The final countdown.

Firstly, apologies, I know that song sucked even back when it was current.

 

Have a random photo of anonymous bits of Naan as consolation.

 

..and if that hasn’t stopped the ringing in your ears, here’s some carefully bloody useless for recognition bits of Saag, instead.

I figured it’s not twins this time, so why not be daft and double up the pictures of my guts about two weeks ago (because I am ever speedy on the turn-around)?

The stomach-boob ratio is clearly not in my cleavage’s favour and am in D cups right now. Am not used to having actual breasts, either, so finding the whole proper bra thing a bit of a pain, really. 

If it helps, my fundal height is currently a mere 41 cm, so I look about half as ridiculous as I did with the twins. Astonishingly, this doesn’t mean I feel exactly half as shit. I’ll go with seventy five percent as shit. The three weeks thus far of extra gestation earns bonus points.

Also, I was up from two till six am inclusively deciding whether I should risk shame turning up to work because of Contractions, or wait the blasted things out on the grounds that they probably weren’t the real deal and if the price of some pethidine was having an immediate colleague crack out a speculum plus about a million points of instant humiliation, then I’d rather not pay. 

The bastard things did stop but am worried about tonight. Why is it always the middle of the fecking night, just when you haven’t slept properly in months?

Past form suggests it will be in about four night’s time, at 3am, because turning up in labour looking like shit the day before the party that is the most annoying time to trump your own date with a scalpel.

Especially when option A: turning up dressed in something other than a nightgown with actual makeup on sounds ever so much more civilised.

..and here’s S+N showing how close they are in height. Just because.

Summary? 

Babyectomy next Wednesday if I make it and rampant eating of everything in sight followed by vomiting half of same to cease closely thereafter. Hopefully followed by nearly twenty kilograms of extra arse. 

The abdomen’s a lost cause. 

G 

PS. If manage not to give birth in the next few days promise to actually do a pwp photo post. If short on content on grounds of feeling utter rubbish, divert to photojournalism.

Star

Bhaji Nightshift at 32 weeks, just because I am sick of people asking if I should be out in public unaccompanied, let alone working, and so I got one of my colleagues to do the quick ultrasound once over. THEY obliged by spontaneously going all 3D:

 

Also, it was a nice break from seeing more vag.ina than a por.n star on accounts of the pregnant world losing hold of what remains of collective tiny minds today and all deciding to front up on what I have decided to declare as international ’I have this discharge’ day.

On the plus side and despite my girth, BN is not a giant foetus after all, just very fat (abdomen apparently 97th centile) and is extremely well cushioned in slosh. If my waters do break again this time, sail your arks, Internet.

On the minus side, she’s already larger than Naan at birth and rapidly closing in on Saag (again allegedly, ultrasounds are notoriously dodgy guesstimates and BN is either as big as Naan or closing on 3kg- take your pick with the margin of magical equational  guesstimation).

But mostly, it was a nice break from all that cervical action and I bet that despite predictions BN turns out to be shaped exactly like other babies, after all. I shall probably be ignoring the kind warning to watch my diet in general and sugar in particular on grounds of bugger that for a lark.

Compliance never was my strong point and it’s hard to get a shoulder dystocia at c-section.

G

Disembodied.

Hello lovely Internet,

More disembodied terrible camera phone torso shots.

 

They stop at week seventeen. They’re probably a bit out of order as far as the blue shirt one goes.

You’re welcome,

G

PS. Yes, that is the staff bog in one of the pictures. Actually the light in there makes the whole thing rather less murky than the usual grainy five megapixels. Also, will take real pics with real camera when I figure out how the hell to line up an SLR when one is not looking through the eyepiece on accounts of trying to score a contortionist gig shooting oneself. Suggestions accepted.

Things they don’t tell you.

In no particular order, because I am bloody knackered what with my current day shift incarnation as the Post Baby Contraceptive Fairy (and yes I go bleeping mental all day asking women if they’ve ever heard of the mini pill because that, folks, is my job and no I do not work in a catholic institution):

Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy.

1. You don’t glow, you get zits. Big, lumpy teenage ones.

2. Your hair gains all the frizz of the holder of a fork in a power socket.

3. You don’t get a cute bump, you have a prow to distract onlookers from your giant wobbly dimpled arse. Keeps things balanced, you see.

