Suspicious minds

In summary, The Scan today revealed no items to overly twist my panties over. And I’m VERY talented at finding reasons to knot knickers…

Despite this I can’t quite shake that nagging instinct to fix my metaphorical gaze upwards, in search of that other damn shoe. It has to drop SOMETIME…

Today’s scan was relatively routine, complete with the now traditional red-faced radiologist explaining in exhaustive detail how clean and sterile and sheathed in a glove the vaginal probe is (to my exposed perineum) whilst I cheerfully responded that as long as I got warning if needles were attached, I wasn’t known for my fussiness over what ends up Up There. Heck, I can’t even see what’s going on Up There any more, courtesy of The Fetii comprehensively blocking my view. Neither can I see to attend to matters of a more grooming nature in anticipation of aforementioned girly bits exposure. Not that a minor matter like lack of vision prevents me from doing my razor-waving best purely by morse code, of course.

Goodness knows what the poor man was confronted with, really.

Anyway, it appears that my cervix has been smuggling an extra two and a bit centimetres out of digit reach. Either that, or I’ve stuffed up and picked a stumpy-fingered OB.

Presumably this means that I shan’t be shooting up steroids (strictly for medical reasons, of course) at my next OB visit, to the relief of all concerned. Of course, given the multiple risk factors for pre-term delivery  I appear to have collected (let alone the fact that I can barely move without doubling over in Contractile Distress), the bed/couch remains a Good Place to park my ever-expanding butt.

As for the non-cervical items, both Fetii continue to grow like beings with no concept of being in a container of ultimately finite proportions. Foetus B actually yawned with boredom whilst in her rather uncomfortable looking jack-knifed feet-behind-the-ears position. Presumably there’s no cable or ‘net in (my base model) uterus.

If it wasn’t for all the uterine misbehaviour, bringing with it an ever-present reminder that things reserve the right to change without notice, I’d probably be obnoxiously observing just how easy this whole pregnancy thing is, after all.

Conversations with my bladder.

a.k.a 24 weeks and 2 days and running out of fresh material.

The scene: sometime around the hour of dark and ungodly ay-emm. Say, maybe three am.

Bladder: ‘Geohde, please, wake up?’

Geohde: ‘Snuffle, snort, laborious roll over in bed.’

Bladder: ‘No, please, wake up. I need to do pee-pee.’

Geohde: (Grumbling....)’You better mean it..’

Bladder: ‘No, honest, can I make-a-pee-now, pretty please?’

Cue mild swearing as I lever my increasingly unwieldy bulk out of bed and into the bathroom.

Geohde: ‘Is THAT it?’

Bladder: ‘But I really needed to go! I swear!’ (strains….)‘ Mountain streams! Dripping tap!’

Geohde: ‘I hardly find twenty mls of urine justification for dragging me out of bed. Is that the best you can do these days? Don’t wake me again unless it’s IMPORTANT, okay?’

Bladder: (Whimpering…)‘I promise!! Next time I will be so full of wee you’ll be impressed with my powers of sphincter contraction’

Rinse and repeat above events at hourly intervals for several hours….

Bladder: ‘I’m most awfully sorry, Geohde, but guess what?’

Geohde: ‘Piss off (no pun intended)’.

Bladder: ‘No, really. Gotta go, now. Next step is pee-pee dance!’

Uterus: (butting in) ‘For cryingoutloud listen to the damn thing already or I’ll REALLY have to get your attention….cramp…craaammmmp…you ain’t going to get back to sleep with this strategy, fool’.

Geohde: ‘Screw you both.’

Another twenty mls of urine later…

Geohde: (speculative tone) ‘Would it be necessarily wrong to invest in Depends?’

Not drowning, waving.

With a distinctly reserved right to resume drowning at any future point I see fit.

Before I rather self indulgently proceed onto whining about how goddamn BORED I am when I’m not busy being absolutely terrified, let me first state that the babies have not in any way been born in the interval between the last post and this one. Despite several days of increasingly nasty uterine threats of eviction.

I appear to have made the first of what I fervently hope shall be many lines in the gestational sand, i.e. 24 weeks, although truth be told it’s a rather arbitrary and not-all-that-reassuring one. Simply put, today marks the day that if the babies were evicted attempts would be made at resuscitation. That statement does not quite have the ring to it that ‘If these babies were evicted I’d probably take two healthy babies home, alive, with no major long term disability’ has, hence some of the abject terror.

As far as times to be born go, 24 weeks is not really up there in the desirability stakes.

Anyroad, given the propensity of a certain generative organ of mine to contract at the slightest stimulus (not counting all the purely spontaneous runs it also throws in, just for kicks), I have very little of substance to report. Other than that the view from left side-lying on my couch is rather eerily reminiscent of the view I get when I alternate with right side-lying.

Scintillating stuff.

Oh, and my dear spouse, in explaining the situation to a (male) friend of his, summed up the situation thusly: ‘The babies are threatening to leave home a bit early, I offered to do what the Little Dutch Boy did to plug the hole in the dyke, but she turned me down’.

Men, it always comes back to s.e.x somehow.

Still Pregnant….

Yesterday marked the occurrence of a relatively endangered species around these parts. A routine obstetric visit, at a pre-arranged appointment time, made in honest-to-goodness advance (albeit with several of the unscheduled visits between the act of making the appointment and actual attendance, but why knock the gloss off of the achievement?).

