I believe a trend has been started.

It seems like everyone we know is pregnant now.

Jef and Krista (February)
Will and Stacey (May)
Joe Paul and Kristy (June)
Sarah and Dean (June)
Tim and Kathy (June)
Sean and his wife --sorry, we haven't met her yet--Sean, you could at least fill us in on her name! (June)
Robin and Jeremy (January)

And we're officially 34 weeks in now. Which means that if I had to deliver tomorrow, it would be safe to do here at our hospital--not that this would be ideal, but the baby's lungs should be pretty mature. I don't think we're going to make it to January, the way things are going right now. I mean, everything is fine, but I can only be on bedrest so long. I imagine we'll probably induce once I'm full-term (i.e., 37 weeks), as long as everything is still going pretty well. But we shall see. That's just a VERY tentative prediction. So far everything has been less than week-to-week, more like day-to-day. I'm still hoping to get back to work at least part-time.

Right now the diagnosis is still pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH). The thing to be more worried about is that it might develop into pre-eclampsia (aka toxemia), which is more dangerous. Basically the difference between the 2 is that PIH=blood pressure over 140 systolic or 90 diastolic, pre-e is that plus significant protein in the urine. In fact, just for those of you who love too much information, I had to do a 24-hour urine collection the other day. That was fun. Especially since you have to keep it in the fridge. The good news is that the results were fine and well below the cutoff for pre-e. But, we'll probably repeat the whole thing in a week.

Other than bedrest, I've been having twice-weekly non-stress tests (NSTs) at the hospital along w/ BP measurements. The NSTs basically involve putting the baby on the monitor to watch his heart rate and make sure he looks good. So far he's in great shape, but it's pretty standard to keep them up 2x/week until the end. Not that I'm too worried about him at this point--he won't stop kicking me! Of course my BP is always up for a while after I get to the hospital, since I've been up and around, but then it comes down after 30-60 minutes or so of rest. Which probably means bedrest is working somewhat.

Anyway, if you want to read up on the stuff I'm talking about (MOM), check out this link to WebMD:
http://www.webmd.com/hw/being_pregnant/hw2837.asp

One good thing about bedrest is that I've managed to knit a Christmas stocking for baby and me, and now I'm at work on the Gipper's. (Dennis' was done last year.) Although I'm starting to get some carpal tunnel!