not so bright-eyed anymore

keep me away from google university.

according to various sites and studies i found, my risk of miscarriage due to the subchorionic hematoma is 20 to 50%. yee-haw. don't lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk, they say. complete bed rest is even better. ugh.

most depressing of all is the jerk who used "subchorionic hematoma" as keywords to lure someone into their porn site. who does that? who googles an obscure medical term looking for porn? grrr.

heartbeat!!

yay for happy endings!

well, for now at least.

this time i brought a stack of old copies of the new york times sunday magazine with as-yet-unstarted crossword puzzles. good thing too, as there was quite a wait before the ultrasound.

throughout the entire procedure, i was trying to read the doc's face, trying to guess what she was thinking. good news? bad news? she didn't look very happy. tg was right at my side, squinting at the monitor which i couldn't see. he couldn't tell what anything was either. after forever, she said "look!" and turned the monitor so i could see too. "see that? that's the yolk sac. and that's the embryo. see that flickering?" she zoomed in. "that's the heartbeat." we saw it! we saw our wee embryo's heart flickering at 129 beats per minute!

it measures .4 cm long. according to the ultrasound i am at 6 weeks 3 days; i had thought 6 weeks 1 day so that's about spot on.

the bad news: a "moderately large subchorionic hematoma is present at the inferior margin of the gestational sac." this is a blood clot that was probably formed at implantation (other people get implantation bleeding, i got an implantation blood clot). it's not uncommon, and it's not dangerous as long as it absorbs back into the body the way normal bruises do. but if it gets dislodged, it could take my embryo with it.

so: no exertion for the next month (when i'll get the next ultrasound). no vigorous activity. no heavy lifting or jogging (ha).

it doesn't sound too difficult, but it's still quite scary.

the drama begins

so. yesterday morning i woke up feeling fine, and then started feeling queasy in the shower. ah, i thought, the fabled morning sickness. i managed to avoid throwing up by moving very slowly, sipping water very slowly, and taking lie-down breaks.

when i got to work, i googled "morning sickness relief" and found a lot of people recommended ginger tea, so a got a big sup of that to sip on.

i had lunch (bland chicken sandwich) with a friend, and we split a pot of mint tea (her suggestion - she had an upset stomach of her own).

back to work, feeling okay if not great. i thought, maybe this is the day i should tell my boss i'm pregnant. if i'm going to start puking everywhere, it's going to be pretty obvious anyway. but there were always too many people around, so i said nothing.

twenty after five, i start feeling cramps. i had a cramp the night before too, but it went away very quickly, so i didn't worry. this time was different. at 5:27 i went to the loo and there was blood.

normally i work till six, so i told my coworker (boss had already left) that i was feeling sick and was leaving early. i went straight to the hospital.

where i did a lot of waiting.

and practising my cranky mother routines. jellybean, stop that! jellybean, you are not to leave your womb until i say so! jellybean, are you going to break my heart every day for the next twenty-five years?

and a lot of crying.

a nurse took some blood straight away. then it was back to the waiting room for an hour and a half. eventually i saw a doctor (weird to see a male doctor for this kind of thing - i haven't seen a male doctor in years, and never for womany examinations) who said it is too soon to tell, if it's happening it's happening and there's nothing we can do, and it's just nature's way and it's not because of anything i did wrong (of course in the waiting room i thought i remembered reading somewhere that mint should only be used sparingly - is half a cup of mint tea "sparingly"? - so i'm blaming that. easily avoidable scapegoat? i'll take it.) but maybe it's just a matter of the something tube (i was in a bit of a daze, i didn't even hear the doctor's name unless he really is called "dr. mumble mumble") not connecting exactly, in which case it might leak a little blood, and the uterus finds it irritating so it cramps a bit, and in that case you've nothing to worry about and everything is fine. hemoglobin is good (140), hcg is good (22,178), so maybe things will be okay.

i have an ultrasound booked for this morning at 9:45. cross your fingers.

caffeine, oh how i miss you...

