Oh, the drama!  What will happen next in the on-going saga of Laughing’s uterus?  (cue organ sting, here)

We went in for our 24 week ultrasound last week to check on the progress of my placenta previa and while we were at it, check in on the little critter who is right now waking up, but the feeling of him against my tummy.  The good news:  the kid looks fine.  No news is good news and we got no news on the fetal front.  The bad news:  barbarian forces are running rampant inside my womb and while the baby is doing so far so good inside her amniotic fort, she’s got to come out sometime and we’re gonna have to deal with the vandal hordes.

What??

When I was diagnosed with complete previa at 12 weeks, I wasn’t that worried.  It usually moves out of the way, I was told and had read.  No sex until it’s a safe distance.  At 20 weeks, it hadn’t moved sufficiently and then some other placenta patches were discovered, as well as some vessel.  No sex, no exercise, no heavy lifting, no strenuous activity. No. No. No!  (Except performing.  I can still do that. WHEW!)  Now, at the 24 week looksee last week, I swear there must be some other entity in there making it harder and harder and damn nigh impossible for me to ever even attempt to have a regular “squeeze the baby out the intended exit” birth.  Placenta previa has not moved sufficiently. Oh, and you’ve got a pool of blood sitting on top of your cervix, which we’re calling a “lake.”  Oh, and best of all, there seems to be a vessel between the baby and some of that spare Jackson Pollock-style splattered placenta on the wall there.  It’s at the front of your uterus. Nope, it’s not an umbilical cord, but we don’t want that sucker to rip, ’cause it’s the baby’s blood, not yours. You can stand to lose a lot of blood; your kid can’t.  So, to be safe, instead of either inducing or c-secting you around week 39, in late January/early February, we might recommend doing a c-section around week 35.  Come back in 3 weeks and we’ll take another peek into your battlezone to get a better idea of a course of action to safely deliver your baby as healthily as possible for both of you.

ARRGGHH! The curse of being on the losing side of statistics strikes again!

I shouldn’t complain.  Our baby is, by all available measures, healthy and developing nicely.  I am immensely grateful for that.  Immensely.  And, let’s be honest:  no one has a worry-free pregnancy.  Not even the young woman who gets pregnant immediately, has no problem maintaining the pregnancy, sails smoothly through pregnancy, has a perfect placenta, perfectly turned baby and 3 hour delivery without drugs. (Don’t we want to punch her teeth in?) Even she’s worried.  But still, as long as everything’s going okay with the baby, could I just please get cut a little slack?  A random blood vessel connection for the baby?  Really?  I’ve already apparently got two items blocking my cervix and disallowing me to have sex when I’ve got major hormones rushing around me like a fucking horny 15 year old boy in gym class.  Now I have to worry about baby’s overachieving tendencies being his downfall?  The cosmic unfairness of this is just laughable.

And a lake?  A lake??  I sincerely doubt it’s even fishable, so what use is it to me?  I think we need to name that lake.  Dash-it-all!  I’m going to name it.  Name it something.  If I’ve got a lake inside my uterus, I’m going to name it, by gum!

And it looks like a c-section is unavoidable at this point.  Even if my placenta moves clean out of the way, and the lake disappears, there’s still the issue of the baby-connecting vessel.  If I go into hard labor, the way evolution designed us, the vessel could tear and the baby could lose a lot of blood. Not good.  And even worse, if I go into spontaneous labor.  The bad news is that I might have to go into the hospital on bed rest a few weeks before delivery so that if (God forbid) I go into spontaneous preterm labor, they can have me right there in the O.R. immediately to help us both out, as opposed to having to weather the shitty traffic we have in this area to get there and hopefully save the baby.  The good news is:  the same constraints from last month apply to this month, so far.  So, I’m not on regular bed rest, nor am I having to miss out on performing or otherwise living my life, with minor modifications.  Whew.  I will do the c-section, but it saddens me.  I was really hoping, after all the losses and the scientific intervention to get to this baby, that I could have one aspect of the baby-making process proceed as it has for millions of years.  But I’m sure I’ll get over it.  Truthfully, in my situation, without medical types in bunny suits with all their accoutrement, baby-making would be impossible for us.  As recently as 30 years ago, I’d never have had a successful pregnancy.  And as recently as 50 or 60 or 70 years ago, there’s no doubt in my mind that all the aforementioned complications of this pregnancy would result in maternal or infant death or both upon delivery.  At least baby and I will likely come out of this alive.