4. When people rub your tummy mostly what goes through your mind isn’t ‘fuck off, overfamiliar whoever you are’, it’s ‘please don’t wobble, guts, not NOW’.

5. Your tits will look like THIS

Except considerably bigger.

Goodnight,

G

Ps. Amended to add:

6. Your nose will be so blocked with the mucoid joys of pregnancy you will have to blow it at least once a night and STILL, no matter how hard you try, you will end up sleeping with your gob open and waking with the sensation that some incontinent creature of the night had widdled in there.

Bhaji Nightshift.

Dear Internet,

I did not mean to whizz off into the aether like I just did but, look!, I blinked and seven straight nauseatingly exhausting ‘days’ of twelve hour night shifts just bit me in the arse. Blinking can be hazardous to your health in the medical game.

Anyway.

I could have (and nearly DID do so) alternately entitled this post ‘Fanny Bucket’, one eye-opener of an expression a midwife added to my vocabulary in the last run of seven nights, but since I mostly work in obstetrics these days, I don’t think you want to know about the combination of obesity, lax tissue quality, multiple vaginal deliveries and losing sight of your wristwatch.

Plus, Fanny Bucket was truly mental. I’ve never in my LIFE seen a woman who has already pushed out four babies the traditional way and therefore presumably should have some idea on how the labour thing goes melodramatically crawl up the corridor on hands and knees screaming her waters had burst and the baby was COMING like that before. Especially the bit where she pushed for twenty minutes on a completely closed cervix, in vain, obviously.

See above wristwatch reference as to why I can inform you on matters cervical.

Also, she had the cheek to ask for me to break her waters when trying to poop the baby out failed and I had to sadly point out that THAT would involve the bloody thing actually being the slightest bit open. Which it wasn’t.

I don’t think she quite believed me and perhaps next time I should take a picture.

Regardless, since at any point in my miserable run of nightshift I happen to work no further from twenty metres from a happy, shiny, flashy push-button cup-of-tea-making MFM ultrasound machine that practically screamed ‘USE MEEEEEEEE!’, I may have possibly peeked once or twice when feeling vile enough to warrant a foetus check. Honestly, The Vile this time is quite unexpected and very unfair and if there isn’t a baby to back it up then something or other else is seriously screwed and I want it sent for repairs.

What? Oh, I scanned transabdominally, relax.

Also, I did it standing up so if I heard the door open I could switch to ‘innocently playing with the machine’ mode. As you do at three am.

Given the circumstances about all I can vouch for is that as of yesterday at least Bhaji Nightshift seemed to have a twinkling bit in the middle and I think that’s about how it’s meant to go at this point.

I do wish my crappy home doppler could pick up on the twinkle, though. That’s getting slightly demoralising. Especially since half those stuipd doppler websites tell me that eight weeks is just dandy for their superior product. Pah.

Official scan Friday and then I worry about how the hell I am meant to book in for antenatal care with my colleagues without them finding out I am pregnant before next year’s job interviews are over. In July. Yeah. Um.

G

Heartbeat.

EDD tenth of December.

I don’t think I can rustle up a single sensible word to explain how things feel right now, so I’ll leave it at that for a bit. If that’s okay.

Twenty nine hundred.

Repeat beta 2900.

Doubling time still about 35 hours, something that neither of my viable prior IVF first trimester runs ever achieved. Still pretty low for this point but, um, doubling enthusiastically. Points for that. Plus, thanks to the Indian Takeaway abdominal leftover+ hernia phenomenon, I’m resorting to elastic bands to close my pants.

I guess I better sort out some form of scan, really, but right now I am post yet another 12 hour nightshift and it all feels a bit too much like homework. Besides, I need to have a shower. Muchly. I don’t care HOW thoroughly I have washed my hands after manually retrieving a placenta from  halfway to tonsils (incidentally did you know that with the aid of a general anaesthetic I can bury my arm up to my elbow in a certain passage in order to fiddle around inside aforementioned uterus retrieving lost products of conception? Now we all know. Choose an OB with small hands unless you plan to expel your placenta in a timely fashion, world, is all I can say. Also, unpleasantly warm and wet, it was).

Good night morning. I think I’ve said enough.

G

Beta.

Kidding, kids.

It’s tomorrow.