After the obligatory blood pressure check and belly poke, including some decidedly uncomfortable but enthusiastic wiggling around of whatever bit of whatever baby(ies) happens to be hiding out in the lower uterine segment (I’m guessing head and a bit of sideways trunk of baby A, although given how much they like to move around in there in some sort of never ending Uterine Turf War, it could just as easily be butt of baby B), conversation drifted to my broken-record complaint du jour. The ongoing disobedient activity of BT*.

The consensus view of the obstetrical opinion in the room (i.e. one OB, it’s easy to have a consensus in those sort of situations) was that it would be nice to get to 28 weeks, and that steroids (for lung maturation) may or may not feature in my next visit depending on some esoteric combination of how the fetii and the length-or-lack-thereof of my cervix appear at the next ultrasound in a week’s time.

Oh, and we all had a merry laugh at my scheduled c-section date.

Presumably just for kicks my OB also cheerfully advised me to keep my legs crossed for the next few weeks at least, and on this note the appointment concluded.

My current short term goal is therefore to stay pregnant until at least the next scan and OB visit are done with (one and two weeks away, respectively), and in that aim I plan to develop thighs you could crack nuts between.

 

*Bastard Thing (that shall not be named)

Is it wrong that….

Despite all the angst and worry around these parts, not at all improved by yet another Nocturnal Contraction Bonanza of proportions that had me mentally envisioning my poor defenceless cervix being pulled into whimpering non-existence, I appear to be as inappropriate as ever.

Is it wrong that after so many cervical exams in such a short period of time that I think that I’m no longer going to be able to restrain the urge to cheerfully comment to my OB that ‘we really should stop meeting like this’ the next time I find myself in The Position?

Speaking of The Position, it really is a sweet touch on the part of my OB to delicately place a sheet over the external bits whilst hunting around Up There, but really. I mean, it’s not like we both don’t know exactly where the vanished hand is, although I must assume (given the aforementioned tactful sheet) that enthusiastic ventriloquist dummy pantomime on my part would not be appreciated.

Or is it more wrong that I’m frighteningly likely to cheerfully divest myself of all and sundry garments from the waist down upon arriving for my next appointment without waiting for anything in the way of verbal instruction to do so?

23 weeks today.

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Catch-22

Otherwise known as the Hydration Paradox.

Given that pharmacology alone is not precisely reining in the errant contractile behaviour of a certain occupied generative organ (to which, as mentioned previously, I shall not refer by name), I’ve been trying out all the non-pharmacological methods out there. Methods that a healthy dose of cynicism honed sharp by years of bitter experience tells me are likely to be at least 90% old wives’s tale and 10% habitual routines to soothe the desperate when there is little real option left.

I can conlusively say that neither a warm shower OR a bath make an ape of a difference. My Not-To-Be-Mentioned is quite happy to contract in an aquatic environment.

Lying in bed all day probably stops a lot of the generalised contractile irritability set off by such provoking stimuli as standing upright, but as evidenced by my 3am wakenings, does little for the more alarming efforts. Besides, when you think about it, I’m always already lying down and so relaxed that I’m asleep when the nocturnal palaver wakes me. Bedrest-schmedrest. 

Not that this stops me spending my days carefully rationing Upright Time into the bare necessities. Just in case, you understand. 

I can’t say I’m planning to try my OB’s suggestion of a glass of wine (complete with stories about how they used to place women in preterm labour on ethanol infusions, thus making maternity wards rather hangover-exposed venues), given some nights I’d be plastered drunk (and probably still cramping away).

The one that really gets my goat, however, is the ‘Drink lots of water and stay hydrated’ line. I mean, really? I can’t think of anything that sets the Foetal Squeezing machinery in motion much faster than more than about a teaspoonful of urine in my bladder.

Now if I could only actually get hold of my OB to mention the passing minor matter of persistant BH’s despite medication, self-upping of dose, weeping sleep deprivation and an impending sense of doom…….My next appointment is in six days and I may just have to hope that things don’t deteriorate to the point of no return in the meantime.

Mixed Reviews

I must confess that I was hoping that the addition of a splash of calcium channel blockade to my diet would represent somewhat of a miracle cure for all things Disobediently Contract-y. Okay, perhaps just one thing Disobediently Contract-y, but you’ll have to read between the rather obvious lines since I fully plan never to give it the satisfaction of referring to it by name again, given the Bastard Thing remains determined to make my life miserable.

I admit the initial results were, dare I say, encouraging. Having been lulled into the happy state of barely even having a damn tightening all day long on the first day, it represented a rather rude shock to still be woken up at 3am (as an aside, why must these things always be at 3 bloody am?) with all the usual ‘ow-ow-ow hard belly, softer…no HARD, and co-incidentally why do I feel this nasty pressure in my pelvis all of a sudden??’ palaver.

I was even less amused, and went as far as to check the expiry date on the medication packet (just in case), when the same thing happened the second night.

I briefly considered garroting the pharmacist on suspicion of medication substitution with placebo when it happened the third night. Three days of no sleep rather increases the violent bloody-mindedness quotient around these parts.

Needless to say, last night, when Bastard Thing began cranking up for it’s nightly performance of next-verse-same-as-the-first (but a little bit louder and a little bit worse) early, I had enough. The fact that technically I wasn’t due for another burst of please-g-d-make-it-stop (in tablet form) for four hours notwithstanding, I liberated another tablet from it’s foil backing and sent it to the Great Big Stomach In The Sky.

and waited for something to STOP happening….