So, it looks like our baby will be coming closer to New Years, right after the year turns.  Which, as I hate the month of February, I should probably be happy with.  I kind of am.  Except, on the petty end, that removes a whole month I was going to use to plan with:  painting, etc.  And mostly except that I’m just concerned about the baby’s health.  As the perinatalogist was explaining this to us, last week, all I could see was our little baby, taken 4 – 5 weeks too soon, trembling and cold in a NICU, with a plethora of tubes connecting him to breathing devices, like some sort of human squid.  It was all I could do not to cry.  I was very proud of myself for staying calm and not letting the knot in my throat or the heat behind my eyes betray me, as we asked our questions.  After having talked to a pediatrician family member of mine, I’m more convinced that she’ll be okay if she comes into the world a month early.  I was – and still am – most concerned about the baby’s lungs.  The closer to 40 weeks the better, but we don’t all have that luxury.  The only other thing that concerns me is the condition of my uterus.  With all the flotsam and jetsam mucking it up right now, I wonder if I should expect that with subsequent pregnancies.  Or if it’ll be too damaged to even hope for future pregnancies.  We want at least one, maybe 2 more kids after this one – provided, of course, that this kid is nice and doesn’t sour us on parenting alltogether!

Ahh, how blissful my ignorant days when I just assumed all my lady parts were fully functioning!  Whoever said “knowledge is power” didn’t know how powerless one can feel when in possession of knowledge you can’t really use, but effects you so deeply.

So, there you have it.  Sorry to complain.  I shouldn’t.  The baby’s healthy.  I will do whatever is necessary to continue to facilitate that.  It’s just that it would be nice to get a break some time on the lady end.  I would love to love my uterus and not feel at odds with her.

No guarantees.

Since I’ve gone public with my pregnancy, I’ve had a few women – maybe two or three or four – say something to me along a common theme that I find very curious.  “Enjoy your pregnancy.  It’s the only time you know your baby is completely safe and taken care of.  It’s the only time you have total control over their safety.”

What?

Granted, these women didn’t know about my previous history, and I can only assume that each of their pregnancies resulted in a live baby delivered at, or near term.  Otherwise, how could one so easily dispense that reason for enjoying pregnancy?  I find it hard to believe they’d hold me personally responsible and accountable for the losses of my previous five pregnancies.  (Though, there’s little doubt in my mind there are some wack-jobs out there who would.)

Of course, I smile and nod politely and respond with a shy, “Okay.”  But naturally I’m thinking:  “The only time I know it’s taken care of?  The only time I have control over its safety?  You have no idea what you’re talking about.”  The only thing I can say about my offspring, in this condition, is that I know where he is and under whose physical protection he is.  I can’t vouch for her safety, really.  I feel her kicking and moving, so I assume all is well, but I don’t know how she is reacting to her environment.  I don’t know if he is perilously close to kicking the snot out of the low-lying placenta which would endanger us both.  I don’t know if she has an organ condition unfolding that could lead to a prenatal fatality.  I don’t know if he’s having an allergic reaction to something I ate.  There are SO many ways I don’t know if this baby is safe; that I don’t have control over its safety.  Just because she’s inside me, doesn’t make her safety any more certain than if she was outside me, fully gestated.

And assuming I have complete control – or even a large portion of control – over the baby’s safety assumes a lot.  It assumes I have a large amount of control over my own safety.  We like to think – especially in this nation of self-determinism – that we have the majority, if not complete, control over our own safeties and destinies.  But really, we’re lucky if we have 50% control.  I drive in a car to work every morning.  I can only control my own safety so much.  I fly in in airplanes, where I have way far less control.  I breathe air, drink water and eat food polluted by generations of waste and chemical experimentation – even if I ate only locally grown, organic food this would be the case.  I climb staircases, step over and around obstacles and turn corners in a hurry.  Gravity is not, and has never been, my friend.  Trips, slips and falls happen.  Sure, my baby is protected by the finest suspension system nature has to offer a woman’s body, but it’s not fail-safe.

What I can say is that my baby is likely warm and hopefully cozy and comfortable.  It’s the only time in early parenthood when I can take my kid with me to a movie unsuitable for children.  It’s the only time in early parenthood when I can do fun stuff with my husband and not worry about a babysitter.  It’s the only time in early parenthood when I can do fun stuff without my husband and not worry that leaving him with the baby is overwhelming him.  It’s the only time I can be a parent and still be pursue my own interests more or less as I like, as far as I see it.  At least that’s how the experience unfolded so far.

There is really little I can say with certainty about the state of my baby as she is inside of me. He seems to respond to my laughter. She’s healthy, as far as we’ve been able to gleen. Can I rest assured that I control his sustained safety?  Of that I’m pretty certain:  no.

That’s what we heard Tuesday morning with the nifty doppler machine.

Hubby was finally able to join me for a doctor’s visit.  Since we’re at week 17, I was hoping we’d have an ultrasound, so he could take a look at the baby.  He hasn’t seen it since it was just an amorphous spindle with a beating light that would become a heart, at 7 weeks.  He hasn’t gotten to see legs and arms and face and stuff yet.  But it was another checking-in and listening-in visit.  Which is fine.  I also wanted to make sure he met the doctor who’ll be delivering our child.  He’ll come to as many of these as he can with me.  He didn’t have any questions this time around, but I assume he will as we progress.

