I know I have not blogged since February, and I will try to start getting back into this, but let me announce that my wonderful, beautiful, handsome baby child has been born!!
Alexander Cole was born March 27th 2014, at 2:09 pm, weighing 8 pounds and 4 ounces. He was 21 inches long.
First let me go back several weeks. On the Thursday (3/20/14) before my due date (the 25th), I was out walking with my sister-in-law attempting to convince Alexander to come early. I had previously started itching pretty good on my stomach, but was assured this came with the stretch marks that had appeared the week before. It was slowly getting worse, and the day before I had noticed that my stretch marks looked much worse, and had now turned red, and little dots were appearing on them as well. This was also beginning on my legs, which now itched as of that morning. And yes, I have stretch marks on my legs. -sighs- Such lovely, evil, things...
My sister-in-law said hers itched and turned a bit red, so as of that morning I assumed it was still normal. After walking for a bit however, I looked down and realized that what I now realized to be a rash, had started appearing on my arms. Not cool. Unsure if I could still take benedryl, I called my doctor's office to ask. When told that I was seemingly getting a rash, they told me to go into Labor and Delivery - I was depressed as this meant once again missing class. I should have expected the last few weeks of my pregnancy to be difficult.
My sister-in-law wonderfully went with me, and off we went. The itching was becoming worse and worse, and I am still amazed at how quickly it was becoming worse. Once there and hooked into the monitors, the nurse looked at my legs, arms and stomach and said that she thought I had something called Pupps. This sounded vaguely familiar as I had done quite a bit of reading online, but I couldn't remember much about it. She said they would have to draw blood to make sure it wasn't something with my liver, but was pretty sure it was Pupps.
A couple of hours later, I was diagnosed with Pupps, told that I could take Benedryl, use cream, and basically that was it. The nurse told me on the side that a woman she had seen with it before had taken Dandelion Root and it was a great help. I was devastated there was nothing else they could do, and I was given very little information about it except that it was a rash.
So doing what I normally do, I went searching on google. I found some helpful sites with a tiny bit of information, and some very helpful blogs. It was the blogs that probably saved my sanity. I wound up knowing more than my doctors and my nurses by the end. What is scary is that apparently it's rare enough that some doctors never even hear of it.
So here is what I know:
Pupps: pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy
It is a rash that occurs in about 1/200 women, usually on their first pregnancy, and more often if they are carrying a boy, multiples, or gain a fair amount of weight too quickly. That's about all they really know and there is no treatment. About 70% of women who get it have a boy. It does even more rarely show up after birth. It usually occurs in the third trimester, though RARELY it shows up in the first or second (and I am so, so sorry if this has happened to you). It usually doesn't occur in any following pregnancies, though it can happen and its usually milder. Oh, and the BEST PART? It SPREADS UNTIL DELIVERY!
http://www.pregnancycorner.com/being-pregnant/complications/pupps.html
Keep in mind though that after reading many, many blogs and comments, none of these rules are hard and fast. I saw women who had gotten it in their third or fourth pregnancies, women who were having daughters, women who got it afterwards and all kinds of other things.
To truly understand part of this horror, here are a few pictures of me with it. Keep in mind, I only had it for about two weeks:
You can google other pictures. Let me just describe my experience with this. For one, it appear on stretch marks, and makes them worse. So much worse. They raise up and basically kind of welt. Also, some of them aren't stretch marks, it's just the rash. Two, the itching is like nothing you could believe. I have had poison ivy and the chicken pox and it really doesn't compare. On top of that, the rash not only itches it burns. And while you may think scratching makes you feel better, it makes it a hundred times worse.
I read several blogs of women who kept scratching til they bled. Luckily my husband yelled at me a lot. After finding out what I could use, I went to walmart and bought all of it. And immediately used it. It didn't help a lot. The hydracortizone cream gave me relief for like... five minutes. The benedryl kinda helped but not by much.
After reading and reading, I wound up buying Dandelion root pills but was too afraid to take them. I did buy Aveeno anti-itch lotion which helped, but did not for long. Any stretch mark creams, like Palmer's seemed to make it worse. The week I delivered I did not go to work because I had to wear extremely loose clothing or irritate the rash more. Cold baths became my best friend and I was taking about three a day - each at least an hour long. This was one remedy I had read the most about, and at first I had to sit in luke warm water, and then let it cool down. It was fantastic. It did however make my rash purple which was weird.
