24w3d

Hallo, internets!

I suppose it's kind of boring the way I start off all of my posts with "forgive me, internet, for I have sinned. It has been {insert staggering length of time} since my last post."

So I won't do that this time. Except that I kind of just did.

The news in a nutshell:

Things are good. They're really, really good. Can't ask for much more. My blood pressure has been low; a second-trimester dip is normal, and I got it. It will undoubtedly start to creep up again soon, when I enter my third trimester (kinnehorah-knock-wood-god-willin-and-the-crick-don't-rise).

We are having a wee boy. A boy! The 18 week scan was a story unto itself, which I'll type up soon. Suffice it to say that there are indeed minuscule boy parts attached to the minuscule boy. After reeling and having a few minutes of whaaa? what do I know about boys? we have plunged into an enthusiastic study of baby-boy-hood. And I figure anything else we need to learn we can google.

I am continuing to be enormous. We thought that maybe I'd plateau and end up a more normal size. Nope. My combination of wicked shortwaistedness + unimpressive abdominal muscles = spherical me. Of course I'm just as delighted as most people who have spent two years willing themselves into precisely this state would be. I am starting to feel a bit... unwieldy. My darling darted away from me in the supermarket the other day to go and grab the peanut butter (my peanut butter, that I craved). As I saw her slim, graceful frame slipping 'round the corner into the next aisle, I felt an impotent rage. I lumbered, huffing, behind her. "Don't just run off like that," I snapped irritably. With her usual vast good humor, she assessed my rolling, panting figure, petted me and gently said "okay, I won't."

Hey I got a new layout. In case there are any of you who actually aren't reading this through an RSS feed... I dunno, I'm a bit conflicted. I absolutely love the look of it, but is it less readable? Please feel free to weigh in, I won't be offended.

This day in history. One year ago today, I had just gotten the results of my second beta for my first, ill-fated pregnancy. They weren't great but weren't awful; 74 at 14dpo, with a doubling time an unimpressive 67 hours. I was heading into the really painful part of the OHSS.

OHSS symptoms: completely miserable. Can't walk, eat, or breathe properly. My stomach looks like I'm six months pregnant. In fact, when I got my blood drawn today (for the second time today, third time this week) the technician thought I was six months pregnant.

One year later, here I am, actually six months pregnant. The word "grateful" does not suffice. I am not just full of gratitude, I am saturated with gratitude. I have been pregnant for 157 days (okay, technically, for five of those days the lab down the street was pregnant). Every single freaking one of those days I have felt again the pure shock of gratitude at my own outrageous luck. Even more so, now that we're (just) past 24 weeks, and each day that passes represents a tiny incremental increase in our guy's chances of survival.

I would never say that the two years, three IVFs, miscarriage, untold number of dollars (I refuse to calculate it) and loss of so many other things from my life were "worth it". But I do wonder if, had this pregnancy not been prefaced by all of the above, I would feel my gratitude so very keenly and continuously.

I've had some severe mood swings, and when I say "severe" I mean "full on snotty hysterical sobbing." Usually accompanied by my wailing "I don't even know why I'm cryyyyyyinnnnnngggg." But even when I am full of dread and misery I am strangely aware that This is not real. My reality is happy. Soon I will be back to reality. And you know, I always am.

13w3d rambles

I'm sorry for leaving this blog for so long, long enough that I've gotten a few kind email inquiries as to whether or not Everything is Okay.

Everything is Okay. I don't know to what I owe my powerful blog constipation, except perhaps that I am just sitting here quietly, gratefully, afraid to attract the envy of the evil spirits. We Jews are an extremely superstitious lot.

First trimester screening
Last Monday we had our first trimester screening. We got to see the wee babe on an ultrasound; for the first time it looked like a human being, not a blob in a snowstorm. That was a powerful moment, its power dimmed only slightly by the fact that omg I have never had to pee so badly in my LIFE. (note to the uninitiated: before ultrasounds, especially early ultrasounds, a full bladder helps to lift the uterus into better viewing position.) It was especially funny when the fetus would not assume the correct position and the ultrasonographer was thus forced to grab my ample belly and jiggle it forcefully. She was very sweet and apologized profusely, but whoah.

The ultrasound measurements are combined with bloodwork measurements to come up with a set of odds for Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders. Our DS odds were, before the screening, 1:258; with the screening information, 1:5141. Other chromosomal disorder, baseline risk 1:452; after screening, 1:9021. These odds mean that we'd be crazy to do an amnio (miscarriage risk roughly 1:250), so we won't.

I am very grateful that there was such a noninvasive test that gave us the information to make this decision. Having the screening was a no-brainer for us, and there was no doubt that, if the odds had come back in a suggestive range, we'd have had an amnio. There are some disorders for which we'd choose to terminate and some for which we wouldn't, but in any case, I am a person who has to have all the information that is gettable. Sometimes I wish I were a take-it-as-it-comes person, but I never will be anything but an exhaustively-researching person. Sometimes this has served me well and sometimes it hasn't.

Work
I told my boss and my officemates. Only one person blurted out "How?" Everyone's been very sweet and supportive. Now that everyone knows I can stop wearing the baggy tops I've had on for the past ten weeks or so. I've been going around in plus-sized tops, which merely looked oversized and unflattering. Now I'm in properly-sized maternity clothes.

Wardrobe
Yes, I know that 13 weeks is ridiculously early for maternity clothes, but the sides of my pre-pregnant pants are not even in shouting distance of each other. Yes, I am enormous for 13 weeks, even now that my swollen ovaries have receded. No, I don't know why, except that I'm extraordinarily short-waisted and I guess it has nowhere to go but out.

On the subject of maternity clothes: must. stop. shopping. I can't stop buying them. Something in my leathery and scarred infertile soul softens and heals a little with every piece I buy. Luckily my shopping tastes run to thrift store and clearance racks, so I'm not spending too much. But I really have to stop at some point.

Most recent Value Village find: a pair of "H&M Mama" black combat trousers. Adorable and so comfy! I have no idea where it came from, as there are (sadly) no H&Ms that carry the Mama line anywhere near me. But for $3.98 they were all mine.

Doppling
In other news: I bought a fancy-ass doppler real cheap over Craigslist, and have been restricting myself to doppling every other day. Doppling is a mixed blessing because

1. I am blessed with a generous allowance of abdominal padding. I don't know if that's why, but I find the wee one extremely hard to locate. At 13 weeks we should be finding it no problem, but in fact there's always a sweaty and tense 10-20 minutes, and a good 40% of the time we can't find it at all.
2. Not finding the heartbeat stresses me out.
3. Finding it, on the other hand, is a glorious high.
4. Every time I do it my darling feels it necessary to yell "don't dopple me, bro!" and then fall over in gales of laughter.
   

On the whole the calculus is clear, because not finding it doesn't stress me out nearly as much as constantly worrying about missed miscarriage would. Every time I've not been able to find the heartbeat I've found it the next day or later that same day.

The body
Physically I am still reeling with gratitude about what an easy first trimester I've had. No puking. Minimal queasiness. Fatigue, but not crushing fatigue. Moodiness, but not -- oh, okay, sometimes crushing moodiness, but it's been pretty transitory. My blood pressure started in early on the second-trimester dip, so my monitor is showing lovely numbers that it hasn't shown in a long time.

What else? The OHSS is pretty much gone and has been for a few weeks. The tummy is no smaller, but it's differently shaped. Before it was a sort of diffuse swelling. Now it's higher and pointier. When I tense my abdominal muscles it gets very pointy and odd-looking indeed. Of course I do this like ten times a day just because it's so cool.

The mind
I know a lot of people really hate the expression so beloved of formerly-infertile-pregnant- bloggers, NBHHY -- Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet. It doesn't annoy me, though. I hear it with a wry smile, and the knowledge of how sometimes merely acknowledging a lack of badness seems like an invitation to destruction.

I am relaxing. I am learning to hope. And I am so grateful for all the people who have held onto my hope for me, when I was too scared to hold it myself.

wow.

my sister just called.

she's pregnant. she doesn't know how far she is, being one of those crazy heterosexuals. between 6-10 weeks. she thinks probably 8 or 9.

wow.

9w ultrasound

Yesterday was the 9w ultrasound, our graduation from the RE. The whole experience was less dramatic and less traumatic; I knew to tilt my hips immediately, thus avoiding the OWOWOW drama.

In short: there is a critter in there, it is the right size, it has a heart and (I am assured) a head. My sweetheart and the doctor both said they could see limb buds, but I think they were lying.

Here's the ultrasound, if you like that kind of thing!

It was best described as "fetus in a snowstorm". The enormous round thing off to the left (far bigger than the fetus or sac) is an ovarian cyst... doc thinks it should start to recede in a week or so.

We have an OB appointment next Wednesday.

Yesterday I was just shaking and exhausted and happy after having had every muscle in my body tense for a week or so, out of fear of the 9w ultrasound. And now..?

If I'm happy, is that arrogant? Does that assure that something's going to go wrong to knock me out of my smugness? I am haunted by this happy chirpy post I made the day before I found out that the pregnancy was over. Logically I know that the happy post didn't make that happen, but my brain is a small primitive animal that links proximal events and sucks at figuring out causation.

If I'm scared, is that ungrateful? So far there has not been one single thing wrong, not one result for me to point to and say "meh". I haven't bled a drop. What more do I want, really? Women would kill to be where I am right now. Shouldn't I just shut up and enjoy it?

