Round About Week 15

Hiya, friends. Sorry for the silence.

Not much to report around here except for the IF equivalent of first-world problems: feeling blue about feeling fat; feeling terrified at the prospect of an actual baby in our actual apartment; feeling like stabbing someone in Old Navy while attempting to buy maternity clothes and settling for having a melt-down in H&M instead. Fascinating stuff.

I have an OB appointment tomorrow, so perhaps there will be more to report then. I'm hoping it will at least help with the fat-freakout -- I know it's moronic, and it isn't as if I was skinny before this, but it turns out I'm having a bit of trouble ignoring the past 30 years of societal conditioning on the subject. With luck, said OB (The Russian, OB 3 of 4. Haven't met her yet.) will not tell me I am gaining too fast, eating too much, etc. With further luck, that will help my brain get off this hamster wheel. If she *does* say I'm gaining too fast, batten down the hatches, 'cause we'll all be in for a stormy ride. (In point of fact, I *am* eating more than "they" say to, because I'm freakin' HUNGRY. There is no reasoning a stomach into peacefulness at 4 in the morning, and there is no going back to sleep for me while said stomach is restless.)

Enough ado! Here is your photographic evidence of my state at 14w6d (their count) or 15w1d (mine), in an Old Navy tank top wrested from roiling Herald Square this weekend and a very stretchy skirt of Sugar's (double-wardrobe is one of the great benefits of the Homosexual Agenda):

ETA: Oh, gawd. I just realized that this turned into one of those "I'm so fat (now tell me I'm skinny)" posts. Yuck. Not the (conscious) intent, really. Please just take it as evidence of the crazy I referred to above -- I swear I have regressed to my 15 year-old self vis-a-vis body image, and frankly, that was not the best or most interesting aspect of her personality.

The Dating Game

A few people have commented on the timequake that struck my ticker recently. If you thought it went backwards for a few days, you're not wrong.

When I first made the ticker, I was using the EDD I'd gotten from an IVF website. After all, I thought, no need to bring my LMP into this when I know *exactly* when I conceived, right? Egg Retrieval was CD 13 for me -- the closest I've had to a "normal" cycle since I started charting -- but the protocol says it's CD 14 for all date-figuring purposes, so I went with that.

And then I joined up with the OB practice. And they only wanted to hear about when my last period started. (Let's not even get into how the dang thing had the spottiest start ever and I wasn't even sure when to start stims and I ended up calling the Baby Factory in a tizzy, 'kay?) And they decided my EDD should be 3 days later than what I'd been thinking.

After some dithering, I've decided to go with their date. The word on the street from the lezzie-mamas and others who know for darn sure what day they conceived, thank you very much, not as if we're just casually throwing spunk up in our business, is that having a date that's a little later than you know is right is better than having an early date -- that way, you buy a few days' breathing room before people start pushing pitocin on you for being overdue. (I was doing all this reasoning before the specter of pre-term labor was raised at the nuchal, understand.)

So I've adjusted my ticker accordingly, even though it feels wrong to see the week number turn over on the wrong day of the week. (Those who know me from the IVP may notice that I left that ticker alone as a compromise to my view of truth.) I put off changing it for weeks, because I didn't want to lose ground in the struggle to get past the time of highest miscarriage risk with my sanity intact. But I'm gradually forcing myself to practice belief that this bunny-bean will stick around, whether or not I remember every superstition I've invented.

Buttons Of Our Lives

It's been far too hot in the past several months to think about wearing jeans, but Cali's Photo Friday suggestion got me curious.

Most of my summer clothes are big and loose; I had no idea it had come to this.

Here is the other exciting button in our lives these days:

This darling little doppler was lent to us by a splendiferous blogger, with the help of another pair of magnificents (all of whom I'm happy to name if they'd like -- You Know Who You Are). We love it and are so happy to have it visit us, especially knowing its storied history, listening in on the early moments of some very fine babies.