We were pleased with what we got to hear:  144 heartbeat and fetal movement.  That was the coolest part, for me.  Not just hearing the heartbeat – though that was awesome – but hearing the wubbly sound of the interference with the doppler was my favorite.  That, evidently indicates the baby moving.  In the 15 to 20 seconds we listened in, the baby moved about 3 or 4 times. I don’t know what average is, but it was music to our ears.  And our doctor again happily commented that we had an active baby moving around in there.

I think – though I still can’t be certain – that I’m beginning to feel the baby moving around in there.  I am still not quite sure whether it’s the baby or whether it’s gas.  The only differentiating factor right now is whether after I feel a bubble movement in my abdomen, I then feel the need to expel gas in some form or fashion.  There have been a few moments this past week – one in particular – in which I have felt with some certainty that it’s the baby.  Every night, Hubby takes about 30 – 45 seconds to place his hands on my lower belly in the hopes that he feels it, too.  But right now, it’s so unpredictable.  I can’t wait until the movement is more predictable and I can share it with him.

I’m pretty sure I feel it move at least once a day.  Yesterday, I was concerned because I hadn’t felt it move all day.  So, Hubby dug out the stethoscope and listened around my lower abdomen.  I listened in, too.  We could hear liquid gurgling noises, which I assume you’d find in anyone’s tummy, be we also heard tiny, arrhythmic knocking sounds.  Since they weren’t in keeping with my heartbeat, and didn’t sound like sloshing, we decided it was the baby moving.  Don’t know if we’re right, but we’re clinging to it.

My pregnancy is now common knowledge.  I’ve told just about everyone I’ll see on a regular or semi-regular basis, as well as those I don’t, but who might be happy to know.  This kind of scares me.  Again, still don’t want to find myself in an “un-announce” situation.  But this moment had to come.  I’m not fitting into my clothes easily anymore – or even with strained difficulty – those who know me will recognize soon, if they haven’t already, that my body is changing; I can’t really hide it anymore, so I’m not going to fight it.  I feel like making it common knowledge is a bold step.  A very scary, bold step.  I’m doing it confidently, now, but inside I still quiver; I still hold my breath.

The strangest thing – or maybe not so strange – is that for as open as I am now about my pregnancy, I sometimes want to tell people that this isn’t just a pregnancy.  That this isn’t just a happy accident.  That this is hard-won and it’s still not over.  And it will probably never be over, even after we’ve had all the children we want to have and they’ve grown and gone on.  Some people, now that I’m basically public about it have said, “17 weeks? Oh, so you’re out of the woods?”  Am I?  Just because I’m past trimester doesn’t take me out of the woods, in my mind.  This little fetus is still so frail and dependent on me.  Though, I’d always thought the same thing.  The other night, talking to a friend after a show, I said all I really wanted was a happy, healthy baby.  “That’s what you’re supposed to say,” she amiably quipped, teasing my political correctness.  But it’s so genuinely true.  Yeah, I’d prefer a baby born in springtime, because I SO hate mid-winter, but by golly, I’m really not going to be picky. After 5 pregnancy losses, all I really DO want is a happy, healthy baby. Hubby wants a happy, healthy baby boy really badly, but I’m really of no opinion on the sex or who it looks like or any of that.  At least not with this kid. It may sound trite, but when you know all the things that could go wrong in a pregnancy or in fetal development, healthy really is all you want.  Just because you’re likely to get it – as most women do – doesn’t mean you take it for granted.  And when you’ve had nothing but failure in the past, hoping for much else feels like hubris.  Mostly, and I don’t know why … I sometimes want people to know how hard-won this pregnancy is so that they don’t take it for granted.  That I’m not just a woman who made love to her husband and this is the outcome.

But I can’t tell most people I know all that.  It’s too weighty and private and reserved for a select few:  those in our closer circle and those who have let me glimpse some of their pain.  Most people have no idea of the far-reaching sadness that recurrent miscarriage carries with it.  (Hell, I’ve been through it 5 times, and I’m still not sure I grasp it.)  Most people can offer their sympathy, but it’s a limited sympathy that you give a friend who’s lost a pet.  I’m sure they’d be sad for me, but they have no idea how miscarriage affects not only my hopes for that embryo, but my self-image, my internal health, my marital health, nor much less my dreams, both for motherhood and career.  It’s hard to make career plans and movements when you’re constantly thinking:  by next quarter I’ll be pregnant and then in a year I’ll have a baby, so I don’t know if it’s worth it to make this risky move.

But I ramble.  I’m 18 weeks, today.  And thus far healthy.  We’ll find out in two weeks how the baby has grown and see if the placenta has begun to migrate to a safer place.  For now, genuinely, I’m really happy and more hopeful than I’ve been since this month four years ago when I first stripped the last Ortho Evra patch off my cheek and we decided to get this experiment going.  I’m actually hopeful that these swooshes and wubbles will quite soon give way to coos and babbles.

I'm telling. Who else is telling?

I finally talked to my boss yesterday to tell him that I was pregnant.  Or rather – am – pregnant.  I was going to hold off until Tuesday afternoon to have the talk with him, mostly because I wanted to make sure, after our Tuesday appointment that everything’s still going well.  That we have a little, beating, breathing, wiggling baby inside me.  But my closet forced my hand.