It didn’t.

So, with the only other option being a nocturnal trek to L+D where they would probably only do what I was about to (but with the addition of a latex glove temporarily in my girly bits and a machine that likes to make printout versions of uterine activity), I took another tablet, and lo, at a cumulative dose precariously close to the maximum daily dose allowed Bastard Thing was finally quelled.

I must assume temporariy.

Guess I better tell my OB.

Wish me luck tonight.

Two weeks until Tentative Viability…..

The lesser of two evils.

My, thus far pharmacologically un-interfered with, pregnancy is now decidedly interfered with.

This morning I took my first Nifedipine, washing it down with a dose of hope and (in case threats help) a firm admonishment to the tablet that it  better bloody well work. Then I sat up, and (of course) my uterus gave a clear two-fingered opinion about things in unambiguous terms, becoming both rock hard and painful.

Hopefully my little calcium-channel blocking friends will render this simply a passing shot in (rather spiteful, dearest uterus, I must say) defeat.

I can’t say that I particularly like taking a medicine that is officially (because rule makers are stuffy) Category C in pregnancy and comes with warning about causing birth defects in animals. I don’t. But I also know that the rat-snuffing effects were at non-human doses, well more than even the most anxious contractor would ever take and that there is good data out there showing that what happens in rats does not necessarily happen in humans*. In fact there’s no reason, some authors state, that nifedipine is even given a Category C with the human data that is now available*.

Besides, since nobody has ever applied for this widely-used tocolytic drug to be licenced in knocked-upness it’s no surprise that it isn’t.

Besides the first besides, what other choice do I have?

Real Labour at this gestation would unambiguously equal Dead Babies. I’ll take slightly murky off-licence use over that any day.

As the infernally chirpy ticker on the right reminds me, only a bazillion days more to go. Or, realistically speaking, a mere eleven weeks until my goal gestation of 32. Why 32? Long term outcome for babies born at 32 weeks are as good as term births, and since I don’t think it especially likely at this point that I’ll reach term, 32 is sounding just wonderful.

Wish me luck.

I only hope that tomorrow I’m not posting a disillusioned entry about how the pharmacist must have sold me sugar tablets.

PS. I’m also off work until the flipside of pregnancy with a bonus dose of ‘increased rest’.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

* http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/jun16/brown/brown.html

* Ray D, Dyson D. Calcium channel blockers. Clin Obstet Gynecol 1995; 38: 317-322.
* Magee LA, Schick B, Donnenfeld AE, et al. The safety of calcium channel blockers in human pregnancy: a prospective, multicenter cohort study. Am J Obstet Gynecol 1996; 174: 823-828

In which I humiliate myself, again.

In the time I have been writing here, I am fairly sure that I have not been at all shy in describing the myriad of ways in which I find to embarass and/or humiliate myself in connection with the (un/mal)functioning of my girly bits. I let it all hang out.

This is no exception.

Either my uterus really has it in for me, or I’ve stumbled upon a hiterto-undiscovered miracle cure for intractably irritaing and co-incidentally mildly terrifying Braxton Hicks. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be winning any prizes, however.

Let me explain. In steps:

1. Have a good week of increasing pernickety tightenings and oh-my g-d stop it crampings, to the point that you’ve forgotten what it was like to ever have a soft belly.
2. Add in a pinch sleep deprivation courtesy of uterine reluctance to stick to a day shift contraction-pattern only. When does the damn thing rest?
3. Consider using aforementioned rock-hard uterus to knock the living snot out of the next medical professional who reminds you gently that BH’s alone do not a pre-term labour make, but decide that it would be wiser to actually politely seek their advice, first.
4. Hover in indecision about trekking down to L+D at an inconvenient hour of the evening. Decide that it’s more than you can bear to have another night of sod all sleep without reassurance, at least. Hope that anti-reassurance won’t be dispensed instead.
5. After an hour of show-off cramping watch-settingly 6 minutes regular, round up the spouse, banish any remaining sense of shame, and head on over to L+D.
6. Realise when you get there that, hang on, the uterus has gone suspiciously, sullenly quiet. Bastard thing. Husband notices Look On Face and groans when you confess it’s all stopped.
7. Have the L+D staff point this out to you, complete with 15 minutes of politely ‘timing’ precisely zero uterine activity.
8. Be asked in a slightly bemused tone if this is your first pregnancy (with silent dear).
9. Mutter in self-defence that no, honestly I *swear*, they were REAL and REGULAR. Only an hour ago!
10. Complete humiliation by insisting that somebody please just casually shove their hand up your business end and check that the cervix really is unmoved by the recent flurry of non-believed activity.
11. Wait while doctor begrudgingly extracts a chaperone (I can only suppose because having a husband in the room is not defence enough against hypothetical Sexual Harassment claims when the patient has asked for a rather personal exam- forget that I’ve had everybody and their assistant up there in the past, and really really am Not Shy) from the busy pool of midwives dealing with Real Women In Labour and then confirms that the cervix is rather boringly long and closed.
12. Receive added bonus of jump-to-the-ceiling painful prodding on hitherto undiscovered abdominal trigger points that are triumphantly declared to be Ligament Pains. Implication what they think you had all along. Extra prod given to make point.
13. Go home in humiliated defeat with a parting shot that they’ve dobbed you in to your OB and they  want to see you, so-you-better-make-an-appointment-for-presumably-a-big-lecture-on-not-bothering-busy-people-when-nothing-is-wrong.
14. With bonus packet of I-Don’t-Believe-You paracetamol.