Before getting pregnant, I was very smug on the topic of dopplers. New-fangled nonsense, nothing a person with any faith would need, ultimately meaningless -- not being able to find a heartbeat at home doesn't mean there isn't one, nor does finding one today mean one will be present tomorrow -- and so on. Then came the Days of Bleeding. By bleeding, I mostly only mean spotting, but by days, I mean over a month, every day*. No matter how many times I told myself that the extra scans I had showed nothing wrong, that my cervices are famously testy, that none of it meant DOOM, it was DOOM I thought of at every bathroom trip, nonetheless.

The big argument against dopplers goes something like: You will one day fail to find a heartbeat, because you aren't trained at this and these wee little machines aren't perfect. And then you will panic, when you wouldn't have panicked if you'd never had the means to try to eavesdrop beyond your uterine walls. And there's something to all that, for sure.

But you know what? The first night of red bleeding, I PANICKED. Not having a doppler didn't save me. I think if I'd had a doppler then, one of two things would have happened: We would have found a heartbeat and possibly felt a bit better; or we wouldn't have found it and possibly felt worse. But I'm not so sure we had so very much worse to feel, in the absence of medical confirmation of our fears.

All of that is a very long-winded way of saying we're glad to have the doppler. (THANK YOU, lovely people.) Sugar is good at finding the heartbeat, probably in part because she's more patient than I am -- she really seems to believe there's something in there. I failed to find it the one time I tried alone, but strangely, it didn't scare me that much. Sugar found it that evening.

If she weren't pottering about, cleaning, I'd have her look for it now and try to record it for you. Just as well. All the books say these poetic things like, "your baby's heartbeat sounds like a galloping horse," but our baby? Our baby sounds more like a blue-tick hound on a porch somewhere, panting away the summer.

(Check out the other button-y pictures at Creating Motherhood.)

*I'm chicken to say this out loud, but there's been nothing since Sunday. (!)

Exhale

Thank you all so much for your good wishes and encouragements and sympathies. (May, get your heart our of your mouth, darling, you're liable to chew it or something.)

The short answer is that everything is fine.

ETA: pics to come; I think Sugar took them back to work in her bag.

The bean was very reluctant to get into the necessary position, so we had a nice long spying session while the sonographer punched, jiggled, and generally assaulted my bladder. (I like her anyway.) Heart was visible even to me, amid the sea of static. It was beating away at 155 bpm, she said. Lots of wiggling and so forth.

Measurements are all good and put risk of Downs and Trisomy 18/13 at comfortably remote levels. HCG was also good. PAPP-A, less so. Dr. Southern said that was still fine vis-a-vis Downs and Trisomy 18/13, but did have a slight correlation with increased risk of Pre-eclampsia, IUGR, and Pre-term Labor. Yuck.

The math part, in case you're into that kind of kink:

My measurement for PAPP-A was 5th percentile -- still well below what they like (30th) for its principal use as a indicator of risk for DS and Tri 18/13, but not an issue in my case because all the other data was so good.

The study that found the correlations listed above found them at and below the 1st percentile. It wasn't, apparently, an amazingly significant correlation for all aspects. Risk of pre-e was about double the general population risk for the patient's demographic group, which is still a pretty low risk. (For instance, Dr. Southern said that if I had been 1st percentile, my risk would have gone from about 2.5% to 5%.) IUGR is associated with pre-e (because of blood-flow problems in the placenta), so it's not surprising that it made the list, too.

I'm not at the 1st percentile, though. I'm at the 5th. Which means the correlations in my case are less convincing.

/math

Dr. Southern said he would recommend keeping a closer than usual eye on me for IUGR and pre-term labor, but he didn't seem too worried. As it happens, that's already in the cards. Both are common complications for those of us with bionic anatomies, that is, Müllerian Anomalies. Dr. Baby Factory thought I wasn't at increased risk for incompetent cervix because, unlike most bionics, I have a uterus of normal size and shape. But then Dr. Robot mentioned, in our discussion (ok, her lecture and my attempts to squeeze in a question without being interrupted) of c-sections, that she wouldn't attempt a version on me in the case of a breech presentation, because even if my ute looks normal, it will be different on a microscopic level from a typical ute, and won't stretch as well. The wheels in my head finally got through processing that tidbit this week, so I called to find out whether that also put me back in the incompetent cervix crowd, and it turns out it does. So it looks like I shan't be lonesome for medical attention after all.

