Brushing off the dust
Wow, it’s really been a while. This may have been my longest blog hiatus.
A lot has happened since the last entry. The day after my last entry, I took a pregnancy test, which came out positive. 🙂 I’d been keeping a locked blog about my experiences, which I opened up today, for the reason that we have finally told our parents. Please don’t feel obligated to read it, because I do talk about some unpleasant and possibly too personal things, like the state of my GI tract, or “lady business” (heh – this is in reference to a stupidly named iPhone app I saw the other day). It’s over at Made of Family. Again, it’s a bit TMI so if you don’t want to know how my state of barfing is, or the nitty gritty details of our doctor’s visits, please don’t go!
This current blog will remain my general blog, and hopefully I’ll stop being so lame about it. I had a lot of pregnancy-related fears in my mind, so it was hard to think of something to blog about without venturing into that territory.
On top of that, I’ve been incredibly busy at work. I’ve gained some new responsibilities and visibility, which is both really nice and a buttload of work. I’m up to the challenge and feel good about the things I’m doing, but it’s kept me from random musings here. Plus, twitter makes it so easy to give short updates when there isn’t enough time for an actual post.
Anyway, here’s to more frequently coming up for air.
The Big Reveal!
We’ve told our families! Woo hoo!
On Tuesday, April 14th, we went for our monthly doctor appointment, where everything seemed to be fine. We also went to get my blood drawn for the second phase of our integrated tests.
As usual, there was some trouble in finding a good vein to draw blood from, so this time, they tried something new and drew blood from the back of my hand! Sure, it hurt a little tiny bit more going in, but they were able to get blood going right away, so I had no problems with that.
We were told that the results would come back in about a week, and if everything is fine, we’d hear back from our doctor, and if everything is NOT fine, then we’d hear back from the doctor of the testing labs. The testing itself takes about 2-3 days, not counting the transport time of the blood specimen, so I really was expecting to hear back last Tuesday (April 21).Â
When Wednesday rolled around with no call from the doctor, I started to get a little nervous. Thursday morning, while out walking the dog, I called the doctor’s office and found to my chagrin that my doc was not in the office on Thursdays. I left a note with the receptionist who told me that we’d hear back on Friday. The good thing is that I actually got a call back from the office just an hour later. The bad thing was that the nurse who called me back said that they don’t actually have the results and it can take up to 9 days total and that we were on day 8, so she was going to call the lab to see if the results were ready.
In about 30 minutes, she called back to say that she was concerned because the lab said they hadn’t even receive my blood specimen yet! That was a big WTF. She felt the same way, so she said she was going to call back with the originating blood collection location to try to track the whereabouts of my blood. She asked me to confirm that it was with ABC labs, which is where my blood work is usually done, but I told her that it was actually XYZ labs, which is where the main integrated testing lab told me to go. With that new piece of information, she told me she’d follow up.
I didn’t get a call back that morning, so I called later in the afternoon and spoke with the nurse. She said that she had been able to get in touch with the correct lab and that they had my results ready to mail, but upon her request, they were faxing it to the doctor’s office. She let me know that she had put the results on my doctor’s desk with a note to the doctor to call ASAP when she came into the office on Friday. She said the doctor is supposed to deliver the results, and that she is not supposed to talk about patient records.
So by now, I was really grateful for her work and getting the results on the doctor’s desk as fast as possible. At the same time, I was worried that the results were bad, because I’m paranoid like that.
However, the doctor called back Friday morning with the news that we had less than 1 in 20,000 chance of the baby having Down’s Syndrome, 1 in 20,000 chance of the baby having trisomy 18, and 1 in 1000 chance of having a neural tube problem. She told me that those are really great numbers. I even looked up those numbers after the conversation to confirm and indeed, they are great odds!Â
I know that doesn’t mean the baby is 100% sure to be healthy. There are lots of things that can’t be detected before birth, and these are screening tests, not diagnostic tests, so nothing is certain. But the results were great enough that we felt we could finally tell our parents! 🙂 Yay!
I called my mom. This is how the conversation went:
Me: Hey mom. How are you doing?
Mom: I’m ok. How is everything with you?
Me: It’s ok. I’m sorry I haven’t called a lot recently. I’ve had a lot on my mind. Actually, I have some news.
Mom: What is it?
Me: Guess!
Mom: Hmmm….. You got a raise?
Me: No.
Mom: Are you pregnant?
Me: Yes!
Mom: I had a dream about this!
And there ensued a 15 minute monologue on the dream she had and how she told my sister-in-law about the dream. Ha! 😀 She was really excited. She’s been waiting for this news for a while now. I broke it to her that we were pretty sure I was pregnant when we were visiting her a few months back, and she sounded sad at not having been able to make me even more dishes than she stuffed me full of already.
I found it funny that she guessed I had gotten a raise, because I know she wanted to guess pregnancy as her first guess, but knew that I had been telling her the last several months to stop pressuring me. Heh. That was pretty thoughtful.