In the meantime:

Lines I’m starting to feel hopeful about. Oh, and bloody terrified.

Of course.

G

Protected: On this day.

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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.

Wobbler.

I made it out the other side of a real OB appointment, unscathed. Given my terrible luck with all things obstetric, I have to say it was somewhat surprising.

As of Tuesday this week, my uterus is still the proud owner of not one, but two live fetii. I haven’t misplaced any in the last week or so, it would seem. All beautifully confirmed by ultrasound (and I didn’t even have to ask), and complete with foetus A’s precocious exhibitionist ‘Look at me!! Me! I can move! I have limb stumps that I can wave’ dance.

That sucker moved. Wobbled, anyway.

B, on the other hand,  slept through the whole thing although he/she did so being sure to only display the most photogenic profile possible.

Miracle of miracles, both are now actually measuring bang on dates. Clever children, I’d say they must take after their mother, but I fear the reality is that their father is more responsible.

Perhaps in retrospect it was wrong to discuss gestational diabetes screening and my personal level of risk with both a multiple pregnancy and PCOS whilst consuming an intensely sugary chocolate bar, but heck, I’m so goddamn hungry all the time these days that it is really quite fortunate that I didn’t eat my referral form for the fibre.

I think a small celebration is in order Sunday when they officially become fetuses for pedantic real at ten weeks. Foetus Firstest Day has a real ring, don’t you think?

Now all I have to do is survive a whole fortnight of fear of dead baby until the next scan. At some point my worries will seamlessly move on to anomaly, but at present I’m still stuck firmly in the ‘miscarriage’ algorithm. Two whole weeks. How on earth do fertile women do it?

Oh, the hugeness.

Whilst the dead baby thoughts continue to plague my every waking (and many of my sleeping) moments, I cannot ignore the fact that Things Are Happening in my pelvis. More specifically my bowels have been forcefully evicted by an uppity uterus, and are taking the only available real estate left.

I’m already at that sexy, sexy point where I look not sweetly and unambiguously pregnant, but wobbly and in dire need of a good gym membership. Or an industrial strength pair of Bridget Jones style suck-it-all-in knickers. Either would do, really.

As far as I can recall, the Devastating Fatness has begun about two weeks earlier than it did in my last pregnancy.

Whilst I fervently hope that both babies make it out of the first trimester unscathed, I am finding it increasingly difficult to disguise my condition until the socially approved twelve week mark. I, clearly, don’t want to spill my secret until significantly more sure that I shall, probably, be having some babies, but short of making cracks about a hotdog eating contest gone horribly wrong, I have no idea what to say when somebody inevitably actually asks.

Non-observant as most people may be, I don’t think I’ve got much time left. At a staggering gestation of only nine weeks my trouser buttons can take the strain no longer. I’ve had to break out the Bella Band.

Even if it is, admittedly, the tiniest wee version of clever elasticated button technology that ever did prevent a woman from splitting the butt-crack of her trousers upon assuming the seated position, it’s a sign of (please g-d I hope this time) things to come.

I shall depart with a visual illustration of my problem…..

Things I learned this week.

An itemised list:

1. A freaked out pregnant lady can, with enough motivation, twist a kindly OB registrar’s elbow far enough into new and painful contortions to receive a mercy scan at work.
2. It isn’t humiliating enough being witnessed scurrying down to my own ER for aforementioned scan to stop me doing it. I clearly know no shame.
3. The babies still both have heartbeats as of Wednesday, even if the registrar didn’t extend her mercy far enough to measure their lengths.
4. It is truly amazing how rapidly I can bolt down sustenance between seeing patients on one of the endless ward rounds I must endure every day. Additionally, muesli bars fit very well into corners of my work-folder. I can secrete five.
5. It isn’t good for my bladder to wait twelve hour between pee breaks. It hurts.
6. I think I can can just about feel a fundus when my screamingly full bladder pushes it up out of my crowded pelvis in those golden need-to-pee moments.
7. I will get about a dozen calls a day about a patient with Raynauds syndrome with ‘cyanosis’. Despite him being perfectly pink everywhere apart from where Raynauds syndrome can make you blue (the finger tips) and having an oxygen saturation of 98% on room air. Explaining the reason and writing it in the file and obs chart will not stop this from happening in the least.
8. I have an honest-to-goodness actual OB appointment next Tuesday. I’m scared. Surely something is due to go wrong?
9. I shall have to explain innumerable times that giving a febrile patient paracetamol so they feel less like utter shit will not compromise the results of the hypothetical blood cultures the Div 2 nurse seems to think I should take for a temperature of 37.8 degrees in a patient with an established cause for his fevers. 
10. My registrar will wait three days for an xray report in preference to actually interpreting it. My version (accurate) will not satisfy unless backed up by the consultant on the ward round (and for the record I was right about all the films).
11. I can do an entire ward round and make reasonably sensible management decisions all by my widdle self, if needs be.
12. I have to work covering the entire hospital this weekend. May the good l-rd have mercy on my harried soul. The patients seem pretty unbreakable, so I’m not worried about them.