What’s that?  My clothes have been getting tight lately, but I’m still in my regular clothes.  (I tried a belly band last week and it didn’t do much more than escape my pants and seek refuge around my waist like some bad lycra belt.)  Yesterday morning, however, I pulled on a smocked top sundress that I was looking forward to wearing, and I looked a lot more like I was packing a bump than I ever have before.  As someone who carries her fat in the front and who has been asked by people in the past if I was pregnant, this is saying something.  So, I scrambled as best I could to put something together that didn’t make me look totally with child and decided to lay it out for him yesterday morning.  He already knew I wanted to “chat” about something, and was nervous.

But I was weepy.  Not with him, thankfully. Just leading up to it.  Leaving the house; sitting at my desk.  I was so scared.  Not of what he would say – I knew he’d be happy for me – but of bringing it to his attention.  Thus far, we’ve told just about everyone who needs to know:  family, very close friends.  And we’re letting it out among the wider circle of friends who may not have known we were even trying, much less all the heartache that’s been leading up to this.  I was pinged by a friend on Facebook who heard it through the grapevine of our performance community.  The news is now spreading beyond me.  But for some reason, letting my boss know – even more than letting my female coworkers know, who’ve known for weeks – was seriously tough.  It’s like admitting to him, officialized it. “I will need time off to bond with and care for my baby.”  It made this more real and less retractable.  I don’t want to have to “un-announce” to anyone, and statistically, it’s unlikely that I’ll have to.  Nonetheless, when it comes to babymaking, I’ve been on the losing end of statistics so much in the last 4 years, that I no longer trust the notion of the “likeliest outcome.”

I’ll be at 17 weeks this Sunday, and have a check up on Tuesday morning.  It can’t come fast enough.  I just want to take a peek or hear a heartbeat or anything to assure me that we’ve still got a growing baby in there.  And I know it’s still kind of early to feel kicking, but I want to feel it so badly.  I want this little critter to communicate with me and let me know he or she is doing well.  Every day I take sometime to feel around on my bloated, rubber ball of a uterus and hope for some movement.  Invariably, I always get my own pulse and the palpitation of my excited breath as it courses through my body.  <sigh>  Hurry up, little bug!

My therapist was right:  this is going to be a loooonnng pregnancy.

The last time I visited pregnancy forums, before this pregnancy, was after my second miscarriage.  I decided I wanted to find other people who were experiencing the hurt and frustration of recurrent loss.  I stopped visiting after about a week, because I found that I was in something of a minority, it seemed:  though I wanted the babies those pregnancies would have created, and though losing them was heartbreaking, my anger and upset was as much with my body as it was with the loss of the potential child.  A large portion of the women on the forums, it seemed – even the ones who lost their pregnancies as early as all of mine ended (4 – 6 weeks) felt they had lost a full-fledged child, not, as I felt, the beginnings of a child or the promise of a child. (I can’t say I’ve ever felt like we lost a child.  It seems like I would rather suffer 100 early pregnancy miscarriages than ever lose a child.  Even at 14 weeks, now, I believe my baby is my child, but I can’t imagine the agony I’d feel losing it today would ever compare to that we’d feel if we lost it at birth or anytime thereafter.)  I was definitely the odd woman out.

But what irked me with the pregnancy forums then, and is starting to irritate me now are the 10,000 icons and widgets you can add to your profile.  And they show up in each posting a woman posts or responds to.

The women on the loss boards often decorated their forum profiles with icons about their lost angels and the dates of loss.  Some, who were pregnant at the time, had pregnancy tickers running with their forum profiles.  While I’d never wish loss on anyone, I found that particularly distasteful, since we were all grieving.  It almost felt like flaunting.  And begging for goodwill.  Just ask for goodwill!  We will all gladly give it.  We all want women to have healthy, successful pregnancies.

But those decorations do not even compare with what I have to sift through on boards right now.  It seems every third woman who posts or responds has about 17 widgets on her profile, meaning I have to sift through so many layers of shit to get to the next woman’s response.  And these widgets are anything but tasteful.

There are, of course, the ever-popular pregnancy ticker widgets.  If the decoration trend stopped there, I’d be more than happy.  But it doesn’t.  In the last few weeks since I’ve gotten on the boards – namely just at whattoexpect.com – I’ve seen photos of womens’ ultrasounds, photos of their dogs, their existing children, their wedding days and of course, their naked bellies.  Many women have photos of all of these.  Some of these belly photos actually have ultrasound images superimposed on them, as if looking at a stranger’s pregnant belly wasn’t awkward and creepy enough!  Women who choose not to include scans of their own ultrasounds often opt for a variation on the ticker, which features an animated peach-colored fetus, complete with umbilical cord, floating against a black background, featuring how many days left until delivery. (Don’t know if they make other colored fetae, or if a peachy, white fetus is the only option.) Others include widgets, with any assortment of icons, that include the given name of their child to be.  Another widget is a stick figure drawing of the entire family, pets included, including a pregnant belly mom.  And one of my absolute – read, least – favorite widgets is that of a prediction.  Apparently, you can have Madame HokiePokie (or some stupid made-up name) guess the fortune of your pregnancy and delivery date and include a little paragraph to show everyone.