i love coffee. i have pounds of great coffee in the house. oh, how i'd love to drink it all.

especially since i am so freaking sleepy all of the time.

but of course, no coffee for me, the pregnant lady. i drink a cup of decaf at work, and sometimes , if i'm really exhausted, make it half-caf.

man, what i'd do for a pot of real coffee though. i used to drink it by the litre. i cut down before conceiving (after reading somewhere that large amounts of caffeine can lead to a 27% decrease in fertility), just like i cut out drinking (except for emergencies) and smoking. i'll stave off my cravings with the occasional pot of tea. but it's just not the same.

i guess it's time to invest in gourmet-style decaf beans!

coincidence? or...

can i just say how happy i am that fisher, my favourite comic strip, is pregnant at the same time as i am? i mean at first it kind of sucked, because they were having a baby and i wasn't (yet), but now it's just too cool.

especially since most (if not all) of the online communities for pregnant women seem to be aimed at crazy people who love animated gifs and paranoia more than anything else in the world.

i mean, when we were still in the "trying" phase, it was frustrating, it was disappointing, but we kept our heads and didn't do crazy stuff designed to make us depressed - like testing days before my period was due, squinting at the stick until we imagined we saw something that wasn't there, and then proclaiming every period to be a miscarriage. why do people do this to themselves? isn't life complex enough without adding to it by inventing problems? good grief. i won't even get into the infertility people, who just scare me. infertility is an awful thing, but i don't see how spending tens thousands of dollars on an unfixable problem while alienating your husband is really helping anything. ugh.

there are endless sites for stepford moms, loony pagan earth moms, and paranoid crazy moms. nothing for us normal people.

so i guess i'm just left with my blog and a comic strip. if only fisher featured a handy list of what kinds of fish are safe!

i have a midwife!!

whee! of course, my appointment isn't until the 20 september, but just knowing i have an appointment is such a relief. i was really beginning to worry.

so sleepy!

last night i got home from work around seven o'clock. i was tired. my lovely husband tg said, go to bed! so i did. i woke up a couple of times - once to watch fireworks at ten-thirty, once at half-past-six when tg was getting up to go to work - but other than that, slept through till eight o'clock this morning. thirteen hours. make it twelve when you subtract the brief moments when i opened my eyes. yikes! how am i going to get anything done if i'm never awake?

in other, yuckier news, the midwives' collective called yesterday to say that no one is available. i had no idea it would be so difficult to find a midwife so early - i mean, if i had a 28-day cycle like everyone else, i would only be four days late at this point! and i called over a week ago! does everyone in this town have a 22-day cycle or something? yikes! anyway, the woman who called gave me the numbers of a bunch of other places to call, and i'm still waiting to hear back from seventh generation, so knock wood i don't have to panic yet. but it was still a pretty terrible feeling to think that despite starting to look for a midwife two days after i found out i was pregnant, i may have to do without!

whee!

one of the midwives' groups i contacted called me back last night - just to get more info to pass on to see who is available, but still i feel like i am at least on the road to somewhere! just having a normal conversation about this stuff with a professional who cares & knows what she's talking about feels really really good. the other group is supposed to get back to me tomorrow. i guess whoever calls first wins!

meanhwile, i keep searching ebay for baby stuff even though it's way too soon to think too much about it. trying not to get superstitious.

grrr!!!

talk about worst doctor appointment ever!!

my regular doctor is only working two days a week (because she just had a baby), so i saw one of the other docs in her office. that's happened before, and was not a problem, but i'd never seen this doc before.

for starters, she booked two people for the same time - 9 o'clock - and showed up late. the other woman went in at 9:30, i got to wait until 9:45. during which all of my ack-i-can't-believe-i'm-pregnant-i-need-to-be-reassured-that-everything-is-okay angst crystallised into a full blown ulcer of anxiety. blecch.

now, after waiting forty-five minutes, you might think the doc would start off by apologising. maybe asking how i was feeling. nope! she asks why i'm there, i say i'm pregnant. she looks at her computer and says, hm, looks like you have a file, let me go get that. (yeah, why look at my file before you see me? it's not like it contains my medical history or anything useful like that.)