We were standing outside of the work office we were in the middle of moving from when I made the call. Zee husband yelled toward the phone, “Mansei!” which is a Korean cry of celebration. 🙂
He also attempted to call his parents but we found that his dad was traveling out of the country, and his mom’s cell was off. 🙁 Sadly, neither of us had their actual ground line on our cells! What terrible children we are! Heh. His dad apparently called back from abroad so we were able to pass on the news. We had to wait until we got home and could look up the phone number to re-contact his mom, but we were able to finally make contact! 😀 Funniest thing was when she called back about 10 minutes after the first excited call and reminded us to get cracking on fixing the house. 😀
The good news is that we have a quote and a reference check for the contractor who gave us the quote, so we are ready to go! 🙂
I also told work in a rather lame fashion. We were at the new office, hauling our stuff up the stairs and into various rooms (I was in the “move into various rooms” duty, and not on the “hauling stuff up the stairs” duty, and I was using a chair as a dolly) and it was so hot that I needed to take my baggy hoodie off. The baggy hoodie had been serving as my Pregnant Belly Disguise, a.k.a. my Hobo Uniform. But it was hot and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I whipped it off and told people I was pregnant as they came up the stairs.
I had told my manager and my CEO shortly before, so I figured I can tell everyone in this lame fashion. Heh.
Roll, baby, roll
Wow, that was exciting. Last Thursday, we went to the first of our integrated tests. As expected, they did an ultrasound, where they measured the baby in various configurations.
I’ve seen ultrasounds for my little brother, my niece, and for my friends U&C’s baby D. So I knew it could take a couple of seconds for the baby to come into the proper position for viewing. However, BAM! As soon as the technician put the ultrasound thingy to my belly, there he/she was, in perfect profile like they always show in the movies.
THEN, he/she rolled over and showed us his/her back. Then appeared to wave at us with the left hand. Obviously, these are completely involuntary, unconscious movements, but I have to say, this was the moment for me, where I was struck over the head with the reality of there being a real baby in there. The husband had this goofy/silly/dumbstruck look on his face like, “Did you see that?” I almost cried from the amazement. I definitely would have if we weren’t in there with a stranger.
Sizewise, the baby seems to be the right range. The technician said 6cm, but the fuzzy printout says 6.7cm, I think. The printouts suck to what we actually got to see when we were there… I wish I had asked her also what the uterus size was, because I was astounded that the baby could move so freely, with zero awareness on my part. It wasn’t squirming, just hanging out and rolling about freely.
I mean, I’ve known and felt pregnant for months now, but it’s really different seeing the baby in motion, while listening to the heartbeat. Now, there is a new awareness of this new being in there.
In funny news, I think my husband and I are having an ongoing disagreement on how much we want to push our kids. We had a really tense discussion the other day on what learning is, and yesterday, while we were watching How I Met Your Mother, we clearly came down on opposite sites of Lilly (wants her kindergardeners to have fun playing basketball) and Marshall’s (wants them to push to win) argument.
In pregnancy symptoms news, I will overshare and say that constipation sucks. And the nausea is definitely better than the peak I hit a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still ever-present. I have headaches and nausea. I had a 4-day streak (maybe it was longer) when I didn’t puke, but that got ruined two days ago. Boo.
I certainly don’t feel like my usual upbeat & happy self. In general, I feel like a stick-in-the-mud. I never feel up for doing anything and I’m grumpy when I hang out with people, and I always want to puke.Â
But it’s still better than a couple of weeks ago! 🙂
Lots o' Pills
No, nothing pharmacological. I’ve been taking ginger pills since last Thursday, and vitamin b6 pills since about two days ago. Compared to my pre-pregnancy self, I still feel like utter crap, but compared to last week, I am much, much better.
We went to our regularly scheduled doctor visit on Wednesday and listened to the heartbeat for the first time. It’s pretty crazy. Even though I heard it perfectly when I accompanied my friend to her appointment, I failed to hear it right away for us. 🙂 My husband did hear it fine though.
We told two more of our friends on Sunday at a small dinner gathering to celebrate the husband’s birthday. I also told another friend on Monday when I met with her for lunch.Â
Tomorrow is the first of our integrated testing. This one will be some sort of ultrasound, where they measure the width of something behind the neck and make various other measurements to ensure that everything is going along ok. We won’t be told about their conclusions re: neck measurement or anything unless it is so severely out of wack that it’ll be obvious something is wrong. If things are not immediately noticeably wrong, they will wait until the week 16 tests to interpret tomorrow’s results, to ensure a much higher accuracy.
I’m nervous. I just hope the fetus is the expected size and everything.
I have graduated
… from regular vomiting to projectile vomiting. I have ruined my black sweats. 🙁
The last two weeks
… have been full of vomiting and non-stop nausea. Ok, I’m exaggerating because there are gaps of a good hour or two when I feel really good.
It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, because it’s hard to fall asleep. It’s hard to work because I’m extra fatigued and I’m nauseous all day. My head pounds, my stomach hurts, my mouth waters like I’m on the verge of projectile vomiting, because I am.