Now, with few exceptions – like the bellies with superimposed sonogram images, or the fortune forecasts – I wouldn’t mind these widgets, individually.  You wanna include a preggo belly pic?  Fine.  A stick drawing?  Okay. Even, the creepy CGI animated floating fetus?  Be my guest.  But must these women include ALL of them?  My profile is thin; almost just perfunctory.  I don’t even have a profile picture of me up there, so when I post or respond, all people see is some default images of clouds by my name.  I don’t know if there is some way these women can put all these widgets on their profiles, but not on their forum posts.  If there is, I wish they’d do it.  I’m happy to let someone else decorate her space all she wants.  It’s your locker:  go crazy!  But what irritates me most is that I have to sift through all that crap just to get to the next response.  If 10 people have responded to a question I want to know the answer two, between 3 – 6 of them will have in excess of two – and sincere excess – widgets I’ll have to scroll past in order to get to the next woman’s response.

Ladies, it’s all about content.  That’s why we’re here.  I shouldn’t have to sift through layers of scrapbooking to get to the verbal description of your experience.  Let’s leave the accoutrement for the baby books that we all hope to make!

put this mic on your belly; tell me what you hear

We decided to have the Nuchaltype Papp-A test done last week, in the middle of week twelve.  I’m glad we did for a couple of reasons, but 90% because I think we just want to be informed of any heightened possibility of chromosomal defects before birth. Having lost so many previous pregnancies, I still wonder and worry that maybe some of them were because they were too genetically deficient to progress.  So, getting this test was important to me.

I knew I was going to have an ultrasound, but not having had one in three weeks – the longest I’d gone in this pregnacy without a peek inside – I wasn’t sure what they’d see.  I was concerned, of course, that the baby hadn’t grown, or that it had, but had stopped and died.  But I was still hopeful that we’d see it in there, plugging along.

When my name was called, I followed the ultrasound technician into a darkened room with a bed facing a giant HD flat screen TV with the ultrasound image of a fetus in profile on the screen.  Clearly this was an image left up from the woman who preceded me.  I laid down on the bed, lifted my skirt above my belly – badly bruised from an ill-placed injection of lovenox I administered to myself two days earlier – and the screen went blank.  The technician squirted a warm jelly on my stomach.  I was excited that I’d finally been promoted beyond the transvaginal “wand” sonogram.  She touched the sonogram paddle to my belly and boom, there in profile was an image of a little fetus lying on its back.  She pulled the paddle off for a moment, for reasons I don’t recall, and for a moment I thought, “oh, the other woman’s image must’ve come on the screen.”  But then she replaced the paddle and there it was again:  a little fetal baby alien animal!  In my tummy!  And not only that, it was moving and kicking and wiggling and even sucked its finger – which I couldn’t tell, but the tech could – for us.  The sonographer kept telling me I had a “social” baby.  “Oh,  this baby is very social,” she’d say each time it shook its fist or kicked or stretched its back.

And I got to hear the heartbeat.  It was really cool.  Apparently its heart rate is about 155/minute.  So I only assume it’s engaging in major aerobic endeavors.

Either way, I was amazed.  In just three weeks, our offspring had gone from looking like a curled up grub worm to looking like a baby.  The proportions are still kind of funky, but I could see bones in its face and appendages.  I got to see the top view of its developing brain and it was so cool:  it looked like a butterfly shadow.  This pregnancy was still “legit.”  We have pictures of a developing baby inside me.  (I’d post them here, but my scanner’s been acting a-fool lately.) Luckily, the baby’s neck measures a safe thickness – i.e., not so thick that I should be concerned about possible Down Syndrome – and though I haven’t gotten the exact ratios yet, apparently my bloodwork came back looking good.  In other words, it doesn’t look like the baby’s at any higher risk for carrying a fatal or debilitating trisomy.

It was discovered, however – because I can’t be allowed to have a flawless pregnancy – that I have complete previa.  In other words, my placenta is lying entirely on top of my cervix right now; in exactly the wrong spot for so many reasons.  The nurse practitioner who consulted me after my Nuchal ultrasound told me not to panic about it.  Apparently, the placenta usually migrates away from the cervix as the uterus expands with the growing baby.  But we’ll need to keep an eye on it.  “Don’t have sex for a while <great, just what I want to hear.> and don’t go prying around on the Internet for information, because you’ll just scare yourself,” she admonished.  But that’s like saying, “Don’t think of Clive Owen naked.”  Once you’ve told me Clive Owen is naked, now that’s all I can think of.  Naturally, I did some checking around on the Net.  And it did scare me, at first.  But I’ve decided for now, to trust that it’ll move.  If it doesn’t, I’ll likely have to spend a portion of my last trimester on bed rest (blech!!) and deliver by C-section, which we’ve already been considering anyway, to ensure that my previous uterine surgery scar doesn’t rupture.

