34 weeks ~ Vitamin K saga

I saw a consultant at Epsom, again a different one.  But she seemed really helpful and much friendlier than the last consultant I had seen. My wonderful Grandad took me to the hospital, he was truly wonderful, he would take me to work, hospital appointments, out to see friends anything, he didn’t like to see me get the bus and train and I loved spending time with him while we drove places.  I was very close to my Grandad and spent a lot of time with him, later in this diary he will sadly pass away before baby arrives but at this point and to the day before he died he was very much alive in every way.

The results came back from my blood tests and my lamotrigine levels had dropped again so my dose went up to 575mg daily.

So we arrived at the hospital at 10.00, I saw the midwife briefly, my blood pressure was fine, my urine was +1 for glucose which they put down to just having eaten breakfast… but that it needed to be monitored.  The consultant listened to the baby’s heart beat and actually let me listen to it for a few seconds unlike most doctors who locate the heart beat and then quickly move on.  We discussed the plan for the birth so far, she referred me to an anaesthetist so they could review me and check that it was possible to get an epidural in and to discuss a plan for an epidural.  She also said that the policy was all women with epilepsy should take vitamin K but that she had heard it was quite difficult to get hold of, so she sent me off to the hospital pharmacy to see if they had any, after a 20minute wait they came back and said they didn’t have any. So back to the consultant I went who said I could take the Vitamin K injections orally… so back to the pharmacy we went, after another 20minute wait they came back with 10 vials of vitamin k, they seemed sceptical that they would work as they were for babies and didn’t think they would absorb orally in adults, they then went onto say that 10vials would only last 2days!  When they then explained I would have to break each vial and use a filter needle to make sure there was no glass in it, I started to think maybe the benefits wouldn’t outweigh the hassle of doing all of that.  Especially as I had read some research suggesting that the benefits were debatable and any shown seemed to be in enzyme inducing AEDs which Lamotrigine isn’t.  I went back to the midwife and asked about this, she rang the top consultant who said he had just read a ppiece of research to say that Vitamin K has little effect and so they would be changing the hospital policy, so I didn’t need to take anything!  It was now 1pm, I was late for work and my Grandad had stayed with me the whole time, looking back I’m so glad for every moment I spent with my Grandad.