That’s all folks.

Twins

Stealing a sniff of free neighbourhood broadband….

The scan this morning went some way to explaining why puking is beginning to seem an attractive proposition. There appear to be two hiding out in utero, and the little buggers are ganging up on my vomiting centre on a regular basis.

One appears to be measuring bang on dates at 6w3d, and the showoff sibling is measuring ahead at 6w5d. Needless to say, both have heartbeats.

I won’t bore you all with repetition of just how terrifying the p-word is.

There’s a bear in there…

And a poo in my loo.

You heard right. Bears not only shit in the urban woods, they also can’t flush.

I’ve moved house. It’s been chock full of pleasant discoveries, like finding out that the little prick who lived here prior to me has pissed off home (overseas) without bothering with the minor technicalities of cleaning up after himself, paying long overdue bills, or disconnecting said overdue (and blocked) services. I can’t connect anything in my name because, get this, I’m not the named account holder.

I just live here, apparently.

Oh, and as alluded to above the dirty sod didn’t bother to flush either. To my eternal horror I discovered a rather elderly turd bobbing around in the toilet, presumably minding it’s own business until the Holy Flush came by. Welcome home, my ass.

I hate moving.

Anyway, I am on-line courtesy of some community spirited neighbour who hasn’t secured their wireless. I plan to flit on to blog occasionally and that’s about it. If they notice, I’m stuffed, and the above complaint should make it quite clear that connecting anything at this residence may require divine intervention.

With that in mind I’ll give up the numbers:

• Beta 2529, doubling time now increased to about 53 hours and the P4 dropped even further to 39.

The nurses still seem to be somewhat optimistic, gleefully chanting the mantra ‘No bleeding = viable gestation’, but I am well aware that those terms are not in any way synonymous. No matter how much I’d like them to be.

Hmmm.

Again, the graph:

It’s a little suspect, but there’s not much I can do about it. Other than bitch and whine via a stolen Internet connection, of course.

I’ve been offered an appointment for another beta late next week, but I think I may cancel as another set of increasingly NQR numbers is not in my To Do List right now.

Roll on Wednesday the second of January. That’s when the first scan shall be, provided I get that far.

Now do excuse me while I go and clean this house, it’s filthy. There’s a funny smell and I need to figure out what’s making it. I hope to g-d it’s not another fecal surprise.

Back to the future.

I type this entry from the past, about 12 hours before dutiful WordPress shall publish (in accordance with the assigned time stamp). Why? Mostly because I can, but also partly because I don’t know when this Internet connection will formally get the chop, and am thus somewhat artificially stretching things out.

Oh, and also because I’m a terrible tease, of course.

Before I discuss the beta I have some other trivia to share as to how I plan to update from a house with no functional Internet. I think I may be able to get the odd bit of legal email access through work to communicate with the world, albeit in a somewhat limited fashion. I wouldn’t be exactly comfortable pulling this site up on a ward computer, but if push comes to technology-deficient shove I shall email in an update or two from the Stone Age to LostandFound.

Now, onto more important matters like The Beta.

I will confess that I was secretly hoping for a second beta that was about a thousand percent up on the first, and if I couldn’t have that particular wish granted I was prepared to settle for 220%. I didn’t want to haggle any lower than that, but one gets what one is given.

The Beta could be described as ‘alright’, but given I was hoping for nothing less than stellar I am left disappointed. This one’s a bit dinged up, you see.

The doubling time came in a little over two days and no amount of frowning at the number seems to have convinced it to budge. The slope is also oh-so-slightly off the axis of the plotted beta ranges (Which by the way are from a relatively small series of women, and not necessarily representative of the true spread of betas, although the gradient is reliable. I’ve checked). Small deviations seem to turn into big anxiety around these parts, so it’s a shame my beta wasn’t more like 1600.

For graphical learners, I include the following:

The reall bummer was that my P4 has dropped thirty points in two days, despite the pessaries.

The combination of not-quite-double beta and free-falling P4 prompted the nurse to, irritatingly, tell me she’d like to repeat the bloods in another two days, not that there’s anything wrong. Oh no. Of course there isn’t, Bad Liar Nurse, the third numbers are simply from the kindness of your heart. I shall respectfully beg to differ given that if there was ‘Nothing wrong’ there would be no need for more bloods. Needless to say I’ve not precisely rushed out to book my six week scan.

So, again I wait. I also hope like the blazers this tale ends well.

The tension builds, again.

I’ve been venously perforated in search of a second beta.

I still feel like a non-pregnant fraud, but I can’t put much stock in that because I did last time too (although I did have some reassurance in the mastalgia department, conspicuously absent thus far). Not that that’s precisely a happy thought, but you get the drift. I apparently gestate with such ease that I don’t even notice it’s happening until people start pointing it out to me. 

The irony is that there isn’t much I wouldn’t give to have my head in a toilet bowl right now. Puking would be wonderfully reassuring.

Its a shame that history shows I’m not so good at gestating normal babies. Perhaps it has something to do with the lack of attention my body puts to the process, but whatever the cause I hope that whichever wobbly bit is responsible concentrates jeuuuust a little harder on neural tube manufacture this time around. It’s about that time in my pregnancy that baby 2.0 is going to either be just dandy or doomed for good, and freakishly enough I don’t even know for sure that I’m actually even viably knocked up. Oh neural tube, fold and close, but not before you’re meant to please.

Anyway, enough of that talk.

Suffice it to say that I almost wish that I hadn’t asked for more information because I’m jittery with all the tension of waiting and hoping like crazy that this damn beta is normal. The first was such fun, but it in no way guarantees that the second shall not suck ass.

I have to confess that I peed on a wee stick to give a small degree of non-quantitative reassurance this morning. It didn’t reassure me one whit, being noticeably and significantly lighter. Fuck. But it does dovetail nicely with my morbid obsession about the fate of this gestation, it’s so hard to feel the least bit upbeat or secure when one is so experienced at the Bad Outcome.

So I wait.

I also move house away from my reliable Internet access today and thus in one fell swoop I raise the tension for you, too.

My apologies. I shall do my best to drive around my new suburb and steal someones goddamn wireless.

Huh?

Before I ramble on about my tiny disintegrating mind I’d just like to say that even though I’m in fragile, precarious early p-word I fully understand just how hard it can be to have an unexpected gestation and beta etc shoved into your RSS feed unexpectedly.

G-d knows I’ve been, and probably always will be on some level, bright green with envy (as well as red with shame at the green, turning me a sort of muddy brown) more times than I care to recall over the past year I’ve been putting thought to keyboard when I’ve hit upon a positive.

I hope that things go better in this pregnancy for me than last time, but more than that, I hope that you’re able to stick around for the ride, good, bad or other outcome.

I also understand if that is just too much of an ask.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

This is the post otherwise known as That In Which I Become Predictably Obsessed, Face Slapping-ly Terrified and Repetitively Dull.

Today’s menu includes a pretty beta, ordered with extra large helpings of miscarriage fears, miscarriage fears and more miscarriage fears, in a delicate sauce of miscarriage fears, with a bonus side order of dead baby thoughts in anticipation of later on (should there be a later on, of course). I’ve tried to keep a lid on the latter items for the sake of all concerned.

Now what was that you said?

Sorry, I’ve been a little distracted by my latest toy, The Beta.

Such a nice Beta is is too. So well behaved. So clean behind the ears, such neatly groomed hair and absence of visible snot or smudges that it practically goddamn sparkles. I keep it written on a rapidly disintegrating post-it close to my heart, occasionally wearing out the print with the intensity of my glare, completely unlike those ungrateful breasts of mine, who so shamefully failed me in the symptom department this time.

Okay, so the boobages are kind of physically close to my heart (and I’d be investing in a better bra if they weren’t) but believe me when I say it’s simply an accident of anatomy and modern underwear engineering, and most certainly not because I approve of their current behaviour.

Ha-hem.

Do you think that they know something The Beta doesn’t? Excuse me while I get a Beta fix again….mmmmmm……that’s much better. Now where was I? Ah, yes.

Hopefully basking in The Beta will get me though the next 24 hours until my next beta fix. Which better bloody sparkle too, or harsh words will be spoken until it sodding well does, don’t you worry about that.

Now please do excuse me while I write ‘seven-hundred-and-one’ and ‘gravida two’ in my best excited love-letter fashion all over my cycle paperwork. In pink. With hearts. It helps to keep the crippling anxiety at bay, and I know how supremely irritating I am when I’m anxious. Just ask my RE, who I suspect will only be too pleased to hand my regular panicked voicemails over to an honest-to-goodness OB in a few weeks. Hopefully.

I’ve only got the minor hurdles of doubling-beta-two, oh-my-god-don’t-fall-out-will-you-embryo(s)(yes, I’ve been quietly speculating as to the numeration of sleep loss and abdominal musculature I may suffer), heartbeat scan, NT scan, and detailed foetal anomaly scans at 16, 18 and 22 and finally a-viability-which-does-NOT-equal-bonus-NICU-time to go before I can exhale. I’m thinking about eighteen years should cover it.

No worries, right?

Piece of cake.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

If you do just want to check back for the Good Stuff, I’ll summarise my near future (which also includes severe Internet lack, a worrying problem I am not yet sure how to circumvent):

• Second beta tomorrow.
• Heartbeat scan probably the second of January (all being well with the item above).
• I can’t think any further ahead…..
• No, really, I can’t.

Seven hundred and one reasons.

I may as well get directly to the point, the crux of the matter, the Holy Number, etc etc that allows me to confirm that I am now officially (after much effort) Gravida two. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t type a smug grin because I’m feeling pretty darn pleased with myself.

I’m also simultaneously feeling abjectly terrified, but that’s normal. Worry is the only symptom of pregnancy I seem to ever experience.

My beta at 13 DPD2-3T is 701. Yep, seven-freaking-hundred. Such a well behaved little embryo. Even if the p-word currently in-situ is from my spontaneous ovulation three days prior to the ‘bryos, it’s still reassuring. Nifty, huh? My P4 is a similarly spiffy 76.

I think my RE will probably suggest that I not waste my money on further pessaries, but will also indulge my madness if I persist. A girl can never have too much liquefied body-temperature fat leaking from her hoo-ha, after all.

Being an anxious sort, I cried ‘venepuncture’ at the mere thought of having to publicly eschew alcohol, blush furiously and lie badly if challenged as to why over the New Year season. They think I’m mad, but I’m to have another beta Wednesday.

It better be good, or it’s really going to put a crimp in my seasonal good cheer.

Holy fuck, I’m pregnant (again).

Oh, and I finally disclosed the underlying reason for my anxious bitch-wife-from-hell routine to my darling spouse last night while I was out shopping. He was home, so I sent him a text message telling him to check out how many tampons I had left.

Pause 60 seconds while he figures out A: what a tampon box looks like, B: how to open it and C: unexpected contents and then (right on cue), a confused phone call asking why there seem to be positive pregnancy tests in a box of menstrual products.

Heh. I crack me up.

Insanity.

Psst…..Internet, may I level with you? On the quiet? 

Here’s the thing, dear Internet. I know I can talk to YOU, right?

You and I both know perfectly well that I’ve been peeing on successively dark wee sticks since Tuesday. Ergo, something is up in there. I am all too aware that a positive pee stick does not a healthy child (or even ongoing pregnancy) make but surely I should be celebrating while I can? As much as I can?

We both know that victories can be few and far between in this game, right? I mean, even with ART it’s been a year between compulsory non-alcoholic drinks, Internet.

But you know what’s weird? My darling spouse doesn’t have the foggiest.

It could be that he’s simply not counting very well this time around. Or that he’s been totally and thoroughly swayed by all the ‘Never gonna work’ marketing I’ve been pushing so heavily lately. After all, I’ve got him talking in terms of ‘when we get the negative beta’. But. Somewhat childishly, Internet, I’m narked that he hasn’t even enquired as to whether a known incurably rabid stick-pisser like myself has indulged lately.

