P-p-p-paranoia!

I little snippet into my life right now: nausea. 

Oh god, the nausea. 

Heartburn, yuck. 

Oh yeah, I'm pregnant! I almost forgot in the chaos that is the life of a Mom of a 22-month-old. Maybe I should check what the miscarriage rates for today are since I'm probably not pregnant anymore. 

Am I feeling cramping? 

Shit, are my underwear wet? 

I'm bleeding. I must be bleeding. Hmm...no blood. Fab. 

Oh no, I might throw up. Must eat immediately. 

So bloated. So fat.

I thought that maybe I might be less nervous this time around, but it seems that the first trimester is just as much of a bitch the second time around. Maybe worse, honestly.

The symptoms are there much of the time, like whoa, but other times I feel nothing. Why, oh why has no one invented a portable ultrasounds machine for post-infertility preggos?!?!

I have ultrasound #2 with my RE tomorrow, which I hope will put my mind slightly at ease for 2.5 minutes. Then first the first OB appointment in scheduled for next Friday. Since my last pregnancy ended in a slightly preterm birth, this time I'm considered high risk so am going to start seeing a maternal fetal medicine specialist instead of the run-of-the-mill OB I saw last time. I have no idea what this means or if anything will be different, but I guess I'll find out next week! I have an inkling that I will continue progesterone injections throughout the pregnancy (hoping for only once a week, but the RE wasn't sure). My ass cheeks are starting to get pretty lumpy and sore, but I could definitely handle it if it was only every 7 days instead of every. single. day. 

We shared the news with our immediate families over the Thanksgiving holiday and shocked everyone! Pretty drastically different than the last time when they were all waiting for it impatiently! I was really surprised that my Mom didn't guess before since I was SUPER tired and nauseous for the few days leading up to the announcement. 

So, that's life now! I am going to start posting weekly updates because I feel like I need to document this time in some way or it will pass in a flash and I won't remember anything. It's just so different than last time where I obsessed over everyday and moment!

Beating

The ultrasounds was today! I was really pretty nervous, but in went the dildo cam without any fanfare and it was there.

There is a baby with a heart rate of 136.

It was measuring 7 weeks, a little ahead of schedule (I'm 6 weeks, 4 daysish). 

I can't shake this guarded feeling I have, but I am definitely getting more excited as this feels a tiny bit real. We're starting to think about how/when we're going to share the news and I'm starting to feel all day queasiness and freakish hunger...so seems that we're chugging along!

Holy shit.

13

This was a BIG week in baby land. 

Yesterday I hit 13 weeks, which in some circles counts as the start of the 2nd trimester. I think it officially starts at the end of the 13th week, but who's counting? Okay, I'm totally counting. 

The NT scan went great and we got to spend almost a full hour looking at our babe due to some positioning snafus. Pretty surreal and most definitely amazing. We got some great videos and pictures (including a couple 4D that totally creep me out usually, but ended up actually being pretty cool)

I have no idea why it's upside down...

We also found out that our risk of Trisomy 21 is 1 in 10,000 and Trisomy 18 1 in 100,000...seems like good news to me. I know this does not rule out everything, but as a NICU nurse I was having the tech look at everything she could see. Even got a little gender prediction out of her! I'm trying not to hold onto it because 13 weeks is too early to know for sure, so I'm not even putting it out into the blogosphere for now :) 

Aside from all of that excitement...

I pulled out my belly band for the first time yesterday and I am officially starting to get sideways glances from people because there is a definite bump there, but no one has the courage to ask. Smart people. We will be all the way announced by the end of next week because I am making a trip to the East Coast to visit extended family and wanted to share the news with as many people in person before making it public on facebook and at work.I can't wait!

Also...almost NO MORE nausea!!! Hallelujah! I'm hoping I can resume a more normal eating pattern now and lay off the ginger snaps :)

Baby is the size of a small apple this week. Plucked this "baby" off our backyard tree :)

Not Just Chillin'

I'm going to kill the suspense right quick. I had my "peace of mind" ultrasound this morning and it appears that all is well in my uterus :)

My Doctor thankfully found the heartbeat immediately so I didn't have to wait one more second to breathe a sigh of relief. Then I saw the coolest thing ever. It's a baby, you guys. It was moving its arms and legs like crazy and bouncing around. It may only be the size of a fig, but it now looks more like a baby than a blob! The movement was unbelievable to see. It is definitely not hanging out in there, it is getting its groove on! So cool.