I’ve tried several methods, from eating a teeny bit of food all day long (literally with no respite) to eating smaller meals but more frequently. Candy and gum trigger a nausea reaction now. Foods that I ordinarily love make me terrified that eating them will end in a binge of barfing.Â
Today, my head spun so hard that I thought there was some non-zero chance that I’d pass out at work.Â
Don’t get me wrong; I’m so happy about being pregnant and having our baby. I just never expected the nausea to be never-ending and so relentlessly painful. My eyes feel bleary all the time, and there is a sharp pain in my head.
In good news, we are in the very beginning of week 11! That means we can tell most people after the next week or so. It’ll be better after we go to the doctor on Tuesday and see if everything is progressing normally. My husband already accidentally let it slip to two close friends who are expecting a baby. Basically, she asked him head-on and he was caught off-guard. Haha. This makes 7 people who know so far: my best friend, my sister, my high school friend, one of my local friends, our housemate, and those two.
More food-obsessed musings
I wrote up a little list on my iPhone of foods I could think about eating. I guess this means that in the 1.5 weeks since the doctor’s visit when I told her that I still wanted to eat everything, I’ve developed some food aversions, because some foods make me feel queasy.
Appetite
I thought about food all day today. This is not that unusual, as I tend to go on these food fantasy benders, but today, it was all about trying to think of various foods that didn’t make me gag. My food observations so far:
- Sour/tart/vinegary foods seem to keep my nausea away. I had a couple of tiny cornichons the other day at brunch with my husband’s cousin and his girlfriend while we were down in LA, and I’m still thinking about it. I also downed a couple of pickles today.Â
- Skim milk really hit the spot today! That was weird, as milk is not my thing. I generally only use milk for cereal, coffee, tea, and ice cream.
- Fatty things make me queasy. This was something that had almost always been true when I was younger, but as I got older, I had gotten past the queasiness to the down-and-dirty deliciousness of most fats. But now, I find that fatty, greasy things (unless in spicy or soupy form) make me really nauseated. I find breaded, fried things to be particularly off-putting. The mere thought makes me want to vomit.
- Keeping food in my mouth, whether it’s actual food-food, snacks, gum, or candy seems to keep the nausea at bay. Barely.
- It’s the worst in the mornings and about 20 minutes after a meal. I feel worse than I usually feel when I’m legitimately sick. It’s also bad when I move too quickly.
In other news, my doctor left me a message saying that the blood tests all came out clean, confirming being clear for various diseases (I’ll need to call back to figure out exactly what this list entailed), and that my rubella shots seem to be up to date (I had no idea you could tell from a blood test), but that I seem to have a bladder infection that needs to be treated right away. Ugh. So they called in a prescription of antibiotics for me, which I’ll be picking up and starting tomorrow.
I read up on it and it’s apparently not a big deal unless it travels to the kidneys, which the antibiotics should prevent. A kidney infection could mean premature delivery, so it’s important to get rid of the infection. And the antibiotics are supposed to be perfectly safe for fetuses, so hopefully everything is ok.
Back to appetizing food talk — a perfect segue from talk of bladder infections, I am sure… 😐 Anyway, tonight was delivery from a place nearby that specializes in Northern Chinese cuisine. We got some awesome handmade dumplings with a vinegary sauce, pork w/ preserved vegetables noodle soup, spicy chicken & dry-fried string beans, and pea sprouts. I think the preserved vegetables were mainly pickled mustard greens, which hit the spot with their tartness, as did the sauce on the dumplings.
I told you about the tart thing. 😐
I even contemplated at some point today, if I could chug a little vinegar. Would that be bad? Probably. But it provides relief. I honestly had not anticipated that I’d be overwhelmed by such crappy feelings during the incubation of our future baby. I had sort of smugly imagined a perfectly happy, healthy pregnancy, untainted by even the tiniest of discomfort. I have no idea why I was so pre-smug about things. What a humbling experience. Heh.
Blood!
Today, I went to a phlebotomist near my work (or, rather, my husband drove me) instead of going back to the lab near my doctor. This person stuck me within 2 minutes and got blood almost right away and sent me on my way. And she was really pleasant the whole time too. Ah, the small pleasures of interacting with nice people…
I sucked on Jolly Ranchers all day, which was strangely helpful. The dear husband unit ran out in the evening to get me some sugar-free candies and gum so I don’t rot my teeth out. It seems like the gum is helping! Good! I could live with that.
Second Doc Visit
This past weekend and some was truly full of barforama. Things moved from indigestion and heartburn to full-on nausea and vomiting. AND I’m still hungry all the time. This is a bad combo.
We saw our official doctor (as opposed to the nice nurse practitioner) today together. She answered a buttload of questions for us, as well as conducted a transvaginal ultrasound, as I believe it is called. We saw a little ultrasound pic of the fluttering heartbeat, which is truly strange. The measurement came out to 9.7mm, putting the age at 6 weeks and 6 days, and the due date at October 7th, 2009, exactly as my charting calculations had shown. Hee! She said it’s one of the rare times that the date based on conception and the date based on the size has been so dead-on.
We have to call to schedule the prenatal tests and I have to go get my blood drawn tomorrow for some of the screening tests. I hope this time they will be able to get some of my blood! I am going to a facility near my work, which had a woman that was able to draw my blood in mere moments, so I have high hopes.
I will be posting the ultrasound pics of the embryo soon. 😀