14w6d: Reading Material

No big updates at the moment, but I just wanted to share this Washington Post Magazine story - I started reading it when I got to work, then had to stop because I was tearing up.  Then I went back to it while I ate lunch, and sure enough it made me ugly-cry at my desk.

For men, infertility often becomes a private heartache

It also comes with this absolutely gorgeous picture of sperm and egg, which really reminds you of how amazing and miraculous the whole process is.

13w3d: Shopping Time

First of all, my NT scan went great – before the scan, due to our ages, the babies had a risk of down syndrome of about 1 in 700.  Now, baby A’s risk is about 1 in 7,500, and baby B’s is 1 in more than 10,000.  So it seems pretty safe the say that we’re in the clear!  Risks for all of the other trisotomies are way down, too.  My only hope going in was that the risk of a problem after the scan would be less than the risk of miscarriage with an amnio so that we would know not to do the amnio, and I’m SO happy that it worked out!

The ultrasound was a little long, but spending an hour looking at the babies was fun – we even started to get a sense of their personalities.  Baby A is going to be our troublemaker; no matter how much the tech jiggled my stomach, she refused to get into the right position (at one point, the tech even thought she might be holding her feet in her hands!), and the entire time we were looking at her face she was opening and closing her mouth… I’m wondering if that means she’ll be hungry, talkative, or both!  Baby B, meanwhile, was super cooperative, and even waved to us!  Well, sort of… he made a hand movement that the tech described as “saluting” us, and Henry thought looked more like he was giving us the finger.  Haha.  And no, despite the fact that I assigned them genders here, the tech would not make any guesses on sex.  However, I get to go back in three weeks for them to start checking my cervix, and she said they will most likely be able to tell then!

This weekend I’m going on a very important shopping trip: maternity clothes.  It’s time; I pretty much exhausted my closet finding things to wear to work this week, and I’m doing only slightly better outside of working hours.  The point that I really need maternity clothes was really driven home this morning as I dressed for work.

 

I planned to wear a pair of khakis that have always been a little too big, but I hadn’t worn in a while.  I ironed them (and I almost NEVER iron so you know I was desperate) and proceeded to get dressed.  I pulled up the pants, tried to close them…. and a good three inches remained between the button and the button hole.  I considered it for a second, sucked in everything that can be sucked, and just managed to get them to close.

Great!  Until I turned around – there on my butt was the world’s most obvious panty line.  And could you even sort of make out the pattern on my underwear through the thin pants?  Yup, you could.  I signed heavily, walked over to my underwear drawer, and started searching for the pair of nude, no-line briefs I’d bought for a wedding with a thin bridesmaid dress, all the while wondering if I’d be able to button the pants again.  No luck on the briefs, but there staring up at me was another possible solution to my problem: my one and only thong.

I know some women love thongs, but I am not one of them; I’ve just never been able to get comfortable.  And this was a particularly evil thong, a cheap novelty thing I got as a gift at my bridal shower when my butt was at least a size smaller than it is now.  But, it was a light color and would mean my ironing efforts were not in vain.

So, that’s how I ended up walking around all day with pinching pants and a permanent wedgie from a too-small thong with the word “bride” emblazoned across the crotch.  I can’t wait to go shopping!

13w1d: Confidence Rising

So, after that last post, I realized how silly I was being and decided to tell the rest of my friends.  I called them up, everyone was happy, and I haven’t worried since!

Yeah, right.

Actually, after that last post the achiness in my pelvis continued to nag at me.  It didn’t hurt much but it was constant and didn’t seem to be improving, and I started to worry that I had a UTI.  Finally I decided to call my doctor to ease my worries.  Everyone online calls their doctor and is told, “If it doesn’t hurt more than menstrual cramps and there’s no spotting, it’s normal.”  It didn’t and there wasn’t, so I made the call confident I’d get that reassurance and be able to move on.  I didn’t - instead, the nurse said, “We have an appointment open at 9:15 tomorrow, would you like to come in then?”  Once an appointment was offered I couldn’t say no (obviously they suspected something was horribly wrong if they weren’t giving me the standard line about spotting!), so I made plans to go in the next morning.

Of course, when I woke up the next day the pain was almost gone.  But since the missed appointment charge is almost as much as my co-pay, and I’ll never pass up the opportunity for an ultrasound, I decided to go in anyway.  The doctor was really nice (I’ve now met three out of the four doctors in this practice and like them all) and told me not to feel silly about coming in; since they have the ultrasound machine right there in their office, she said that they don’t mind taking a quick peek when we’re worried.  So that’s what we did and – shocker – the babies were fine, even moving around.  She also checked my cervix and – shocker again – it was long and closed, just like it’s supposed to be.

I was there for less than five minutes but it was very reassuring, especially since at the time of that ultrasound I was past the 12 week mark so starting to be in the range where some people say that the first trimester is over.  And with that reassurance, we really did tell a LOT of people over the weekend!  There are still a few friends left in the dark, but just because we haven’t seen them in person since we started telling and haven’t gotten to the point of calling people with the news yet.  I even told my coworkers!  And, amazingly, I haven’t had my post-telling panic attack thinking that we jinxed everything!

Speaking of telling, I also figured out the solution to a problem that’s been nagging at me.  See, I’ve been torn about what exactly to do when we “announce” on Facebook (I’m not a huge fan of Facebook “announcements” but whatever).  I want to acknowledge my infertility in some way, since I’m sure there are others out there having problems and I want them to know that they’re not alone, but I don’t want the news of my infertility (which has been kept 100% OFF Facebook) to overshadow the happy news.  Basically I’ve been trying to figure out a secret code that only infertiles will be able to decipher.

What I’ve finally decided to do is to “like” my fertility center on Facebook at about the same time that I announce my pregnancy.  I’ve always wanted to like the center, but haven’t been brave enough to publically do it.  By doing it at about the same time as I go public, I figure that anyone who is curious will put two and two together, and people who don’t think about infertility probably won’t even notice.  I’m really happy with this plan, and Henry even said that he is going to do the exact same thing!

So we’re almost ready to go public.  Assuming everything goes well at our NT screen tomorrow, there will be nothing holding us back!