Another Answered Prayer

I've been itching for about two months now. It started with the soles of my feet and then my palms and within the last three weeks it spread to my entire body. This is no light itching. I literally would itch until I was in tears, spend hours just standing in a cool shower and scratch until I was bleeding. I had mentioned the itching to my doctor when I first started noticing it and he said it was just normal. Everyone else around me told me the same.

I couldn't make my last doctor's appointment so I had to reschedule for this week. I had prayed and prayed that the doctor could tell me something to do to help relieve some of the itching. I had called his office numerous times in the last couple of weeks and the nurses just told me to take an oatmeal bath and start taking Benadryl. So I did and I managed to sleep one night through the night without the itching waking me and so I thought I'd found a cure. Three days later however, the itch was back full force and neither was helping me any more.

Thankfully today the doctor really listened to what I said and took me seriously and immediately told me what he thought was going on. I still have to wait for the blood results but due to the severity of my itching and the dark color of my urine, he seemed pretty convinced that I had developed cholestasis of pregnancy. In a nutshell, it pretty much means that I have bile acid running into my bloodstream and should it get to baby it could potentially means some pretty bad things.

The positive side is that once the test results are in, depending on the level of bile, I will either be induced immediately or at 37 weeks. This means that I could only have 3 weeks of pregnancy left before my little one arrives and that my brother will also get to see him while he's home! However, the negatives definitely could outweigh the positives so I'm praying that things are okay and that we found it soon enough and that I have no worries.

I'm just glad to know that something is up and that I'm not imagining it. I was really starting to get depressed at the idea that this extreme itching was just 'normal' and that I would just have to deal with it for another 6 weeks.