run, then did a 19k bike, and finished off with a 700 meter swim. 

You are never fully prepared for a triathlon until you do one. There was no way for me to really practice transitions which would have helped a lot. The weather had been nice all week but of course it was freezing the day of the triathlon. It was about 40 degrees F and there were 20 mph winds. Road bikes and wind do not mix well. I just crossed my fingers that the winds were in our favor. On the way out on the bike, it was a head wind. Imagine trying to ride your bicycle through water and that is about how it was riding through the wind. The best part? Having a 20 mph tail wind on the way back! Sometimes I didn’t even need to pedal and I was going 21 mph. I was freaking out just a bit because I had never gone so fast on my bike before. 

My main goal for the triathlon was to finish and not finish last. I was 3rd to last coming in from the run, last to get on the bike (long transition), and I had passed 4 people on the bike so I got a good lead for the swim. There were many categories that people could be in and I ended up getting 3rd place in my category. I am really tall and not built to be a stick so I was able to enter the Athena category, which meant I weighed more than 150 pounds. I was very proud of myself for getting a medal. 

Here are my medals (everyone got a completion medal): 

 

Here is me after getting my medal: 

The pool was outdoors and was NOT heated. It was about 60 degrees F so I ended up wearing a long sleeved neoprene shirt and my bike shorts over my swim suit for the swim. It was still really cold but I was not about to stop! There were so many people that flaked out of the swim and I couldn’t believe they would go all that way to quit. I am no quitter! 

Before my husband and I got married, we agreed to both complete a triathlon before having kids. We both wanted to be in the best shape of our lives and to be able to show our children a healthy way of life. This was my first triathlon and my husband’s 3rd. I think I have been bitten by the bug though because I am already ready to do another triathlon 🙂 There is a polar bear triathlon in December that is about 45 minutes from where we live so we will see! 

This is another way I am showing PKD that it will not beat me! 

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Bicycle Modifications

When I first got my Townie Electra cruiser bike, I didn’t get a preference on what it looked like. We bought it from my neighbor who was moving and didn’t want the bike anymore. I couldn’t really pass up on the price she was selling it for so we got it anyway. It is bright orange which is not really what I would have picked but it is growing on me. I wanted to make it more ‘me’ and do some modifications to it so it didn’t look like all of the other bikes in the store. 

Here is what my bicycle looked like when I first got it:

 

My husband’s bicycle is the black one. Mine was just plain Jane so I started thinking about what I wanted to do to it. Blue/turquoise blue is my favorite color. If I would have picked my own bike, it definitely would have been a shade of blue or turquoise. I was shopping around on the Electra website and I found an awesome seat and handle bar grips set that would go perfect with my bike and it had turquoise on it! Then it hit me to add polka dots on my bike! I currently have the turquoise vinyl on order and one of my friends with a cricut is going to make the dots for me but here is my bike with new handle bars, new basket, new seat, and new grips: 

 

Cannot wait to get the polka dots put on it so the whole look comes together! 

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Patriot Day

September 11, 2001. It is the day that changed the world we live in today. Today is a very bittersweet day. While we remember those that died on this tragic day, it is also my grandmother’s birthday.

She always says that she had the best birthday she ever had one year and then the worst the very next. Her 70th birthday was spent on a cruise ship with her daughters. It was the first cruise she ever been on in her life and had a blast. The very next year was 9/11/01.

I was a sophomore in high school on 9/11/01 and I will never forget that day. So many emotions and it seemed like the country just fell silent. So many innocent people died and so many people sent their loved ones to work not knowing it would be the last time they saw each other.

My husband was in pilot training for the Air Force on this tragic day. He joined before this war and has been deployed 5 times, since joining, fighting to keep us all safe and to help ensure nothing like this happens again. We met in 2009 and married in 2012. It’s days like today that I am extra proud to be a military wife.

Even though today is a very sad day for most, my grandmother had a great day. She lives in Ohio with a lot of my family and they always go out of their way to make her feel special. My family had a lunch party with a ton of food and they took her to the casino to play bingo (her favorite game). It makes my heart happy that she had a good day because, after all, it was her birthday first and there is no reason she should have a bad birthday.

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