This past Wednesday, I visited my OB for my monthly check up.  I wasn’t sure what to expect beyond consultation and vitals.  Which was pretty much what it was.  She brought a device into the exam room that looked an awful lot like a more advanced, less colorful My First Sony recorder.  I assumed, rightly, that it was something to pick up the baby’s heartbeat.  She managed to pick up my heartbeat on the doppler good and strong, but not the baby’s.  Oddly, I wasn’t worried.  I don’t know if it was because I figured the baby was probably okay, or if it was because even if the baby had died, I was feeling satisfied that I was able to carry a pregnancy through to early fetal development – long enough that my body made a baby-thing, and not just a cluster of fleshy cells.  Either way, I didn’t panic.  “This doppler – and the equipment I have in this office – isn’t as advanced as the equipment in the peri-natal wing where you had your ultrasound last week,” she explained.

We stepped into another exam room where her ultrasound machine is.  Sure enough, there was the baby, wiggling and kicking.  “Oh, this one’s active,” she said.  Turned out the baby had its back to us.  Which is probably a large part of the reason why we didn’t get a heartbeat.  It was turned over on its right side and seemed to be wiggling laterally, much like I have been a lot at night.  Only the baby was lying on top of my placenta, whereas I lie on a Certa … or maybe it’s a Sealy; I haven’t looked in years.  Either way, it was fun to take a look at our baby, and to see its tiny spine; to watch it squirm around like a kid in church.  Which makes me think this will probably be a squirmy kid in church.

I’ve begun leaking this information to more people, with the caveat that it’s not general knowledge yet.  I’m not sure when or how I’ll make it general knowledge.  I think in the next week or two.  I figure I’ll let mid- and outer-circle friends know and they can share it as they want.  I’m not going to do a FaceBook announcement or anything.  That’s just not my style, particularly after all the loss we’ve had leading up to this; I just feel very protective of my pregnancy and of my baby’s dignity.

I’m still really unsure how I’m going to tell my boss and supervisor.  I feel like I should have a plan.  But frankly, I’m not even sure we have a maternity/FMLA plan in my office.  There are about 10 of us.  We’re owned by a larger company, but they don’t extend the same benefits and privileges to us that they do their direct employees, and we mostly operate like a small company still.  Hubby and I really need to have that conversation this weekend, I suppose.  The “what can we afford/how long should I take off/should I return to that office” conversation.  Since we’ve never advanced this far in a pregnancy, to the point where it’s likely that parenthood is imminent, I’ve never had to consider the career effects.  I know don’t want to return to that office.  I’m tired of it right now and want to find newer, freelance things to do from home, when this kid comes.  But I’ve never been great at self-promotion, and I guess I’d have to step up.  I’m hoping that having a kid will teach me to be a better self-promoter and also less of a procrastinator.  C’mon, kid.  Kick yer mom into gear!

I find the more I progress in this pregnancy, the more I have two conflicting thoughts:  1) I’m happy and increasingly excited and 2) I worry that being happy presses my luck; that I’m being too confident.  For now, I’m allowing the growing confidence to override the worry.

Sorry it’s been almost a month since I last wrote.  I need to go to bed soon, so let me just drop a brief update about what’s gone on in the last month.  Sorry in advance for the bullet points.

