Baby #4 (August 15)

I am getting bigger all the time and we still hadn't really made the big announcement yet. My pregnancies are usually complicated by me being incredible sick so this has been nice that I am not so sick and I haven't had to do IV fluids at home. I have still been sick and most mornings start with me throwing up but it passes pretty quick. Most of the cooking falls to Robb though since the sight of meat can put me in bed for the rest of the day.
Of course things can't be that easy for me this time and we got some news not long after we found out we were pregnant that threw us for a loop. My antibody titer (a screening they do on every pregnant woman) came back as positive for anti K or the Kell antigen. Even as a Nicu nurse I didn't really know what this meant. It is fairly rare and we don't see very many cases. When I researched online all the information was terrifying! (I know online research is the worst!) What it came down to was that my body could attack the baby and cause the baby to be severely anemic. We ended up having to see the Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist to find out what we needed to do to keep this baby healthy. We went to Dr Smith and I was really impressed with him. We walked out of the office knowing more about anti K than we would ever need to know. He gave us the best and worst situations and then we just had to wait. Best scenario: Robb tested negative for the anti K antigen and that means that I got it from the 2 blood transfusions that I received after the boys were born. (This never crossed my mind that I would be the 1-2% that would end up getting this from transfused blood but I guess someone has to be in that percent.) If I had gotten it from transfused blood they would watch my titer levels close but it would probably never be and issue. Worst scenario: Robb would test positive to also being a carrier of anti K and we would have to start doing weekly ultrasounds at 18 weeks that measured blood flow to the baby's brain. At this point they would be able to tell when the baby was too anemic and our options would be to do a blood transfusion in-utero(dangerous) or deliver a possibly very preterm to preterm baby (scary). Thankfully Robb tested negative for the Kell antibody like the doctor expected him too, so things were looking up. We did see the specialist a couple more times just to follow up and by 18 weeks he had discharged us from his care and I will just follow up with my regular OB doctor. I guess if I had to pick something good that came out of all of this stress it was getting a couple more ultrasounds. My regular OB is now considering this a very normal pregnancy so I get 2 ultrasounds like the rest of the world instead of one every time like I got with the boys and Abby. At our 14 week appointment we were able to find out the gender of our little one. I always love that ultrasound!!!