Will Christmas come early this year?

This evening I'm blogging from the antepartem ward of Clear Lake Regional Hospital, where Maureen is in for 24-hour observation. Our doc wanted to get some more data before diagnosing a condition he saw from some tests in the office today. This condition may warrant a slightly early delivery, possibly very soon. I say slightly early since 37-42 weeks is generally considered "full-term", and we're at 35 weeks as of today.

So tomorrow we'll find out if she has some of the common signs of pre-eclampsia. This is a condition whose cause is not yet understood, and symptoms are often masked, but left on its own can be very harmful to mother and child. There is a lot of conflicting and unproven information on the internet, but one simple fact is that it goes away after delivery. So if we really have noticed it super-early, our doctor will wait until it progresses to the point that it's safer for the baby to be outside than inside, and we'll just have him a little early. If the condition doesn't get any worse, we just wait until nature takes its course and the baby comes when he wants to.

So, hospital stays are never fun, but this one is happening because our doctor was astute enough to notice very early that something might not be right. Thanks to that, we got a slew of other tests today (including another ultrasound) which tells us that Baby Gerty is doing great and is waiting obediently in a heads-down position, waiting for us to tell him what to do!