Home!

Ahh... it is good to be home. I was in Washington DC all week for my first and final important business trip as a pregnant person. I have to say, given the fact that I'm really quite darn big, it went very smoothly. I was able to mostly stick to my low-carb diet, my ankles puffed up a touch but nothing outrageous, I never got exhausted or miserable, and I feel like I drank enough water for six people. The plane rides there were great- lots of empty seats and personal space. The rides home sucked (full planes, bad seats = backache), but I made it and managed to walk around on each flight anyway. By the time that Lucky recovered from his excitement that I had walked through the front door I had already gotten over the backache so really, not too bad.

I didn't get out of this unscathed, however. Some unknown thing has happened to my skin and it is very annoying. On Thursday night, after a delicious dinner, I got back to my hotel room and noticed that I was getting itchy. After stripping down I did an inspection and discovered that I am covered (in some places) in a bizarre rash. It is somewhere between a heat rash and hives, if I had to characterize it. I called my doctors late at night (from DC, calling MT!) and they gave me this sage (and kinda funny) advice; Don't itch it. Take benadryl. If it gets significantly worse or if you start to feel weird, go to an emergency room to have someone look at it.

Now, I totally knew that was what they were going to say. That is what I would have said. But I needed to hear it anyway.

So stayed up until about midnight watching bad TV and keeping an eye on my rash. It didn't get worse. It didn't make me feel weird, fevery, or really different at all. So I went to bed.

In the morning I tried not to think about it and just proceeded on with my travel. I ignored the itching on the various taxis, planes, and waited until I got home to take a look at it again. And you know what- it got a tiny bit worse. More benadryl. Sigh...

My guess is that this is a hormonally induced heat rash thing. I've looked up all the pregnancy rashes on the internet (including the dreaded PUPPS that my sister got) and this is not any of them- wrong look, wrong symptoms. It doesn't really even look like hives anymore. It is concentrated in places that get clammy or sweaty- like where my belly now rubs on my hip-joints, or where my arms touch my bust. Matt thinks it sort of looks like a heat rash.

It definitely doesn't warrant the emergency room. Rate of spread is glacial, itch is bearable, and I feel 100% normal otherwise. My ankles look better today than they did last night, so I know that my circulation is good. The baby is as active and squirmy as ever. Unless this suddenly blooms out into something scary, I'm just going to wait it out until Monday.

My only request of this rash is that it does not last until I give birth. That would be a long time to not be able to comfortably wear underpants.