A twinkle in my eye

Wow, it's been a while. I've been really busy lately with .... just getting ready for this baby, I guess. Ryan is wrapping up the second coat of paint on the baby's room right now, and I'm trying to get a quick post in before my eyes go bonkers:

This morning I during American Morning on CNN I noticed an annoying bright spot in my vision. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a bunch of criss-crossed flashing lines of light, knitted together into a crescent shape. I thought it must be from unintentionally looking into a light at some point that morning, but as I tried to wait it out, it would not go away. Then I realized it was spreading outwards and towards my peripheral vision. I got Ryan out of bed (it's his day off, poor guy) and we found this article that scared us a bit more. This is pretty much exactly what happened to me:

Some flashing light phenomena involve the experience of a very distinct, often multicolored or fiery jagged line of light with or without an adjacent black spot in the vision. Such "fortification scotomas" may start in the center of vision and then spread to the side, or start at the side in the first place. Often, if you carefully close one eye and then the other, you will notice that the flashes are actually going on in both eyes, but are just more prominent in one or the other. This type of flashing light typically lasts from 5 to 30 minutes, and may or may not be followed by a bad headache. These flashing lights are different from the flashing lights caused by tugging on the retina described above, and represent the eye portion of a migraine (with or without a migraine headache). This type of flashing lights is usually not serious, but if it is the first time you are experiencing them, or you have any doubts, you should contact your ophthalmologist.

So, knowing that pregnancy can cause eye issues we decided it was best to call the midwife and my optometrist. The midwife's nurse was worried about my blood pressure, so she suggested we stop by for a reading... stopping by is a 12 mile drive though, so we opted to visit our local fire station. One very cute fireman gladly took my BP which was completely normal. (I think I had a tour of a firehouse when I was in kindergarten, but have not been in one since. It was pretty cool, even if the firemen weren't so darn hot in their firesuits.)

ANYWAY to wrap up this boring tale: We visited the optometrist at 10:30 and he dilated my eyes to examine the retina, just in case it was torn or detached. All looked fine to him, so he concluded it was probably pressure on the optical nerve, and he asked if I've ever had migraines (as the article we found would have suggested). No migraines for me in at this point in my life yet, thank goodness.

I quickly realized at home that my full-dilated pupils would not mix well with a day staring at the computer screen, so I called in "sick" and hoped to get some writing on my current project done this evening. However, my eyes feel quite tired from writing this post (which was supposed to be a lot shorter to avoid said tiredness) ... so I guess I'll go fold some more laundry.

Fewer than four weeks to go!