• A few hours after I wrote my last post, I bled a lot.  Bright red blood. Painlessly bled, but it was enough to scare the crap out of me and to be furious that I might be losing this pregnancy just a day after I finally made it to a heartbeat.  How cruel is that?  The bleeding didn’t last long.  I called our fertility specialist’s on-call number and set up an ultrasound for the next day.  Rather, they thought it would be a good idea, though they told me not to panic, because it’s not unheard of, apparently.  The nurse on the phone told me she had the same thing with her two IVF pregnancies and her kids are healthy.  Cold comfort.
• Father’s Day we had an early morning ultrasound.  There was the baby, with heart still beating.  Not for sure where the blood came from, though it’s possible it was from some vascular something or other – basically a clot – that ruptured.  I was glad that A) the baby was still there and growing and B) Hubby got to see the heartbeat; he wasn’t with me two days earlier when I got to see it.
• I’ve been upgraded to a “regular old pregnant lady” and am now seeing a regular OBGYN.  She’s mostly new to me. I saw her last year for my PAP since I’d grown tired and wary of my old practice.  She was recommended me by two good girlfriends who see her.  I LOVE her.  I saw her a few days after week 9 passed. I figured I probably wouldn’t get an ultrasound since “regular old pregnant ladies” don’t tend to get those on their first OB visits. BUT I DID!! Yea!  And finally, it’s starting to look like something you see in text books.  It’s got that warped snuggled bean look to it.  The doc took her time with me during the consultation portion; we probably talked for 45 minutes, but she’s one of the first, if only, doctors I’ve ever met with who didn’t rush me at all.  She could’ve gone on for another 45 minutes if I needed.  Love her.
• My little brother got married last Saturday.  This is only relevant because we finally took my parents aside and told them last Sunday (after the festivities, as to not steal his thunder).  Though both know we’ve gone through IVF, but for some reason, Mom was totally caught off-guard by the news that this cycle was not only successful, but that I’m still pregnant, whereas Dad’s expression conveyed that he could see this announcement coming a mile away.  Go figure.  They’re happy and are sitting on the news until we tell them we’re ready to tell.
• We’ve leaked to a few close friends who know what we’ve been going through.  I’m at week 11, today.  I kind of think I want to wait until week 13 or 14 before we make this information general knowledge.  I’m still nervous.  I’m settling into the idea that I’m pregnant, but I’m – we’re – not really fully accepting that it’s real and that it may (will?) result in a baby.  Still cautiously optimistic, but more optimistic with each passing week.
• I was originally supposed to go off the progesterone last Sunday, but my OB said if I’m comfortable taking it till next Sunday I may.  It won’t hurt the baby, but after 10 weeks, it’s not terribly necessary either.  I’m not taking any chances – I’m going through the end of this week.  I’m still on Lovenox, the blood thinner, though we’re not sure how long I’ll be on that.  Could be the entire pregnancy, minus a few days, or it could just be through half the pregnancy.  It has yet to be determined.  I have my next ultrasound in about a week and a half.  I’m eager to see how it’s grown (God, please let it have grown) and to see or hear the heartbeat.
• I think some people who don’t know I’m pregnant are beginning to suspect.  These are largely people in my social circle who know I normally don’t turn down a glass or six of wine.  But maybe I’m being self-conscious.  These same people probably also don’t notice that I’m not eating lunch meats …

Okay, so that was not as brief as I assumed it’d be.  But there’s still more left to write – especially on the Lovenox and blood thinning, as it looks like there might actually be some answers to the recurrent loss wrapped up in that.  But that’s for another post.  There you have it, though:  where I am and where we are.  I’ll try not to lapse so much next time.

134.

That’s the pulse rate of our baby.  (It looks like the little sucker is, indeed, solo.)

I’m finding myself kind of confused.  Happy, but confused.  I’ve never progressed this far into a pregnancy before.  I’ve never made it to a heartbeat.  I was hoping we’d see one yesterday, of course, but I wasn’t entirely counting on it.  I just wanted to see that the little sucker had grown and not disappeared.

The tech spotted the heartbeat right away an announced so.  I could barely make out a little white squibbly that is, presumably, the baby.  I asked her if she was sure.  My doctor, knowing that I’ve never made it this far, replied, “Ahh, she’s not going to believe you.  Make sure you show her.”

The tech swung the screen around for me to view.  Still I didn’t see any movement.  She zoomed in on the white smudge and there it was:  a little white speck that was fluttering.  I played it cool, but I really almost wanted to cry.

I was happy to see a white line last week, because in the past, I’ve only ever seen the black shadow of the yolk sac (or whatever sac that is).  But to see movement was really cool.  I have an organism living inside of me that could grow into a real baby.

With the exception of a little “feed me” nausea, I’ve not felt anything resembling morning sickness, yet. I’m still holding my breath.  I know I have no guarantees that I’ll make it to 12 weeks, but I’m feeling more hopeful than I have in any of my pregnancies.  I’m allowing myself to do some things that, perhaps, most women as newly pregnant as myself do all the time, but which I think of as dangerous indulgences:  I bought What to Expect When You’re Expecting; I’ve begun trying to guess what sex it will be; I started looking up names online.

I worry about allowing my mind to wander into these areas.  Will this only set me up for harder heartbreak if history repeats itself?  I really don’t want history to repeat itself!  I feel like I’m taking too many emotional liberties … all based on a heartbeat, which is really no guarantee of any success at all.

But it is evidence that I’ve met at least this success.  It’s an open window that gives me hope for an open door.

I’ll be at 7 weeks tomorrow.  I’ll have another sonogram about a week after that, my final one with our specialist.  Then, I’ll be out on my own, with no medical professionals taking my call every time I get a cramp or calling in my prescriptions when I stupidly let them run out. Our nurse has referred me to my OB regarding when I can start exercising, and we can start having sex again.  My libido started returning this week and boy would I like to satisfy it.  I’ll be having my first “regular old pregnant lady” appointment with my OB in about two weeks.  I just want everything to be okay.

I just want to be able to hope and expect without any restrictions or to my hoping and expecting.

All last week my HCG levels had been increasing steadily at the rates the doctor wanted to seem them increase.

I had my first ultrasound Friday morning.  There’s definitely one in there, as well as some shadowy figure that could either be a vascular something or other, or another yolk sac.  They’re not ready to call twins, but they’re not ready to rule out the possibility yet, either.