After floating around on cloud nine for the day, I had a slew of labs drawn for the antenatal screening tests that we elected to do. On September 9th we will have a detailed ultrasound where they will complete in depth measurements and give us the odds of different chromosomal anomalies like Trisomy 21, 18, and 13. I'm a little nervous for that, but also excited to get to watch the scan for up to 45 minutes!

Unfortunately I have no picture proof to share this time, but so happy that baby R is enjoying his/her home in my ute!

Waiting and Woozy

First of all, I want to thank you for all of the support during the bleeding "episode". I was feeling very doom and gloom after my encounter with The Resident from Hell, so your good stories were very calming. 

We returned from Kauai on my 31st birthday and the Mini-Me's 11 week mark. Even though the trip felt like awful timing with the spotting, it was PERFECT timing. It provided just the right amount of distraction, some much-needed relaxation time, and had me surrounded by my sweet Hubs and my family for support. My plans changed a bit in an effort to rest my body (no hiking, only a short kayak instead of a big Napali Coast kayak) but I am not one to complain about extra time spent lounging on the beach and snorkeling :)

The nausea is unreal people. I thought it might start to taper off this week as I approach the end of the 1st trimester, but apparently I was mistaken. I have been wearing Sea Bands which have actually helped a lot, but it only seems to be getting worse. With a quick consult from Dr. Google, some people say that HCG peaks between 10-12 weeks, so nausea will get worse before it gets better. One can hope! Otherwise, besides feeling totally fat (my pants almost do not fit, you guys! At 11 weeks!? In case you weren't sure, eating mass quantities of carbs will cause you to pack on pounds faster than you can believe...) I am feeling pretty great. We'll see how great I feel when I go back to work tomorrow. Boo.

The one upside is that I will get to take an ultrasound peak tomorrow if all goes according to plan. When I went in for the bleeding my doctor said I could come in right after my vacation for a "piece of mind" scan, but when I called to schedule, the coordinators couldn't get me in. Ugh...more waiting! Fortunately, my doctor is in L&D tomorrow which happens to be on the same floor that I work on, so I will be popping over for a STAT ultrasound in the morning! I am VERY nervous. I'm taking the continued nausea as a good sign, but still can't get the missed miscarriage idea out of my head. Evil resident! Hopefully all will be good in there and we can move on after tomorrow and count that as a little bump in the road.

 

The babe is fig-sized!

"Mmmm. I love figs."

It's There

There is a little one occupying my uterus. A little one with a flickering heart beat. 

 

I was freakishly nervous for today and the nerves were amplified by a horrible 30 minute wait for the ultrasound. When the dildo cam went in, it felt like an eternity before she found what she was looking for. But then I spotted a little black area that looked a lot like so many of the early ultrasound photos of yours that I've seen. Then I saw a flicker. A very faint flicker. And I knew that we had a baby and a beat. And it was amazing.

This little babe is teeny to my eyes, although my RE didn't mention what it was measuring. She said everything looked just as they expected it to with a heart rate of 136 and a due date of March 13th. 

Please, oh please stick around little one!

I have an ultrasounds next Tuesday and one on the week after that, so I'll be getting some good viewing time in the next couple of weeks. 

I also got a schedule to decrease my progesterone injections to 1ml at 7 weeks and to stop my Vivelle patches at 9 weeks, then no more progesterone at 12 weeks. It seems strange to be planning this far ahead...I guess it's the pessimist in me :)

Thank you again for all of the well-wishes. You all are the best! I don't know what I would do if I couldn't share the news with you all since no one in real life knows yet. I'd for sure be crazy. Like more crazy than I am now.

Ultrasound Eve

It is ultrasound eve! I am both excited and scared out of my brains about this. 

I have been symptom-spotting up the wazoo since the disappearance of anything mildly "pregnanty" (totally not a word) but have been trying to reassure myself by what so many of you said about symptoms and lack of symptoms.Thank you for all of those pearls of wisdom!

I will say, the slightly (and I mean, slightly) sore breasts have returned. And do my A cups look more like an A+? And I have some very milk food aversions that usually come on part way through a meal when I realize that whatever I'm eating that tasted good at first doesn't taste good anymore. That's it kids. They're either symptoms or I'm imagining it all. In 3 years of TTC, these would not be the first symptoms I've imagined!

I was talking to The Hubby about the ultrasound today and realized how little I know of what to expect from tomorrow. I think we will either see a baby or we won't and it will either be the right size or it won't and it will have a heartbeat or there will be nothing ticking in there. Sound about right?

I honestly have no idea how I am going to wait until 3:45 tomorrow! I might have to kidnap an ultrasound tech at work in the morning and bribe him to scan me. I'm only kind of joking...