The horror.

Oh, and I started cramping again when I got home. Somehow I didn’t feel like going back.

Dearest Uterus

Dear Uterus,

I thought that it was time we had a talk, just you and I.

You see, you may not be aware of the precise reasons behind the myriad of public poking, prodding, embryo-laden catheter inserting, and pessaries beneath you that has been going on for some time now. I probably should have explained sooner, and for that I apologise.

You may be somewhat confused that the above activities ceased about twenty weeks ago and that you’ve been getting inexorably bigger ever since.

Believe me when I say that now is not the time to worry about your waistline, dear womb of mine.

I can almost sense your extreme puzzlement that you haven’t even had the opportunity to indulge in one of your favourite house-cleaning pass-times bleeding since, well, forever.

Please don’t take it all out in fits of cramping, I beg of you.

You see, oh-generative organ, I’ve gone and sub-let you. There are two honest-to-goodness babies who have about eighteen weeks of their rental period remaining inside, and I think we’d all prefer it if their house didn’t periodically keep getting smaller at the slightest provocation.

To conclude, dear uterus, I make but the following request: Quit it,

Yours,

Geohde.

As expected.

News of my uterus’s positively gleeful exploits in the direction of contract in response to just about any stimulus (walk up some stairs- why not contract a little?, full bladder- may as well contract, roll over in bed-contract!) received the unsurprising anticipated noises of official obstetric disapproval at my appointment today.

Noises of disapproval, which I hasten to add, rapidly devolved into an underwear-minus experience involving a lubricated glove reaching for what I had for breakfast, or failing that, my cervix, after my uppity reproductive system even had a tightening (in full eyeshot of aforementioned disapproving audience) precipitated simply by getting up onto examination couch.

The good news is that my cervix is thus far holding on womanfully- long and closed, but I am now under orders to call the next time my uterus decides to seriously misbehave. Presumably for another latex adventure, followed by some heavily-hinted at use of pharmacological tocolysis.

Somehow, I think this might be considerd the point at which I transition from smugly patting myself liberally on the back for swanning through a twin pregnancy with nicely manicured nails, into positively sh!tting myself that these babies may be born before they’re, well, viable. Or barely so.

Nails shall be chewed Chez MI if/and/or until these babies reach a gestation where the thought of their birth does not cause panicked hyperventilation in their mother. Screw the manicure.

 

(spellckeck still awol- many apologies)

Photo evidence.

I was tempted to dub this post ‘The M.oney Shot(s)’, but I get enough searches for p.orn as it is.

P.orn, since I’m speaking of the topic, that now includes searches that I will (for the sake of all retinas concerned) politely euphamise as desiring information about the pleasurable insertion of digits into urethras. Male ones.

Dear searchers of uncomfortable-sounding jollies, you taught me a thing or two with your request, but I don’t believe I can help you other than to say that, personally, I believe some orifices were largely designed with one-way traffic in mind. To my puzzlement, I do not recall having discussed such subject matter before, so I don’t know quite why you landed here. Just another Google Mystery, I suppose.

Anyway, enough of that.

My next OB visit is on Wednesday, at which point I will gleefuly enquire whether the bazillion-and-one (give or take) Braxton Hicks contractions I’m getting most days now bode negatively with regards to my chances of reaching that shimmering mirage on my personal horizon that is 38 weeks gestation. I mean, I may as well enjoy asking the question, since I’m unlikely to enjoy receiving the answer half as much.

In the meantime, in the absence of real content (and with spellchecker, my saviour, still a.w.o.l), let me leave you with the following:

Ticker-tock

So, I caved.

At nearly twenty weeks, or to put it another way, holy-crap-half-way through this pregnancy, it was about time to include a counting device on the site, if only to rapidly warn new visitors that the p-word gets heavy mention around these parts these days. Also neatly reminding me that I have merely a hundred-and-freaking-how-many? days to go, if I’m lucky, every time I log into my own damn blog.

I can’t say it was easy.

For a start, bloody WordPress gleefully insists on diddling with anything that remotely includes (insert sarcastic gasp) code into the shape of a sad little red ‘x’. No funky rotating babies for me, it would seem. Given that most counters/tickers seem to be all clever and multifunctional (read containing oodles of the deadly c-word) it took me simply ages to find an old fashioned ticker.

Without further ado, please move your eyes to the top right corner of the screen. Thank you. That simple ticker is the hard-won fruit of many hours of swearing. 

Before I go, I shall make a small disclaimer or two.

Firstly, I had no choice whatsoever in the daft use of the word ‘only’ juxtaposed with ‘days to go’. It sure doesn’t feel like ‘only’ around these parts, but rather more like ‘agonisingly’, and/or ‘terror filled’ ‘days to go’. Please mentally substitute at your leisure. Secondly, as the first point would suggest, I wish the ticker-babies didn’t look so damn triumphant about it all. I don’t share their arm waving confidence.

Anyway, twenty weeks today.

(P.S. Dear WordPress has retailated against my rant with a neat redesign of the composition window that seem to have completely hidden the rather useful spellcheck button. Many apologies, in advance.)

Pink, or blue?