As of Friday, I was 5 weeks, 5 days along.  This is, of course, my danger zone.  I’ve never made it to 6 weeks in a pregnancy – possibly a little over, but I can’t be entirely sure of it. It seems all my pregnancies find a way to commit embryonic defenstration by week 5 or between weeks 5 and 6.

Naturally, I’m very nervous right now.  Hubby and I are traveling, and while I’m confident all is well, I’m still finding myself getting terrified by every little twinge, pressure and owie.  Yesterday afternoon, and this afternoon, I felt a warm pressure cramp, the likes of which usually precedes my period by a day or two.  It wasn’t sharp, it wasn’t painful; it was just there.  Naturally, I worried.  Each time I took a Tylenol and prayed. And tried not to sink into a puddle of tears and fear. So far, the sensations seems to find a way to pass and only seems to last about 5 minutes, max.  My nurse, Friday, told me that around this time in pregnancy, women sometimes report feeling like they’re having menstrual cramps, so not to worry.  (Easier said than done, of course.)  I suppose that pain is just my uterus expanding.  For a woman who’s never miscarried, she’d probably be a little concerned and then just move on.  Not me, of course.  I feel like I can’t take any twinge for granted.

I’m basically trying to take mental notes of the pains, twinges, pressures and odd sensations I feel:

• nothing sharp yet, nothing resembling the sharp radiating pains I’ve had with previous miscarriages
• mild menstrual cramp feeling
• occasional stretch pain on my left lower abdomen, usually when I’m in bed, akin to the feeling you get in your side when you’ve been running too much and you’re out of shape (or what I suppose a pulled groin feels like, but maybe higher?)
• occasional similar pain on right side, though lesser
• one pain in my right upper chest that exploded like a little fire-cracker, sending a sharp, pain up my right chest and down my lower tummy.  But it passed quickly; attribute it to gas, indigestion and what have you

So those are my worries, now.  I suppose I’ll be in my 6th week starting tomorrow.  Honestly, I haven’t even asked all the questions I suppose most people want to ask like due date and what I’m supposed to be doing. I really don’t know when I should pick up “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”  I’ve been pregnant so many times that I’m not sure I’m allowed to expect anything! I’m not sure what that’ll be like:  to expect a baby. I’m just concerned about getting past week 6, and then week 12, and then week 40.

We’re still hoping for twins, though, of course, we’ll be happy with one.  All we want are healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.  I kind of still think it is twins.  The only other time I’ve seen a gestational sac of mine on an ultrasound was with my first pregnancy.  My period had been irregular and after I’d had some painful cramping (which we now know of course what that meant) and bleeding, I saw my general practitioner. We both thought I had some stomach bug or digestive disorder at the initial appointment. But he also tested for pregnancy since he knew we were trying, but ordered an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t ectopic.  I was concerned it could be, since I’d been in such pain.  At that ultrasound, I was measured at 5 weeks.  I remember clearly seeing only one yolk/gestational sac.  On Friday’s ultrasound, there was the very definite yolk sac, but adjacent to it a very big and round something else.  It was about 1/2 to 3/4 the size of the yolk sac.  Maybe it’s a big old blood vessel, and that’s fine, too.  But if they’re not ready to rule out twins, then I’m not either.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s Baby B hiding in Baby A’s shadow.

I have my next ultrasound later this week.  I’m looking forward to it, but mostly, I’m just praying this pregnancy will persist to the next one.  And the next and all the ones thereafter.  I’ve already set up an appointment for my 8-week, “regular-preggo-lady, no-longer-in-the-TLC-of-the-fertility-doctors” OBGYN appointment.  It’s actually scheduled for week 9, but whatever.

Still hopeful.  Still scared.  Still praying.

First hurdle cleared.

I’m pregnant.  My HCG level is at 467. I almost burst into tears when our nurse told me that.  I’d been so frought with concern.  I still am, but the first obstacle has been overcome.

This morning, my nurse told me they were going to look for it to be in the 80 – 100 range, so I’m beating that.  It’s not the first time I’ve had a high beta.  But it’s the first time I’ve had a high beta while being pumped full of drugs to help me sustain a pregnancy.

Of course, I’m not out of the woods, and as my woods get treacherous very early in, I’m still guardedly optimistic.  But I’m still optimistic, which is also sort of comforting.

I’ll have a couple of blood tests next week to make sure I’m trending up.  Usually, they’d wait another two weeks or so to do a sonogram, but my nurse thinks, given my history, the doctor will want to take a look sooner than that:  perhaps late next week, or early the following.  I guess, right now, it’s still too early to see much on the screen to verify what we’ve got and where we’ve got it.

Tonight, I start Lovenox, a blood thinner.  I’m not thrilled about having yet another injection, but if it’ll help sustain this pregnancy and the little critter(s) in my womb, I’m willing.

I’m still imagining it’s twins, just because I have no indication that it isn’t.  And, though originally, I went in just wanting one, but now I’m actually kind of hoping for twins.  That might be relatively insane, but whatever.  Ultimately, I’m just praying for a healthy pregnancy, healthy baby/ies and a healthy delivery.