Pregnancy News

The news is that there is no longer a pregnancy. For those of you who haven't heard, I have a one-week-old son today.

At 30 weeks and 5 days pregnant, I was admitted to the hospital (Wednesday the 15th) with toxemia. I was told I'd be in the hospital until the baby was born, which could be anywhere from a week to a month, but that there was no way I'd make it to October. For 3 days my bloodwork never came back bad, but my blood pressure and protein counts elevated continuously. Baby Clark, due October 19th, was born August 19th!

Anyway, I had a c-section, which wasn't at all what I was expecting, and I'm home recovering, but baby's still in the hospital. He's very small (3lbs 4oz at birth), but he's just lovely. He has his daddy's cleft chin (whatta man!) and big ol' feet, and my fingers. Right now, he looks a little alien-ish because he's a preemie, and his arms look like chicken wings because he didn't have time to build up any fat, but he's healthy and constantly doing better than the doctors expect. He stopped needing extra oxygen after day 5 and is feeding through a tube down his throat instead of IV. The doctor said not to look forward to (what would have been) 35 weeks, because I might be disappointed, but 39 weeks should definitely be enough. In the meantime, I'm off of work for 8 weeks, but don't have any baby to take care of. We go into Houston every other day to see him, but we can't hold him yet and the gas is a chunk of change, so it's not quite urgent to go every day.

Anyway, that's the news.