As I went to The Scan appointment yesterday, I have to admit to more than a little trepidation. Despite prior reassuring scans, I’m all to aware the reason for a formal anatomy survey is because sometimes problems are found. Yes, most people take it as an opportunity to find out what kind of tackle their baby may-or-may-not be packing, but the purpose is really rather more serious.

I was just hoping like heck that the main thing I took away afterwards were photos of foetal genitalia.

Of course they were running late, neatly foiling my plan to turn up at the very last second and avoid spending any time in the dreaded Waiting Room. Overheated, stuffy, and chock full of pregnant abdomens all reading the old copies of ‘Your Pregnancy’ that inevitably kick around such a venue.

After a dig through the piles of pregnancy-related literature and a verbal bemoan that there was nothing that wasn’t about bloody pregnancy (earning me several startled looks), I sat down to wait.

My husband and I read the paper instead, and I couldn’t help thinking that the last thoughts I wanted to have in my head before potential bad news were not about the latest sportsperson/politician/public-figure-of-your-choice having been caught either drunk in public/pissing in public (on a pub window)/inappropriately texting a woman not-his-wife/shagging a woman not-his wife, but there you have it. They only had the tabloids left.

As for The Belated Scan, after a mere 45 minute wait I found out several things, namely:

1. Baby A is now completely transverse, which sounds like not only will it become more than a little uncomfortable in the third trimester, but also means that Baby B is sitting right on it’s face (please, Google, let that one slide through to the keeper).
2. Baby B is sitting (as outlined above) straight up-and-down. Clearly neither child is planning to have any truck with this new-fangled notion of a cephalic presentation.
3. Both have delightfully normal anatomy.

Needless to say, I was so damn giddy with relief that when it rained on the way home (after celebratory purchase of fish’n'chips), that I laughed. The only raincoat we had between us wrapped firmly around the precious steaming junk-food, we waddled onwards. The harder it rained, the more I laughed, and I’m really not entirely sure if what was streaming off of my soaked face by the end of the trip was tears, or rain.

Kick.

I don’t think there’s much doubt that at least one of those babies hiding out in my uterus plans to not-so-quietly mind his-or-her own business for the remainder of this pregnancy.

(I’ll hopefully know for sure which gender on Wednesday, the day of The Big Scan- you know, the one where everyone has a gander at fetal genitalia under the guise of an anatomy check. Unless the damn kid chooses that particular point in time to get all shy, of course).

To put it another way, I now feel both babies moving quite regularly. Or at least I feel a lot of wiggles and pokes all over the damn place, and if it isn’t the babies doing it then I must assume a good exorcism, or failing that a thorough deworming, is in order.

In fact Left Baby, has developed a new trick. In an effort to show his/her mother just how piercingly irritating to developing fetal ears and auditory cortex my saviour-of-rampant-DBT’s (a doppler) is, Left Baby has been in training. Rocky-ing it right up to the cheesy workout track of your choice. Working hard on, presumably, both a decent left hook and a mean roundhouse kick.

Yes, one of my 19 week fetii kicked the doppler probe off my guts. I even put my husband’s hand on the spot, and Left Baby proceeded to go for an encore performance and do his/her best to kick the living snot out of that, too.

Normally it’s meant to be a kind of Hallmark misty moment when your dear partner first feels your baby kick, but mine?

Not so much.

He simply looked at his hand, then my face and remarked that I could kiss my stomach, intestines, gall bladder and spleen goodbye come the third trimester. Actually, he said my guts were fucked, but that seems kind of crude to include in a post about feeling baby kicks.

Not your average dinner party conversation.

Recently I learned just how awkward friends with big gossipy mouths for good news, but who turn surprisingly silent about spreading decidedly bad news can make one’s social occasion rather, well, uncomfortable.

Let me set the scene. Birthday party of good friend. Lots of guests, many of whom I at least know on a first name basis and have met a few scattered times over the years. None (excepting the birthday-ee, or so I thought) aware of Pregnancy Number 1 and PBWCLEW. Insert obligatory general -and-or-vague chit-chat about nothing of import with people I remember very little about, but who apparently have heard things about ME, and let simmer……

Me (who unashamedly sucks ass when it comes to making small talk):‘So, how are you doing, long time no see, how’s (oh-fuckity-fuck-what’s-his-name-again) your other half doing? How is your (crap, what DOES she do for a living again) job (shite, hope she’s employed) going?….etc etc.’

Other woman: ‘Good, good. And you? How is Mr Geohde doing? (Shit, how did SHE remember?) Congrats on your good news by the way, how far along are you? I remember hearing when you were pregnant ages ago!’

Me: (Fuck. Glossing right over THAT) ‘I’m 18 weeks now.’

Other woman: (Clearly not picking up my subtle cue) ‘And is that your little girl over there?’.

Me: (Nervous laugh, going for bold-faced denial) ‘Nope, not mine! These will be my first’.

Indicating that I was going to grab something to eat, I made the obligatory ‘Nice to see you again’ and left her to presumably scurry off to the host to get the year-old gossip behind my back. 

I’m not really sure how else I could have handled that, even in retrospect. Not without about fifty ears all pricking up to listen in.

Not what you think.

Whilst I have endured several public semi-stranger uninvited belly rubs with more equanimity that I thought I would, given that not only did I not spill any blood, and I do believe that I actually smiled, I can’t say I enjoyed my first belly poke.

Yes, a poke, right in my protuberant midsection. Not even a particularly gentle one, either.

