A Better Day

I'm talking about my pregnancy in this post, so if you're in a bad space, please skip this post, take care of yourself, and come back another time when I'll surely be talking about my nephew's ridiculous Christmas wish list Power Point presentation.

One of my newish pregnancy symptoms is intermittent insomnia.  I don't like it.  Even though I was completely exhausted last night from all the crying over Abbott, when I turned off the light I was suddenly wide awake.  I finally fell asleep, I'm guessing around 2am.  At 7:30, I woke up to pee, and I couldn't fall back asleep after that.  I thought about going into work for a few hours before my 1:15pm OB appointment, but I thought I'd try one more time to fall back asleep after Jeeves left for work.  That did the trick.  The problem - I did not set an alarm and I woke up at 12:25pm(!) with lines all over my face and arms.  I rushed to get ready and get to my appointment.

I'm in a private Facebook group with women I met in an online forum for infertility who are also due in June.  I'm the only pregnancy from IUI in the group - everyone else is IVF.  It's been so nice to have a group of women to talk to about pregnancy symptoms, fears, frustrations.  Many of them have had miscarriages, so they understand my fears.  But the one downside is that I find myself comparing my pregnancy to theirs and worrying.  Most of the women have a lot of nausea, some of them have severe nausea.  I've been nauseated a few times, but not much and my general eating/food issues have been improving this week.  So that made me nervous.  And then a couple of the women started posting early bump pictures.

I have been pretty good about tracking my weight this pregnancy.  In the first trimester, you're only supposed to gain 2-3 lbs, with the majority of weight gain coming in trimesters 2 and 3.  I have not gained any weight.  It's been easy to not gain weight because I'm frequently bloated and not hungry, and even when I am hungry, I can't eat as much as I used to.  My clothes all still fit fine.  And then these gals from my group started posting bump shots.  Also, Amanda from Beloved Burnt Toast, who is around the same week as me, posted a bump shot and she has a giant bump!  Anyway, the girls in my group - one of them is pregnant with triplets, so the fact that she has a big belly already is no surprise.  But a couple of the girls are pregnant with singletons and they have bellies too!  I tried to comfort myself by saying everyone is different, they did IVF, so maybe they already had some swelling from the hormones, etc.  But this week has been so shitty, you guys.  I miss my cat.  And it just started to feel like this whole year has been pretty bad with the infertility, the miscarriages, Dad's cancer, my sister's issues, and Abbott dying, that hey, of course we'll throw one more shitty thing on that pile just to really make sure it is the WORST YEAR EVER.

Suffice it to say, I was going into this OB appointment with a pretty negative mindset.

But last night, I went into the bathroom and when I turned sideways in the mirror, I noticed something.  I have a little tummy.  I don't think anyone else would notice, but it's definitely there.  I called Jeeves into the bathroom to show him.  He said he had noticed it a couple of days before, but he wasn't sure if maybe I had just gained some weight and he didn't want to upset me. It didn't upset me, it made me happy.

Anyway, back to 12:30pm today while I rush around like a crazy person to get to my OB.  I didn't think I was getting an ultrasound today - I thought she was just going to try and listen for the heartbeat with the doppler, which made me nervous because 10 weeks can sometimes be too early for the doppler.  But while we were waiting, I got called into the ultrasound room!  I was getting another ultrasound!  A pregnant infertile will never say no to an ultrasound.

For the first time, I didn't need the tech to tell me anything.  We could clearly see the baby, doing jazz hands.  The little heart was beating away and the tech turned the sound on so we could hear it.  Measuring on time.  Awesome.  A bright spot of happiness to end what has been a very sad week.  Jeeves says the baby looks like something from X-Files.  I think it's starting to look like a baby.

We met with the genetics counselor, who was very nice, knowledgeable, and thorough, and the information she gave us confirmed what we had already decided.  I also appreciate that she didn't make me feel like my eggs are 8000 years old.  I had blood drawn for the MaterniT21 test, scheduled my nuchal translucency scan for December 5th, and did a finger stick for the Papp-A and hCG levels.  If all those come back indicating that we have a low risk for a chromosomal disorder, we'll stop there.  I'd really prefer not to do chorionic villi sampling (CVS) or an amnio if we can help it.  I'm especially excited about the MaterniT21 test, which is a cell free DNA test - it has a high rate of prediction, a low false positive rate, and as a bonus, it will tell us gender.  Results in 2 weeks!

So that was the day.  A much better day than yesterday.  And thankfully I get another ultrasound in under 2 weeks.  That will be a much easier wait than the 3 week wait I had this time.