I'm covering all my bases by having wild mood swings, from elated to terrified. I'm both gratefully happy and humbly frightened! Of course, that also means I'm ungratefully frightened and arrogantly happy. Welcome to my brain. Over the lintel, in old English letters, it says YOU CANNOT WIN.

I do feel like I can be grateful for one thing: I feel pretty damn good. Morning sickness has been minimal; some waves of low-level nausea, but no pukin', not even close. In fact, I'm eating like a horse; I'm hungry every hour or two. Some waves of exhaustion, but mostly I'm just enjoying the fact that I slip off to sleep easily at 10pm, as my non-pregnant self struggles with insomnia. My breasts are sore, but they don't bother me unless I poke them. Other than the swollen abdomen I'm having a picture-perfect time. This scared me when I thought it meant nobody alive in there, but now that I know it's possible to feel this good and have a good-lookin' fetus I'm grateful for how much I've lucked out so far. My body really seems to like this just fine. GF says I look fantastic*, and I'm inclined to believe her.

And that's the 9w1d story.

Love to all of those who surrounded me with warm words and thoughts on my last post. I love knowing that y'all are out there, and that this tiny scrap of proto-humanity already has friends.

^*She may have been looking at my mammary glands when she said that, I don't rightly recall.

7w ultrasound

I will not tell this story with any sense of drama, because I hate it when news is buried.

So: we have a heartbeat. We have one appropriately sized embryo with a heart fluttering at the right sort of rate.

Now the tiny bit of story:

Of course I've been worrying steadily for the past week few days. After a fitful night, I hit the worrying-crescendo this morning. The doctor's visit started out differently, because now everything is different. I've been there for a thousand ultrasounds -- pants off, up on the table, see ya later. This time there I got my weight and blood pressure taken (rather ineptly -- the med assistant was clearly asleep when they taught "how to get an accurate blood pressure reading". No, the patient's arm should not be dangling by her side) and gave a urine sample. Then I waited on the table, cross-legged under my modesty drape, trying desperately to remember my yoga breathing. I watched the girlfriend knit and held her ball of wool, which was very soothing.

Finally he came in and I eagerly scooted down on the table, knowing that in a few seconds my suspense would be over. But it was not to be because OW OW OW OW OW OW OW. It hurt like hell. Even when I had 25 mature follicles a transvaginal ultrasound never hurt like that. I yelled and I think at one point I said "YOU HAVE TO STOP THAT RIGHT NOW" (he did, because he's a nice man and good like that). We tried three times and it hurt so much that I just couldn't lie there. Turns out that because of my swollen OHSS-y ovaries, my uterus is now located somewhere around my chin. My left ovary is so large that it is behind my uterus, pushing it forward into a very unhelpful position. This also explains why I look five month's pregnant still.

So everyone in the room is standing there, a little appalled I think, and he decides to try the abdominal ultrasound. And he gets a picture that, to him, looks like a flickering heartbeat. I am barely used to reading the vaginal ultrasounds, and what he was able to get on the abdominal looked like nothing to me. But he said "there's the heartbeat" and of course I burst into tears, which must have made the ultrasound jiggle, but I couldn't tell because I was crying. I pulled it together pretty quickly, though, and asked if we could give the transvaginal another go.

This time I squirmed down and, on some instinct, tipped my pelvis up (that's "bridge" to you yoginas). And this time it worked and was no more that somewhat uncomfortable.

Um, it's also possible that -- although it didn't feel that way to me -- my incredibly tense muscles were incredibly tensely spasming for the first round, and that once I got some good news they relaxed enough for the ultrasound to work. But I prefer to think that it was my clever pelvic tilt.

Anyway. He took four CRL (crown rump length) measurements; 6w4d, 6w6d, 6w6d again, 7w1d. All plus or minus two. Even the worst of those wouldn't send me into a frenzy. He eyeballed the heart rate and said it looked like around 130 to him, which is perfectly normal.

I am exhausted and I am so, so grateful.

I keep starting posts...

and then abandoning them. There's nothing I can type that doesn't feel like a jinx.

I'm just sitting here, very quietly, making the time pass until the ultrasound on Monday.

24DPO beta

3838.

Doubling time: 49.7 hours.

There's no progesterone because I wasn't due for another beta. I've been cramping a whole lot (no spotting though), and my OHSS suddenly got all better, and I was utterly convinced that I was miscarrying again. So I fished out one of the many beta lab slips from my last miscarriage (m/c betas don't care about progesterone). I just waltzed right in and gave it to lab and got my blood sucked. I figure what are they gonna do, put the blood back? Not tell me the results?

Anyway, the take home messages are

1. As of 8:30 Thursday morning, I am still pregnant and everything is still in normal range;
2. I have truly never been crazier than I am right now.

Really. Everyone else must be feeling really, really sane right now because I am using up all the crazy.

I'm going to go home and sob with relief and bury my head in Animal Crossing. I figure this set of results will give me 24-36 hours of relief before the crazy starts up again.