As for the individual with the temerity to do such a thing, no it wasn’t family, or a friend, or even an acquaintance.

It was the adult (and therefore presumably capable of actually behaving like an adult and resisting the impulse to just reach out and touch whatever grabs his temporary attention) son of a rather elderly patient. I was trying to discuss details around his mother’s discharge home the next day, but clearly he found his proximity to a gestating abdomen too distracting to concentrate on the matter to hand and poked me in the guts.

With an accompanying  ’So what have you been doing, then?’.

My reply?

‘What do you think I’ve been doing?’

Two can play at the game of the emphasised ‘you’, buster. Although, admittedly the answer to his question would have been better phrased as ‘Almost certainly NOT what you think I’ve been doing’.

A question for you.

How do you tell if it’s midday?

Stand the pregnant woman out in the sun and look to see if the shadow cast is over her feet…..

I have survived yet another obstetric appointment unscathed. Still pregnant. I’m starting to get used to the whole boring, routine pregnancy thing. On the whole I’d like to keep things this way for as long as possible, if the contents of my uterus agree.

The only non-routine aspect is the fact that I currently measure 25 weeks. At seventeen. My obstetrician, who clearly can count in his head that I’ll be measuring term size at, well, not term has begun to make gentle mutterings along the lines of ‘If you make it to 38 weeks’.

There’s a confidence booster.

I figure that my once-shy hider of lint belly button, a determined ‘innie’ for all of my thirty-odd years on the planet is going to become considerably more extroverted in weeks to come. Heck, I can see clear into it’s stretched previously unexplored depths already.

Suffice it to say that it’s a lot cleaner now.

Agony Aunt, edition 8

Yes, dear Google, I know it’s been some time.

Please forgive my delay in answering the queries of the Eternally Confused who you, for reasons best known only to your mysterious self, direct here.

But in a small aside, must you send so very many arrangements and permutations on ‘Pregnant’  + ‘Orifice-of-your-choice’ + ‘expletive (usually the f-bomb)’ + ‘verb’? Thank you. I’m not THAT kinda girl, Google.

Ha-hem. Before I really  get going I must make an unrelated observation. Why is is that my darling spouse always thinks that when I get up to pee in the night, that’s his cue to sprint past my waddling self, shut the bathroom door and take a ten minute slash? I mean, I’m very grateful that he doesn’t miss the bowl and I’m spared standing in puddles of wee, but how is his need more urgent than mine? I’ve got two goddamn babies sitting on top of my bladder, ferchrissakes. At least I hope I still have, since after several days of frenetic movement I now feel squat for two days running. Children, if you can hear me, it’s Not Funny, alright?

Anyway, without further ado, may I present to you a hand picked selection of the items that Google feels I am best qualified to answer on this blog?

1. Rubber Vagin@
2. Ginormous a$$.
3. How far to shove progesterone pessaries in?
4. Infertile + whiny.
5. CD 15 and still no ovulation.
6. Anencephaly miracle healings.

Addressing item # 1 (Rubber Vagin@)

Well, dear searcher. If it is a query you have, I’m not quite sure what precisely it is, since you’ve elected to phrase your search term a little poorly.

Most women, if I am a representative example, do not have rubbery vayjayjay’s no matter how flexible the rest of their body happens to be. There is a limit to how much can fit, ya know?

In summary, be careful what you shove up the delicate bits of your ladyfriends and if it was some kind of blow-up self-entertainment device you were actually looking for, I suggest you work on your keywords a little harder next time.

Item # 2 (Ginormous a$$)

Thanks a bunch, Google.

I’m aware that I’m getting there, one gestational week’s induced ravenous hunger at a time, but must you constantly remind me?

Besides it’s kind of like ballast, balances the belly right out and allows me to walk with an even keel, okay?

Item # 3, my favourite thus far (How far to shove progesterone pessaries in?)

Um, well, in the absence of a more delicate way to put it, until you run out of ‘in’ to ’shove’ will generally suffice.

Don’t worry, unless you have a vagin@ like item #1 above you will manage to achieve your goal without losing half an arm up there.

Item # 4 (Infertile + whiny)

Fair cop, Google. You got me. I won’t attempt to argue. How could I? I’ve built an entire blog around the premise, after all.

Item # 5 (CD 15 and still no ovulation).

Yeah, well. Excuse me while I snarl.

Patience is a bloody virtue, alright?

What’s with the presumptive, entitled, downright whiny (oops!) use of ’still’??

Some of us would be Very Happy with an ovulation like that, I’ll have you know.

Sorry. Can I blame hormones?

Item # 6 (Anencephaly miracle healings).

Putting all humour aside, dear sad searcher.

I am so very beyond sorry for what you are going through, and what still must lie ahead for you. But I must be honest with you. There are no, and will never be any, miracle healings for anencephaly.

I’ve been there.

It really makes me ache to type this, but your baby will die the only variable is when. I am so, so sorry.

Movement, I think.

I think I’m feeling movement.

Either that or some sick bastard has given one, or possibly both, babies a feather duster and a bowl of popcorn (complete with teeny-tiny stove to aid in exploding) when I wasn’t looking.

Just so’s they can alternately tickle and poke my guts when I’m doing my best to Be Serious At Work.

It’s hard to Be Serious when you’re trying not to laugh. Let’s just say that discussing Do Not Resuscitiate orders with a patient’s anxious relative with a smirk is Not A Good Look.