of course, she can't find the file. she asks if i've had tests done, i say yes. she asks which ones, i say lots, but i don't remember specifically which (there were a lot! chicken pox and measles and hemoglobin and a bunch of other things). she asks if i'm getting an ob, i say no, after discussing it with my regular doctor, i've decided to go with a midwife. she says i should see an ob and soon, as if i look for one when i'm eight weeks (i.e. a month from now) it will be too late. i reiterate that i have discussed it with my doc (the one who has just had a baby and has actually seen my chart and seems to know something) and will go with a midwife and have already made a couple of calls. she says well, it's your job to find one (and i just told you i already started looking). she asks why i'm here. uh, my doc told me to come in for a checkup as soon as i found out if i was pregnant. you're the doc, you should know what to do. she suggests i get a pap & swab sometime in the first trimester. she says, so you know to avoid cats and stuff? i respond that i know some things to avoid but there seem to be lots of ever-changing lists and i'm not sure. so she drops the subject. any other questions? yeah, why'd you double book us and then leave us to sit for half an hour? i was stressed out before i got here, and now i'm extra stressed out and late for work. she ignores me, hands me a lab req and says, any other questions?

i was so steamed about the whole thing i didn't notice till after i left that she never asked the obvious "how are you feeling?" so i completely forgot to ask about the GI symptoms i've been experiencing. grrr.

i booked my pap on the way out, to make sure i could get my doctor and not this one again. what a horrible person! why go into medicine if you don't care about people? bleah.

the changes

it's amazing how quickly you go from "oh god, i'm not pregnant, am i?" to "why am i not pregnant yet?" to "what is that smell?"

everything smells funny. the laundry detergent is overwhelming. i just emptied out a cupboard of clean dishes because i thought i could smell garlic. weird.

i called the midwives' collective this morning. they took my info, and said they will call back, to let me know if they have someone available (how could they not have someone available? i only found out two days ago, and i have a short cycle!). they also said that by the time my jellybean is ready to make an appearance, they maybe won't be at the hospital my doctor recommended anymore. but a couple of their midwives are starting up their own practice, and they will be at women's college, so she gave me their number and i called and left a message.

wish me luck that i hear back soon!

is it going to be like this until october?

everyone is pregnant. everyone! it's all anyone seems to talk about. and i say nothing. ack. i hope october comes quickly (and without incident). this whole not-telling-anyone while worrying and wondering about the seemingly endless dos and don'ts is driving me nuts.

worse still are pregnancy info sites that lead you to believe they are going to be helpful, but then all of the necessary info is "subscribers only." bleah. i will not succumb!

how come there isn't an "indie baby" site out there to go with "indie bride" ? but i guess it would be filled with its own kind of freaks... not the $700 stroller freaks maybe, but the attachment-parenting-breastfeed-till-highschool type freaks. and they're just as bad if not worse. where is the info site for people like me who are pregnant, want to do the right thing, but don't want to be bashed over the head by pedantic puritans or didactic weirdoes or endless advertising? i just want to have a happy healthy baby, and go back to work when my mat leave is done. that doesn't seem to be too unreasonable.

of course, info sites need revenue, and the best way to build revenue is build neuroses - convince people they're on the road to ruin if they don't buy the right book or the right stroller or the right blah blah blah.

i say forget it! i didn't get sucked into the bridal industrial complex when i got married, i can ride this out too.

i just wish there was a straightforward, non-judgy rulebook.

hello!

well, i just found out yesterday morning that i'm pregnant, so i thought i'd start a little blog since of course i can't tell real-life people for a couple of months. funny, we'd been trying since february, but somehow this time i "knew" from the moment of conception. glad i wasn't just kidding myself! i also "know" it's a boy, although i'm not putting any money on that one. we'll find out eventually how accurate a guess that is. in the meantime, my little embryo is going by the name of "jellybean."

that's all for now... i'm still in shock a bit, i guess!