36 Weeks + Anemic

I can't believe I'm at the end of this pregnancy already! I am ready to have my body back though, but I still have a little less than a month to go. I have been really down because I am gaining more with this one than I did with the other girls. That number just shows me how badly I eat and how little exercise I've gotten this pregnancy. One of the biggest differences this time around has been my energy. I never had the kick in energy in my second trimester and I have been exhausted for the most part of the last 8 months. After a few weeks of seeing my doctor here, they discovered I was anemic and told me to start taking iron supplements. I've always been borderline anemic while pregnant, but my numbers were low enough this time to cause concern. I took 2- 27mg pills a day with orange juice and I literally thought about my iron intake all day. I checked food labels and a common snack would be dry mini wheats with orange juice because I needed to take iron with vitamin C to help its absorption and I had to avoid Calcium around the times I ate iron so it wouldn't inhibit it. That worried me because I'm also not a big dairy fan, so my diet was just all over the place. Ha! I did everything I could to bump my numbers up, but nothing helped and I felt so defeated when the nurse called to tell me. I was so mad at my body thinking I should've done something differently. They referred me to a hematologist to possibly get an iron infusion. I had never heard of this before and was so worried about it! I prayed for comfort and felt a lot better going into the appointment. I just felt like I needed to listen to the doctor and this was a good thing for my body. I also did some reading about infusions and by the end of it I felt sad for and proud of my body. I had just been pregnant with Addie, then 7 months later we got pregnant again, then miscarried at 9 weeks, then had to have a D&C 2 months later because I was still bleeding, then got pregnant the following month. My body has been through so much the past year! I have made a lot of blood and lost a lot of blood. It was trying to keep up, but that's a lot to ask for I think haha. So I met with the hematologist and he was awesome. He made me feel so much better about everything and confident in the decision to get an infusion. He explained that it was like someone had sucked 3 pints of blood out of me. No one had ever said it like that! I didn't know I was low on blood, for some reason I was just thinking I was low on oxygen in my blood or something.  He also told me a big concern is that I was at higher risk for hemorrhaging during delivery. That made it much more real and seem like a bigger deal to get it taken care of. We scheduled the infusion for the next day so they could run my numbers one more time and we were off!

It's a little intimidating walking into this big room because it's also the chemotherapy room. I felt like I was disrespecting the people there because I was healthy except for having a little less blood. I took a seat and waited for the nurse to hook me up. It was a pretty long process, but they gave me Benadryl first to help with any reactions and I slept through a lot of it. My hand was so cold during it!  There was another pregnant girl there and she told me she's had to do it weekly for the last few months! WEEKLY??! I hoped I wouldn't have to come back at all, but that seemed unrealistic at this point. Afterwards I was really tired and went to the front desk. They scheduled me for a doctor appointment and another infusion 2 weeks later. I went home and took a nap as soon as Stafford got home from work. I was SO tired!

At my next appointment, my doctor said it was probably my Benadryl dosage, so they lowered it the next time around. He asked if I noticed a big difference and to be honest I couldn't really tell... I'm in my third trimester! I'm tired already and uncomfortable and I had been sick all week. He told me that I should've felt like superwoman afterwards. I got set up for my infusion, this time I brought an extra sweater to cover my arm. I wasn't as tired this time around which was nice because I could read more of my book. At my next appointment they'll test my blood and check my numbers! I hope, hope, hope that they're way better. I just want to see results and know what I'm going through isn't in vain.

Anyway- that's been my major struggle the last couple months. I just wanted to write it down somewhere.