So, how’ve YOU been?

It’s me, the insensitively-absent, offensively-pregnant, obnoxiously-self centred, and just plain damn tired grumpy old infertile woman.

Remember me?

The first sentence really sums up how I’ve been, although (true to fashion) I have a diagrammatic representation of precisely how I felt after a shockingly busy working week, with bonus hectic cover shift tacked on the end, after doing my grocery shopping and tempting fate by buying actual honest-to-goodness baby stuff.

Maybe it’s the universe punishing me for entering a hallowed realm of the More Fertile. Goodness knows I had fuck all idea what to do with myself once in there, anyway.

I was promptly rewarded for my intrusion into All Things Baby by an hour long series of cramping and belly hardening scary enough to have me almost in tears and firmly stuck by my ever-expanding arse on a bench in the middle of the damn shop for some time. Until I made my escape by limping painfully and still cramping away merrily at geriatric speed to my car.

Matters were improved by a litre for fluid for the thirst I didn’t even stop to realise that I had and a good old-fashioned lie down (once I got home of course).

The green? That’s how my feet smelt after all the excitement.

The grey? The effect of the mere thought that my uterus might decide to summarily evict its contents before they’re ready for that kind of palaver if I don’t slow down. It’s a good thing that my scan yesterday showed two healthy babies, growth ahead of dates and a 5 cm cervix, or I’d be biting my nails more about the whole experience instead of yawning with ever-present fatigue.

My next shopping expedition, I think, I shall defer for the late third trimester.

Smarty pants.

Some time ago now, I had a bit of a giggle at the persistent need my health system felt to place a sign in the public bathroom facilities. You know, to protect and guard against the horrors of ill-aimed piss, feet marks on seats and (worst of all) unwashed hands. Because we all know that a well placed written instruction to ‘please wash your hands’ is always obeyed and a highly effective strategy in The War Against Germs.

I recall observing that adding illustrations would improve the efficacy of the message, given the impressively multilingual nature of our clientele, and even went as far as helpfully proposing my own version:

Clearly the graphic artists employed by the public hospital system heeded my call to illustration, even if they did willfully ignore my suggestion.

Today I noticed this had made it’s way to the enshrined Holy Position on the wall above the washbasin:

I think we all get it now.

Green eyes.

So, I think I have a teeny, tiny problem with jealousy.

Of what (now), you might reasonably ask…

Bumps.

Geebers knows why, but I’m jealous of all the pregnant bumps I see at work.

For the record, clearly a lot of the women I work with have either

• A: engaged in multiple IVF cycles back to back lately (actually, probably just me), or
• B: had actual s-e-x and got pregnant the storybook way that I refuse to believe actually works (surely they’re hiding something), or
• C: sat on the wrong chair, drank from the wrong cup or had a casual shag with the wrong workmate at the office christmas party (or whatever it is that causes swathes of women in the one office to all get knocked up at once).

I have a lot of bumps to glower at.

Yes, I know that I’m pregnant and newsflash to my bitter neurones that means that I actually have one too, but I’m still jealous.

Big bump, small round bump, wobbly-bloaty-is-she-pregnant-bump, huge-how-does-she-even-walk-bump, I’m jealous of ‘em all.

I’m sure that most of ‘em are nicer than mine.

For the record, I don’t know why I’m in such a flaming rush to acquire a more impressive foot-view-obscuring device since I already look like THIS as of fourteen weeks, but there you have it.

Pregnant and irrational. Rather like my non-pregnant and irrational state.

P.S. A small public service announcements to all endone seeking junkies who haunt my cover shifts with complaints of severe pain from their self-inflicted facial scratches. Sod off. Actually, f-ck off. I’m not stupid, so stop taking me away from actual sick people with your lame whinging for addictive painkillers you clearly don’t need. Thank you.

I expect limited sympathy.

I deserve very limited sympathy.

I’ve simply become morbidly convinced that something dreadful has to go wrong with this pregnancy, soon.

Every single time someone tells me everything looks good, I just can’t get my head around it. I’m not used to good news on fertility related matters, and I’m convinced on some level that they’re simply messing with me.

Let alone the fact that I am probably giving some of the most underwhelmed responses in history to the inevitable enthused ‘twins, wow’ that happens every darn time somebody new finds out. Cue external plastering of shit-eating grin whilst I cringe inside every single time I have to think about actually having real, live babies. I just can’t picture it.

Blergh.

My mother, her throat is sore.

I’ve discovered that difficult families suck so much more when you’re The Doctor, and therefore in their tiny minds the Ultimate Root Cause of all their relatives health problems.

It’s apparently got absolutely nothing to do with a lifestyle of smoking, sitting on the cushioned ass and not treating one’s atrial fibrillation plus eating crap for sixty years, followed by a fairly predictable stroke in due course.  All somehow my fault. Joy.

My current nemesis are the clustered spawn of a familial matriarch in her mid sixties, who appears to be more than capable of opening her own goddamn mouth to discuss her health (and in fact complains of very little) yet is never given the opportunity. Her mouthpiece feels the urge to tell us his mother’s wishes as he sees them, which is probably not the same thing as how she sees them and is bolstered by some dodgy uninformed research using the good Dr Google.

Sigh.

