Vile Bile

Good thing the first 6 months of pregnancy were so smooth!

Now the drama begins.

It looks like Bethany may have a rare (1 in 1,000) pregnancy condition called cholestasis. Yay. She always has felt like a special one...

Basically, cholestasis of pregnancy makes her itch until she feels like she is going to go crazy, but more significantly, it poses some threats to the baby as well. It has been associated with fetal distress, preterm labor, and stillbirth. Not so fun.

This condition happens when the bile flow from the gallbladder is slowed or stopped for some unknown, yay-for-weird-things-in-pregnancy reason. When the bile flow stops or slows down, the bile acids build up in the liver and spill into the bloodstream. And make the pregnant mom itch.

Scratch, scratch.

The weird part of this condition in Bethany's case is that it started right when she was at the height of some sort of virus that sent her to the hospital with fever, aches, and other fluish types of things. Related? Who knows. We are waiting on one more blood test to see if the bile acids in her bloodstream have gone down since then. If they haven't, it's time for weekly or twice-weekly blood tests, vitamin supplements (because the fat-soluble vitamins are not getting absorbed), close fetal monitoring, and maybe a mid-December baby! (They often induce babies whose moms have cholestasis to reduce the risks for the little one.)

So those of you who pray, please pray.

It's kind of a sad and scary time right now for us, and daily we must remind ourselves to count our millions of blessings. Millions of them. No matter what happens, we know that God is good and has a plan much bigger and better than our own! He never promises no suffering, just to be right there by our side while we go through it.

Meanwhile, even as we write this, the baby is kicking and punching Bethany with mighty ka-pows; the third trimester is starting; the uterus size is perfect for this stage of development (measured just yesterday); the heart rate is healthy... Hey, maybe the kid actually likes the extra bile. You'd think the little one would need some variation after 6 months of the same ole stuff...