The Strasser's

Well I guess I need to start thinking about Evan's birthday to do something or not to do something. Any suggestions? I think we need to celebrate some how but not sure fully how. 

That is all the entries that were blogged on one day. More to come this week.   I wanted to add all of the  hospital entries to this blog now that it is not a public blog.

All of Heather's test have been improving.  Thanks for the prayers, love and support.  While my Mom, Dad, and Aleta were here the doctor told us that the protein test came out normal.  The doctor was so suprised that she had them double check the calculations. (Aparently their is more then one way to calculate this and she wanted to confirm the test was calculated using the method she desired).  A nurse told us it was possible that with that test improving so much heather might be able to go home on bed rest.   Unfortunetely, when the test was recalculated the protein was just above what is considered very high.  Still, this was lower then before and her other test, liver... also improved.  The doctor reaffirmed that heather will not be leaving until the baby is born.  She says you can be doing fine and four hours later have huge problems and need the baby to be delivered.  She says you just can't tell, it's very unpredictable, thus hea...

So for a little update they took me off the magnesium sulfate for now and the liquids in the iv, for now. Test results are looking right now. I feeling less groggy and all the other side effects are wearing off.  They also took me off the baby monitor .

So the doctor came and talked to us this morning.  She said that the steroids they gave Heather often temprarily improve the preclaptia.  While she is glad to see heather is doing good she believes that this is partly due to the steroids and within a day or two the steroids will start to wear off and then Heather's condition will continue to deteriorate.  The doctor said that Heather has severe precamptia and that typically women in her condition don't last more then 3-5 days before they need to deliver the baby.  She said sometimes women last a week or a few weeks but that is more rare.  I was hoping that since Heather was improving this would mean that she would last for a few weeks or more but I guess that probably won't happen. The baby is in the 23 percentile for weight.  The doctor said this is part of the preclampia.  It restricts blood flow to the organs.  The restricted blood flow effects all organs and the babies growth.  Hea...

Alyssa and Owen are staying with Heather's mom Cindy.  Alyssa was quite upset to hear the baby is a boy.  She has been expecting a girl and has had now doubts about he baby's sex.  Alyssa got over the bad news and now insist that we name the baby spiderman.  We started video chating with the children yesterday and did it again this morning.  Owen was really excited to see us.  We used skype.  The internet here is really slow and so the webcam was running at the poorest quality setting.  Aleta is going to bring our clear internet which will be much faster and then we should have a high quality video feed.  We are going to have the children visist for a few minutes in person today.   Heather needs to avoid excitement so it will be a short visit. We really aren't supposed to have visitors but people have been coming for short visits.  When heather's condition worsens we will not allow any ...

Heather started some sort of magnesium drug.  It suppresses her nervous system which relaxes her, it also has been shown to help the baby's brain when given shortly before delivery.  Due to the drug the last post that heather wrote was quite unreadable before I edited it.  She has a hard time concentrating enough to get through writing a post.   The magnesium also makes her hot and her face is a little red and flushed.  Last night her face was really red and I thought she had a fever.  The nurse took her temp and it was fine.  She looks better now.      This drug has a tendency to create fluid in th lungs.  They are monitoring heather's oxyigen in her blood to ensure that she is getting enough o2.  They said given the amount of oxygen in her blood they can tell that there is no flood in her lungs.  They are counting every ml of fluid she drinks.  She gets to drink very little.  If they ...

So a year ago our hospital adventures started. It has been interesting  to re-read all of these entries and all the things we have been through. To start off  so everyone know's I was admitted to the hospital late Thursday night around 7:30. (Which would have been May 20th) A urinne test came back with high protein on tuesday.  They should have admitted me a couple of days ago. So I started dealing with high blood pressure, and I ended up doing a urine test towards the end of last week. The results came back for that test Monday but the doctor didn't come in until Tuesday and then finally, I got a call Thursday night around 5:00. So back to the results, which was high protein in the urine. Thursday night I was started on medication for High blood pressure and than I was given a shot of steriods for the baby. this helps develop the baby's lunds for a premature delivery.  My blood pressure has dropped and they are glad....