We’ve had it all. She’s cold, so he’ll need to take her home and she will die and it will be our fault. She’s hungry, because she can’t eat (courtesy of a brainstem stroke and flippin’ lucky to be alive at all, but their devastating sense of perspective prefers to focus on the fact that the don’t like the NG tube). She’s got a sore leg, and it could be a DVT so why are we doing nothing because it could go to her brain (she’s fully anti-coagulated which would be the treatment for a DVT if she had one, which she doesn’t, let alone the fact that they go to lungs and not brain. But whatever).

The latest?

My mother, her throat is sore. She can’t swallow.

I think she has a cold.

They want a gastroscopy (Heck knows why, it’s the wrong test, again).

Somebody shoot me, please.

PS. Today I actually made it to a second OB appointment still actually pregnant. Golf claps. The scary news of what is to come is that I’m measuring at nearly twenty weeks at a precocious thirteen weeks. I think that explains the fatigue, frequent peeing, manic hunger and general occasional uterine cramp of protest currently occupying my limited free time.

Contemplation

Alternatively entitled how to render oneself completely unemployable as a female doctor in one’s current health system in one easy step:

1. Get pregnant.

The multistep version:

1. Lose a baby to a lethal birth defect.
2. Pursue fertility treatments cycling back-to-back without a break for a year.
3. Get pregnant, just when you were about to pack it in for a while.
4. Spend twelve scary weeks worrying about miscarriage and increasingly about foetal malformation.
5. Have a blessedly normal 12 week scan, knowing that spina bifida is still a possibility but cannot be ruled out until much later in the pregnancy.
6. Do the right thing and tell your employer that you are 12 weeks pregnant with a potentially high-risk multiple pregnancy after IVF and with a history of lethal anomaly.
7. Receive the most thin lipped ‘congratulations’ in history.
8. ….followed by ten minutes of abuse about how you should have told them as soon as you got two lines on the wee stick, or even better that you were thinking of weeing on a stick, or even better again, that you had purchased said stick, or best of all don’t take the job you are now in if you were planning to breed at all, despite said poor reproductive history.
9. Point out that you are giving them six weeks notice about your departure, which is actually several weeks more than legally required.
10. Be informed that your job will  not be held and that you will have to reapply fresh when ready to return and ‘compete’ to get it back with no regard for terms already completed. You then smell the obvious rat that they will find some excuse not to re-employ you (despite the plain fact that you were an overqualified candidate in the first place) when the time comes because you had the temerity to put something other than an IUD in your uterus. Even though it’s illegal to discriminate against a woman on grounds of pregnancy.
11. Go directly to representation at your union.
12. ……wait for the explosions to begin.

I’m currently at step 12, it’s been a rough week.

My favourite six letters.

N

O

R

M

A

L

Both babies look normal.

We cannot be sure about spina bifida until 20 weeks, but there is no anencephaly this time.

Baby A confirmed his boyness (as if confirmation was required after his recent ultrasound ass flashing exploits), baby B came over all shy and wouldn’t give up the goods.

Honestly, when I think about it, obstetric ultrasounds are probably about the only time that it is socially sanctioned for a complete (albeit kindly) stranger to stare intently at your childs genitals. Let alone pass remark on what they see without getting arrested.

Did I mention that my teeny-tiny son and his indeterminate-but-shy sibling are normal?

They also have the meerest of whisper thin Nuchal Translucencies each, so no amnio for me. I can’t say that I’m sorry about missing the chance to have a great big needle shoved through my abdominal wall.

Needles are only fun if you’re the one doing the stabbing, in my experience.

The most amusing moment of the day was the radiologist trying to politely explain the possibility that the scan may involve a transvaginal approach. I mean, is he kidding? Half of the obstetric and gynaecological profession in my town have been there with far worse things than a vag-cam. 

Suffice it to say I am not shy.

Twelve weeks.

…and rapidly approaching Tuesday, and The Scan.

The Scan that fills me with terror.

The Scan that is giving me nightmares.

The Scan that I can only hope like hell won’t commit another pregnancy to end in disaster.

I can’t do this again, I just can’t.

I’m a regular ray of flipping sunshine today.

For the curious, I include a picture of what 12 week 0 days looks like with what I hope to hell is normally shaped twins:

Are you pregnant?

….were the words out of a workmate who sidled into my office five measly minutes before I was due to go home today. I should have left early.

Cue thoughtful pause on my part. Do I say ‘yes’, or lie and say ‘no’? Much depends on how I handle this loaded query. After all, if all goes well and I say ‘no’, I’m branded a rather obvious bad liar but if I say ‘yes’……Oh fuck what if something happens to the babies and everybody knows? At WORK?

She continued ‘Because we’ve all been wondering for a couple of weeks and we think you are so I said I’d ask you.’

More likely that they’re ALL terminally nosy and she drew the short straw. I guess she figured that if she was wrong and had just mortally offended me about my current abdominal roundness, I’d have the whole weekend to get over it.

Unable to delay the inevitable any further I respond in the affirmative. What else can I say, really? If my occupied uterus is obvious enough that people are summoning the courage to ask point blank, I’m stuffed anyway.

She asks how far along I am. I reply in the order of about twelve weeks.

Cue long thoughtful look up and down my midsection (yes, I know I’m huge, please don’t remind me)….

The next disturbingly razor sharp observation follows ‘Is it two babies?’

Fuck. I think my cover is well and truly blown. All I want to know is how the hell did J.Lo did it for so long. The next scan is next Tuesday and I can add fear of public pregnancy loss to my already full schedule of miscarriage and lethal birth defects.