The good and the bad

This afternoon, I'm heading down to the NY area for my shower tomorrow, yay! I'll drive down today -- since all of my good friends are down there, I didn't want to make everyone drive 4-8 hours when it could just be me driving 4 hours, so off I'll go this morning. I'm so excited because this is the rare confluence where ALL of my closest friends have RSVPed yes! I can't remember the last time I attended a function every single one of my college friends attended! Usually there's someone who has a conflict -- for my bridal shower, only one of them could come, so this is extra special because they all get to see each other too, which rarely happens. Throw in my best buddies from my jobs in NYC and even a couple of high school friends and I don't even care that it's my shower, I'm just so psyched to see everyone!

As for the not so great news, color me Candidiasis. Yes, I have a yeast infection. Which is bad enough, but I think I've had it, literally, for MONTHS and I'm a total idiot. I started noticing a creamy discharge probably around 12 weeks or so and I just chalked it up to leukorrhea, normal discharge that increases during pregnancy. I didn't have the accompanying other two hallmarks of a yeast infection: burning and a distinct odor. I occasionally had a little irritation, but no biggie, certainly not an active burning. One thing, in retrospect, that I did have: pain during sex. So much so that BDing pretty much dwindled throughout the pregnancy because it wasn't fun for either of us to have me grimacing throughout -- though don't worry for the romance in Noodleland, we're getting our canoodling time in other ways ;).

Stupidly, I didn't put 2+2 together and link up the pain with the discharge, I just thought pain in the hoo-hoo area was normal during pregnancy -- I did mention it to my OB who confirmed that your urethra gets squished, etc, so that alot of women have pain during sex so I kind of ignored it. Anyway, I mentioned the discharge to my OB at our last appt 2 weeks ago and she asked about burning and odor and I said it wasn't noticeable and she asked me to keep a closer eye on it and we could test for a yeast infection at any time. She explained that it's not dangerous to the baby now, but if I still have it when he is born, he could get thrush (yeast infection around his mouth), poor thing, and then pass it back to me through the nipple while breast feeding. Lovely! So armed with that concern, I did pay more attention to burning in the intermittent 2 weeks and went in to my OB appt yesterday knowing I'd ask to be tested, figuring it was more of a precaution. As soon as the OB saw the sample on the swab she said "Yep, I'd bet the farm this is yeast." Great! She went to go look at it under a microscope quickly and came back, prescription in hand, confirming I had Candidiasis running up and down my hoo-hoo.

I'm so stupid!!! I've had this infection for MONTHS and was seeing an OB regularly. I should have researched my symptoms (discharge, pain during sex, occasional irritation) more and gotten the test earlier. Ugh!! Anyway, I know it's not a big deal - I'll do my 7 days of lovely suppositories and hopefully it'll clear right up. In my defense, I've never had a yeast infection before, so I was kind of clueless. Now if it was a UTI, I'd have been all over that bad boy within the first 5 minutes. Sigh... I'll pick up the prescription today before I drive down to NY but I won't start the supps until Sunday morning, I don't feel like sitting in goop during my shower. I figure, I've let this thing fester for 5 months, what's another day and a half? ;)

Everything else looked good at my 31-week OB appt, yay! Gained 2 more lbs in 2 weeks, which I think is what's supposed to happen, a pound a week from here on in. I'm up 23 lbs since the start -- I was hoping to keep total weight gain under 25 lbs for the whole pregnancy but it looks like I'll be more in the 30lb range, oh well. I'll deal with that post-Bug. Bug's heartbeat sounded great and during the not-so-comfortable cervical exam, which my OB tacked on after the yeast swab since she was already down there, she confirmed that my cervix is still high and tight and that Bug is definitely head down, sitting right on the cervix. Which was interesting to hear because it's not what I would have guessed given the movement I feel (tucks and rolls) but I guess that's just him spinning on his head, break dance style ;).

Have a great weekend ladies! TGIF big time! Next time we speak, I should be attacking that Candidiasis like a storm trooper!