Speaking of Dr. Robot, who has the bedside manner of Henry Ford: Dr. Southern asked if I'd seen her and said she'd called recently to ask his opinion on a patient he was pretty sure was me. (They aren't in the same practice; my OB clinic sends all patients to this practice for NT.) Warms the cockles of me heart, that does. I guess she's not so bad. She needs some lessons on talking to people, but she both knows her stuff and isn't too arrogant to seek help with tricky bits. That's not such a bad kind of doctor, really.

Good Morning

Hello, all.

It's 5 in the morning here. I've been awake for at least an hour.

Nuchal this afternoon. I sat down with a calendar yesterday to make notes: I've been spotting and/or bleeding for exactly one month.

Not nervous at all, why do you ask?

Heavy Lifting

Hey there, internets. How are you?

Things are basically fine around here. We've gotten several chances lately to spy on the bean, who seems to have arms and legs and a steady heartbeat. It even *moved* while we were watching last Monday -- a kind of quick sit-up, prompting my mother to observe that it obviously has genes not from our family.

The reason we've been getting so much screen time is more nerve-wracking. I keep bleeding. First was the two weeks of brown spotting leading up to the wedding. Once I'd gotten used to that, it turned pink, starting just before the sit-up look-see. A few days of pink, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for learning not to panic at every trip to the bathroom, so my body upped the ante: bright red blood, and plenty of it, in the middle of the night.

PANIC.

After the long wait until the OB office opened the next morning -- I didn't see much point in waking up whoever was on call, since there isn't much they could do about it if I was miscarrying and at least one of us ought to get some sleep -- another scan. Less cute time looking at the bean, more v.e.r.y. slow examination of the ute, after which Sweet Sonographer said she didn't think there was any blood flow from in there, so it is probably my sensitive-soul cervices. (Why no one has cranked open a speculum or two and taken a look, I don't know.)

More brown spotting, plus a new, sandpapered sensation in my upper hoo-ha regions; a period of self-imposed, er, pelvic rest. Things seemed to be settling down. And then I cut the cheese.

Sugar and I belong to a hippie food coop (*the* hippie food coop, really) of the sort where all members work. (Well, almost all members -- as the underemployed member of the household, I do both of our shifts.) When we toured the place and entered the food prep area, our guide said, "this is where we cut the cheese. If you join the coop your job might be cutting the cheese." Naturally, I signed up at once.

It's not all fun and games. Besides cutting the cheese, I wrap it, weigh and label it, and carry it upstairs in grocery baskets. Because of summer school and the wedding, I am behind several shifts, which jeopardizes our access to Waldorf-educated kohlrabi, so I made one up yesterday. I was careful not to fill the baskets the way I normally would, but instead to go up when I had ten pounds or so ready. I had them ready at waist-height, and carried them held against my body, for minimal strain, as my back has been unreasonably testy these past few weeks.

After my 3-hour shift, I found a huge streak of red in my underpants. Slightly more controlled panic. Hovered in the public but uncrowded hallway, left a message with the nurse, did some speedy, highly disorganized shopping (extra shallots? Yes. Trash bags? No.), took a cab home. Nice Nurse called back and said that since the bleeding stopped quickly, I should just rest and stop lifting "heavy" things.

Relief, of course. Followed by a nap. Followed by some feelings of pathetic worthlessness.

I like being pregnant. I like how it feels, for the most part. But while I am hardly a tower of physical might, I am used to thinking of myself as strong enough to manage things. I don't like not carrying things, not being able to open the stubborn window. For that matter, I don't like being so easily exhausted that I had to stop gardening after an hour the other day, when I had planned at least two.

I can live with being lazy, but I hate being weak.

Bah.

News

The appointment went well. Jury's a little out on this doctor -- if she'd started the appointment in the mode that she finished it, she would have only seemed a little robotic, but the first part...yuck -- but to be fair, she did send us off for a reassurance scan without argument. And I am madly in love with the sonographer.

I told myself I would do this if we got through today okay: