Catching Up

P and I had a great day today. A Trader Joe's recently opened up around us so we went to check it out, lots of affordable groceries and almost all organic. We also went to check out our stroller at Giggle.  Convincing P that we NEEDED this stroller was difficult haha but eventually he caved.  Hoping to order it on Amazon over the next few months.  We decided to go with the UppaBaby Vista, a bit of a splurge but that's okay with me...

I will leave you with a few pictures taken over the last few weeks...


Taken Christmas Morning (not a great one of the bump)



A version of this was used for our Christmas card this year.

 

No, this was not taken at a store, this is baby girl's closet.  I won't even
tell you about all the onesies hidden in her dresser.  Don't worry,
I have been buying newborn through 18 months haha!  I told you
December was a stressful month!!

 



And finally, Sage, telling us how very excited
she is to be a big sister soon!

23-24 weeks

It has been so long since I have blogged.  I am continuing to read everyone's stories and although I am not commenting I am following each and every one of you so very closely.

There has been a lot going on, nothing earth shattering...

The Good

I am almost 24 weeks pregnant.  And I am feeling baby girl moving LIKE CRAZY!  I don't know what she is doing in there, but we are in trouble if she is this active when she comes out!  I am still sleeping decent most nights.  My belly is growing!  Our nursery is just about complete.  The only thing we are waiting on is the chair and that is going to be a while, probably will not be here until early/mid March.  But, the painting is done, beadboard/chair rail is up, and we have the dresser, crib, and bookcase assesmbled.  I took a chance and did the one thing everyone tells you NOT to do, and ordered all pieces of furniture without being able to see them in person.  Each piece was from the Land of Nod (associated with Crate and Barrel) but there is no location within driving distance to our house.  After looking at other furniture at baby stores and constantly consulting the Baby Bargains book, I knew this was the furniture we had to have.  It came within 2-4 weeks, the men brought the pieces right up to the nursery, and the dresser was already assembled, and it looks beautiful.  I will post pictures soon, but right now we still have our guest bed in there because Sage likes to sit on it and stare out the window, and it is just too difficult for P to get rid of it right now because of how much time our pup spends on it! 

P and I will be celebrating our 30th birthdays in March, just a month before baby is expected to arrive.   Even though I expected to be thinking about baby #2 by now, the realization tha we are going to have our first baby is a pretty awesome 30th birthday present for both of us!

I had an appt. a few days ago and my belly measured 23 cm which was right on track, my blood pressure was still great at 106/62, and she picked up baby's strong heartbeat right away.  Because my alpha-protein levels came back high in November, we need to begin our serial growth scans to make sure baby girl is still growing appropriately and the placenta is working.  So, we have our first (of three) sceduled for 2 1/2 weeks from now.  We haven't seen our little one since that scary high risk ultrasound, so as long as everything looks good, it should be a much more fun u/s for P and me where we can hopefully get a few more pictures!

I love my OB.  I was iffy about her in the beginning, but since dealing with the scare a few weeks ago, she has been wonderful.  She is very proactive and I feel my baby and I are getting the best possible care which I am so grateful for. 

I also found out that the twice a week NST will not start until 32 weeks.  I had originally thought they were going to start at week 28, but was wrong.  That seems a lot more manageable.  Either way, March and April are going to be crazy going back and forth from work to the doctors.  So, let's hope January and February stay calm with no "surprises."

No stretchmarks, yet!

The Bad

December was a tough month for us as a couple.  We seemed to have turned a corner and we are doing a lot better now.  Marriage is hard, infertility makes it harder, and pregnancy after infertility (although some people claim it makes their marriage so much stronger) can be extremely difficult. 

There are reminders everywhere I turn of what was taken from P and me.  Everywhere we turn another couple is announcing they are pregnant, some with their second.  It continues to knock the wind right out of me.  I am hoping that once baby comes these feelings will slowly fade away even more, but the pregnancy announcements still sting, especially those announcing their second.  Those sting A LOT.

Physically this pregnancy has been pretty easy, but a few days before Christmas I started developing a lot of pain in my lower left back/hip.  My OB thinks its sciatica and wrote me a script for a PT evaluation...hopefully we can get that under control quickly.

The Ugly

Shaving?  Haha, let's just not even go there.  There are way too many parts of my body that I can no longer see. 

When my OB asked what my pre-pregnancy weight was I STUPIDLY gave her the weight I was at the morning of my egg retrieval: 123 lbs.  Between losing some weight right before IVF, not being able to eat for 12 hours because of the surgery, and lots of anxiety, I had lost 4 or 5 pounds.  Meaning, that weight was not even close to being my typical everyday weight!  Now I am up to 140.  So, when she told me I was up 17 pounds I wanted to say...wait wait wait haha!  My real pre-pregnancy weight is more like 127.  But, she didn't have a problem with the weight gain because I am still pretty tiny, so I guess I will just go with it!  (And secretly tell myself I am only up 13 pounds, not 17!)

Oh yeah, my pregnancy pants, those pretty much don't fit anymore!  I bought them around 12/13 weeks and they have been great for the last 3 months, but I am definitely running out of room.  No way I can survive the next 16 weeks in them!

That's about it for now, I am going to try and get back to blogging regularly, but sometimes life just gets in the way!  As I write this, baby is giving me a few quick kicks in the stomach, possibly to remind me I have no idea how busy life is actually going to get this Spring!

20 weeks...and ALL over the place

Everytime I get ready to blog, I stop.  I don't know why.  None of this has happened the way I pictured and I guess I am still having a hard time swallowing it. 

Three days after we had our High Risk ultrasound I had a follow-up with my OB.  I expected nothing but good news because the ultrasound looked so great.  Then she used words that took a while to sink in with me: "There is a link between unexplained high AFP and fetal death."

I didn't quite grasp what she was saying at the appt.  Of course I was alone.  And then I got in the car and the fear hit me like a ton of bricks.  Did she just say there is an increased chance that the baby might die? 

Because of this, beginning around 26 weeks, which will be early February, I will be going in twice a week, every week for non stress tests, until I deliver.  That means I will be hooked up to a monitor for anywhere between 30-60 minutes and they will monitor baby's heartrate, activity, as well as check for contractions.  I will also need serial growth ultrasounds at 28, 32, and 36 weeks.  Chances are everything will be fine, and if it isn't I am being monitored so closely, that they will most likely get the baby out if things do start to go wrong.

Since hearing this a few weeks ago, my emotions have been all over the place.  I am half way through this pregnancy, and just in the last few days I feel like I have for sure felt movement from the baby.  Before then , I was scared to death.  Physically, this pregnancy has been super easy, no morning sickness, exhaustion is gone, and besides this cute little belly, everything seems normal.  That would be great, if we weren't dealing with all the what ifs.  I am praying I continue to feel the baby moving and it continues to grow stronger.

The best part of everything that has happened over this last month, is we found out the sex.  No, we didn't have one of those fun anatomy scans that everyone talks about.  We didn't get one of those.  We didn't get an ultrasound where the doctor explained eveything he/she was seeing and showed us the baby waving or sucking its thumb.  Instead we found out in a dark room, by a strange doctor, who was performing a high risk ultrasound on my baby, looking to see if something was wrong, telling us absolutely nothing.  I decided right before the appt. that I needed to know then if it was a boy or girl.  Screw the stupid Christmas idea, it didn't mean anything anymore. 

For those few days between my high risk ultrasound and follow up appt. with my OB we rejoiced in knowing we are having a GIRL.  Since then, we are still so happy, but I can't help but feel like we have missed out on so many "happy" moments throughout this process.  I am still so sad that we never got to get pregnant the "normal" way.  Every once in a while I get sad over the other embryo that didn't make it, even though not one ounce of me wanted twins.  And I am so very sad that the anatomy scan we had looked forward to and the Christmas surprise we had planned (finally, we would get to do something a normal pregnant woman does) ended up being something that never was.  But, I am also so very grateful.  Grateful we only had to go through one IVF, grateful we are pregnant with our first baby, and over the moon that it is a little girl.  My parents first grandchild, a little baby girl.

I never expected this to be an easy pregnancy emotionally, but I had hoped I would be able to enjoy it a little more.  I just want the baby in my arms.  And I want people to stop telling me I shouldn't worry or everything is going to be fine.  I know there are so many of you still stuck in the trenches and many others dealing with very difficult news about your own pregnancy.  None of it seems fair.  And yet, so few understand.  So many will ever know.

I will post an update on pregnancy stuff tomorrow because there are a lot of exciting things happening and I have probably already spent hundreds of dollars on little girl clothes (stress reliever) but right now I just needed to get this out. 

I knew it wasn't going to be easy, considering getting pregnant wasn't so easy, but I really had no idea it would be this hard!

This baby girl just has to know how much her mommy and daddy love her, and that everything will be okay.

Update from Monday

Let me start by saying everything is okay.

Now, let's backtrack. 

On Monday, P and I arrived to the Diagnostic Center a half hour before our scheduled appts. and I felt so out of place.  It was like being at the infertility clinic for the first time.  You didn't want to have to be there, but you also hated feeling like such an outsider.  It was a very professional environment.  No big smiles to welcome you.  No feelings of warmth from the secretaries.  I guess if you are there, it isn't for a good reason, so it is just best to keep things as formal as possible. 

We waited for about 20 minutes before being called back to meet with the genetic counselor.  She was great.  Very informative, commented that she could tell I did my research, and there was really nothing she said that I hadn't already prepared myself for.  My AFP came back at 2.7.  They like to see it between 1.0 and 2.0.  The way they determined mine was elevated was they compare me to others just like me: a white, 29 year old, in good health, who concieved via IVF.  Taking into consideration all those things, my AFP came back 2.7 times what would be considered "perfect."  She then went onto explain the other 4 things that were measured in my blood.  The others looked good, particularly the 2 connected to the placenta, which means the placenta is most likely functioning properly.  After we had our meeting, we went to sit in another waiting room for about another 15 minutes.  We both were sweating, surrounded by other couples, no one knowing where to look or what to say.  I had no idea what to expect.

When we got into the ultrasound room, the technician told me to lie on the table and that was all we heard from him.  He did point out a few things he was looking at.  But, it was basically, my husband and I sitting in silence while the tech. jabbed at my stomach for 45 minutes taking over 50 pictures and all sorts of crazy measurements.  Every once in a while I looked at the small television screen, but I mostly stared at the ceiling fighting back tears having no idea what was going on.  At the conclusion of it, he told us he needed to consult with the doctor and then would be back.

Ten agonizing minutes later, he walked in with the doctor and they looked over the spine a bit more closely.  Then he finally told us that from everything they could see, there were no problems.  The spine, kidneys, brain, liver, arms, legs, nose, mouth (sometimes an elevated AFP can be due to a cleft palate) everything looked good.  I couldn't believe it.  I was afraid I was going to pass out. 

The wave of relief that rushed over my husband and I is almost impossible to put into words.

The doctor then went on to explain that in their report they will recommend that I have serial growth ultrasounds every 3-4 weeks to make sure the baby is continuing to thrive.  Many times the unexplained elevated levels can indicate complications that may arrive in the third trimester.  Many times, it can mean nothing, and it could just be a level that is normal for my body.

The last few weeks have been stressful and terrifying for the two of us and we are so grateful that our little one seems to be doing well and from everything they could see is a very healthy, bouncy baby.  We have fallen even more in love with this little one and cannot put into words how relieved we are. 

Thank you so much for your comments.  This blog continues to be a great source of support for me, especially when the outside world just doesn't seem to be able to provide it.  I am so thankful to be a part of this community.  Thinking of all of you...

Big Day (maybe the biggest)

Tomorrow is a big day for us, driving to the appts will probably be one of the most difficult things we have had to do so far in our short 3.5 year marriage.  The genetic counseling appt. is first and then we have the Level II ultrasound which could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours.  This past week has been a struggle.  I am surprisingly calm tonight but don't know how I am going to get myself up on that table tomorrow.

Thanks so much for all your kind words of encouragement and support!!

16 & 17 Weeks

Multiple times throughout this pregnancy I have heard the word "perfect" used to describe our little one. It always made me uncomfortable. I don't like that word. Maybe I knew something was going to go wrong, or maybe I just always plan for the worst.

About three weeks ago I went for some bloodwork and my NT scan. Both occurred between 11 and 13 weeks. Since the NT scan went well, I assumed there would be no issues. I felt like I had finally entered the "safe zone" if there even is such a thing.

Along with the first set of tests, there is a second set of bloodwork that has to be done at a very specific time in the second trimester, usually between 15 and 18 weeks if you want it to be most accurate. I was planning on going the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because I had it off. But, for some reason I decided to go this past Monday, thinking nothing of it.

This past Wednesday night on the way to pick my husband up at the train station, I noticed a missed call and voicemail from my OB. At first I thought it may be a call to confirm our anatomy scan, but after quickly calculating in my head that it was still weeks away, I immediately knew it was something bad about the bloodwork I had done just days before.

When I called her back, the first words out of my mouth were, "Oh my god, what is wrong?" She tried to calm me down, but also needed to tell me the reason why she was calling. The bloodwork came back abnormal. They generally like to see your AFP (fetoprotein) levels at 1.0, although 1.0-2.0 is an acceptable range. Mine came back at 2.7, which means it is 2.7 times the median. I now fall under the category "high risk" pregnancy. Our baby is at a higher risk then most of having a neural tube defect, it can be an indicator of placenta issues, or many times a sign of complications to come in the third trimester of my pregnancy.

A few hours after the phone call I decided to reach out to the only person I knew who could provide me some type of support: my RE, DR P. I emailed her and within seconds recieved an automated response that she was out of the country until November 28th and if it was an emergency there were other numbers to contact. The tears continued. The next morning I awoke surprised to an email response from her (that is why I love her so much.) She had reached out to a friend of hers who worked at a High Risk Center at Columbia and these were her thoughts on my situation:

"AFP is totally non-specific; 2.7 is slightly high but different labs use different cutoffs (and there are different cut offs based on race, etc) That said, 2 is generally the threshold I remember. Many people will repeat it to confirm it's high before pursuing a workup but the other option is to go right to Level II ultrasound. It can be caused by many things...bleeding earlier in pregnancy, placenta issues, or can be a marker of uteroplacental insufficiency. If her scan is normal, I would not go as far as RECOMMENDing an amnio, although I would certainly offer it and then also do serial growth scans at 28 weeks and 34 weeks."

The reason for my elevated number is not bleeding, because aside from a little episode of it after a pap smear, I have had zero bleeding. The number doesn't seem to be high enough for a neural tube defect. So, my OB is leaning toward it is most likely an issue with the placenta. She said this will mean more monitoring for me come 24 weeks. Sometimes this can lead to low birth weight, premature labor, preeclampsia, and growth problems with the baby. Sometimes, it can mean nothing and we will deliver a happy, healthy baby.

Hysterical crying and the worst anxiety I have ever felt came over me for the first 48 hours after getting the phone call. I did go to work on Thursday and Friday, but avoided everyone and everything. I went in to talk to my principal and explain what was going on, only to break into huge sobs. She couldn't believe I even was at work and tried to get me to go home, but I knew it was best if I kept busy. She told me whenever I needed to leave I could. Everytime one of my students referenced my baby I had to hold back tears. It was so hard. I am showing now, there is no hiding it. And all I want to do is protect myself and this little baby.

On Friday I called my OB's office again and asked to speak to her. She called me back within a half hour and after breaking down yet again, she agreed it would be best if I came in for a quick check of the heartbeat to calm my nerves. I couldn't fight this feeling that this baby inside of me had died. Luckily, she was able to find the heartbeat right away which put my mind at ease, even if for a few minutes.

Upon pulling myself together over these last 48 hours I have done some of my own research. It seems out of 1,000 women, 50 will get the same phone call I got on Wednesday night. That is only 5%, but it doesn't matter how small, I am part of that 5%. Of those 50 women, 1 or 2 will go on to have children with a severe neural tube defect.

We have an appt. with a genetic counselor on the 26th followed by a Level II ultrasound. If everything looks good, close monitoring will be the next step. If abnormalities are picked up, we will need to decide about an amniocentesis, which would be performed that same day.

I don't know how we are are going to get through this next week...

I need to keep reminding myself, I have wonderful doctors and they are doing everything they can to assure everything is okay with both me and the baby, and they will continue to do so for the remainder of this pregnancy...but I am so scared. I hope everything is okay.

15 weeks

P painted the nursery this weekend.  We went with Benjamin Moore's Stonington Gray and I love it! Beadboard will go up in the next few weeks and then I will be sure to post pictures.  We have picked out both the crib and dresser from The Land of Nod, hope to order both some time in early January.  I think if I wasn't a teacher I might have gone into some type of party/event planning.  I had so much fun planning my wedding and am loving every second of planning this nursery for our little baby.

I had a tough night Friday night.  Whenever I think I am doing great, reality slaps me in the face and I realize maybe I am not doing so great.  We went out with good friends who announced they were 8 weeks pregnant after 3 months of trying.  So, I came home and sobbed.  P couldn't understand why and I could only express my feelings through anger.  It's not that I am not happy for them I am sometimes just struck at the unfairness.   Even talking about our pregnancies its as though we are living in two different worlds...our thoughts, fears, concerns, couldn't be more different.  Then I called my mom. She always makes me feel better.  My mom reminded me that my baby will never be taken for granted, my baby will be filled with more love than sometimes thought possible because this baby has been wanted and desired more than humanly thought possible.  Because of our struggle, this baby is going to have a wonderful life and P and I are going to be wonderful parents because we know how much of a miracle the chance to have a baby really is.   My mom reminded me that all that matters now is the little life I have growing inside of me so I am choosing to focus on that.  And when I start to feel sad, I need to put my hand over my belly and remind myself of this wonderful little gift that deserves nothing but the absolute best of me.  She also reminded me of the pain so many of you are still dealing with on a daily basis in your struggles to beat infertility.  My mom is a very smart woman.

With all that, I am so excited to be 15 weeks pregnant!

How far along: 15 weeks
Total weight gain: 6-7 pounds...could I really gain one pound a week from here on out?  Scary thought...
Maternity clothes: all of my pants are maternity, still need to find some leggings, and have a few comfy tops from Gap
Stretch marks: No
Sleep: Not terrible, but not great....I am able to stay up way later than just a few weeks ago, love having more energy!!
Miss Anything?  Being able to go to the bathroom without any issues i.e. constipation, weird pains, constant peeing
Movement: No, but anxiously waiting!! Must be getting close!
Food cravings: Nothing new...still love my snacks and can't get enough orange juice
Anything make you queasy or sick: Lettuce (of course it can't be Doritos or chocolate!)
Have you started to show yet: without a doubt, I teased my kids today telling them to stop laughing at my chubby belly and they laughed and laughed!  Already had a few people at work touch my stomach, I thought I would be uncomfortable by the gesture but I love it, I love the excitement. 
Boy or Girl: Not sure, but really anxious to find out.  The old wives tales are doing nothing for me.
Looking forward to: Our anatomy scan which is November 30th!  We will be asking the tech to write down whether it is a boy or girl on a piece of paper and then wrapping it to put under the tree and open it Christmas morning!! Ahhh...definitely husband's idea....I hate waiting...am a very impatient person...don't know if I can do it!  But, it is important to P, so I will try.