I mean for g-d s sake, I haven’t touched a fun drink in five days now, surely that might count as a wee hint? It’s the holiday season!

Yes,  suddenly judgemental Internet, please don’t look at me with that expression. I know that I really should tell him. Really. I’m quite sure that he’d be very interested to know that I may be gestating his child as we speak. As I recall he was pretty darn interested the first time it happened. Heck, the IVF payments are coming out of his bank account so the motivation may be all financial, but it’s motivation nevertheless.

Yet……

I’m playing my pee-stick cards incredibly close to my chest bladder. I’ve had to hide them somewhere pretty imaginative (in my tampon box, no less) to avoid an unintended denouement.

It’s completely insane, dear sweet Internet, but I’ve got it into my head that A: It’ll only upset him it if goes pear, B: It’s not real anyway until a disgruntled nurse gives me my damn beta, and C: Telling = all going to shit (as if the act of merely uttering the p-word will magically curse my uterus).

Insanity.

I’ll have to tell him. An obsession shared is an obsession doubled, after all.

Now Internet, if you could just help me in explaining to him why I’ve waited five freaking days to casually mention that, well, the p-word seems to have happened, that would be really helpful.

On: freakout

Ok, so I had a freakout this morning.I did a BAD BAD BAD thing and wee’d on five pregnancy tests.

In my defence it was only 5 because the first four came out negative (with control line, so allegedly valid tests). The fifth was a fairly unimpressive positive.

Needless to say, I shat myself. You would too.

After putting up with my bawling for 5 minutes, my sweet man called the RE who was concerned enough for my reproductive organs to have an immediate date with a well-lubricated probe.

Needless to say all is well.

Bubba blob has been busy in the (embarassingly) 5 days since my last scan. He/She has more than doubled in size and has a heart ticking away so emphatically that it makes me proud.

I attatch the evidence:

 

Thank the diety of your choice. Now to throw out my pee-stick collection and write a furious letter of crank to the manufacturer.

On: You guessed it

Ultrasound this morning showed a healthy looking intrauterine gestation consistant with dates and a good heartbeat.

Clearly I am:

A: an idiot who is going to kill her self with worry many times in this PREGNANCY

B: overdramatic and histrionic when doing said worrying

C: Bloody insensitive to HCG, since I feel fine

D: probably shouldn’t brag about point C just yet….M/S could be waiting to get me, and I don’t want to have to read back how well I felt when I’m posting my blog from a toilet bowl.

Can I just say that that little flickering pixel of a heartbeat was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen?

On: A confession

Guys, can I fess up?

I’m still beyond terrified.

I guess that’s no surprise. Even my best friends want to slap me at this point.

My RE must be a cruel woman since she won’t do another beta without good reason (i.e. bleeding), and if I ask any more pointedly I think she’ll change her number

But since I have NO symptoms of pregnancy whatsoever to go on (unless fear counts), I have no idea if I’m still hosting a very busy zygote/fetus or have plummeting hcg and am destined to miscarry.

I’ve looked at far too many websites courtesy of some magic involving the words ‘google’ and ‘miscarriage’, and can quote odds ad-infinitum.

Even my long suffering spouse is telling me to relax. I tell him that didn’t GET me pregnant, and it won’t help me STAY pregnant. THEN he tells me that a doubling beta doesn’t mean I can’t miscarry the next day anyway, and he’s right, the bastard.

Yours truly,
A scattered mess.

On: 1 by ten to the three is good

First beta 1000+.

Needless to say, I have a happy RE. Who was kind enough to call the result in on her way home at the end of the day. As soon as she got it…she’s getting to know ME pretty well.

I am (perhaps) a slightly less panicky patient.

I’m not to have a repeat beta unless I bleed……given I have no history of miscarriage (Like, duh, never been pregnant and there’s always a first time!)

So how do I feel? Absolutely NOT pregnant despite that beta (and I always imagined that I’d be super sensitive to the stuff….Ha! You could hit me over the head with it and I’d probably just blink).

My fingers are getting cramp from being crossed so tight. Id’ve kinda liked a repeat beta, since the rate of increase is a bit more useful than a single number, but I think my RE thinks I’m a bit unhinged as it is. In a good way of course.