Looks painful, no?
It is.
Really.
Promise.
Getting too hot also made the rash go insane. I already had some cold packs, and I would take these and put them on them between legs when I went to sleep and have a bit of bliss. Literally the best thing is just to freeze yourself as much as you can bear it. If it wouldn't have killed me, I may have just sat in ice.
In the week that it had really popped up, it spread down my arms, all over my stomach, slightly on my chest, a little bit on my back, and on the Wednesday before I had him, all the way down my calves. The horrible thing about that was that I was scratching it with my foot as I slept. It's just so easy to do. And I would take my socks off in my sleep. IT HURT SO MUCH. My legs were truly the most terrible part. The last few days I just slept. A lot. And prayed that Alexander would come. A week wasn't a big deal. I even prayed that my doctor would induce me on my due date. She didn't. Which was good. But I hoped. Oh I hoped.
Luckily for me, I had one last burst of energy and did a bunch of laundry, cleaning and getting things ready. I did sadly leave the dish from cooking supper in the sink to soak, and that smelt wonderful when Sean came home during my hospital stay. I couldn't fall asleep on Wednesday the 26th, and kept finding random things to do. I thought I had a couple of contractions but nothing consistent, so my husband went on into work (he's works third shift and this was the first Wednesday he had worked in like... a year), when my water sorta broke. Apparently you can just leak for a while. Tis lovely. Really. That happened at 2 am.
I texted my husband "So my water may or may not have broke." He calls, "What? That's not exactly clear there, did it or did it not?" He rather thought my text was funny. To be fair, I had been up for hours. I called the doctor emergency line, and they sent me to labor and delivery because I wasn't having contractions (or at least I thought I wasn't), and you have to be induced after so long. I called my sister, she came and got me, my husband waited for us to get close and then he met us at the hospital.
I am happy to say that my water had broke. And apparently I was having contractions I couldn't feel. And my baby was born that day :) And after the delivery? The wonderful doctor I had never met gave me steroids to get rid of the rash. And I love him. If you aren't breastfeeding, take them. They are great.
I know I read that a lot of women completely forget about the rash while in delivery. While I will cover my delivery in a different post, I will say that I could not forget about the rash. At all. Because I didn't feel pretty much any of the contractions. My husband loves telling people. They are measured on a scale of 1 - 100, and even on one that like 84, I felt a slight bit of pressure that made me want to pee. Yep. It was pretty great. BUT I HAD LOOKED FORWARD TO FORGETTING THE RASH!!! Even during the pushing I was like, I ITCH MAKE, IT STOP. Cause the Epidural didn't make it go away either -sighs- I felt so horribly bad too, because my hospital does what is called Kangaroo Care, which means after being weighed and cleaned, the baby is given to the mom for skin-to-skin contact for an hour. I made it forty-five minutes. He kept kicking/scratching my rash on my stomach and I was about to cry because of it. I felt so bad, but the nurse was really sweet and said it was time to move me back to my room anyways. Once I got in there and got laid down I laid there for about twenty minutes because I started asking after my drugs. I was miserable. Luckily the steroids started making the itching less, and then by the next day, much much less. Though I could still take a barely luke warm shower without making it worse.
The rash has gone in about two days, including the redness and purpleness. I had to be wary of hot water for about a week. The steroids were great, except I kept getting really sick to my stomach and one of the nurses finally decided it was because of those and gave me extra food and it seemed to fix it. Gotta love Turkey sandwiches. They also made me a bit shaky. As the dosages went down the side affects went away a bit. It was worth it.
However, my skin still itches, and sometimes it gets very, very itchy. Like, I almost cry with memories itchy. Several women said that theirs would pop back up. I am scared to have a second child, eventually, simply because I may get the rash. As a matter fact, the itchyness has been getting worse, two weeks out from delivery. I'm rather worried. Some of my stretch marks seem to be getting more defined again as well.
Wish me luck.
Also, for a site that has basically compiled most of the advice on all the different blogs about what treatments to try and such go here. Some of the sites that were more helpful seem to shift on the google search and don't always pop up. So just keep trying. And clicking.
And I wish you the best of luck.
