Oh Happy Day!

Well, I had my anatomy scan with the peri yesterday. The baby looks great and it is definitely a girl. This time instead of saying "well, I don't see any boy parts" he was confidant enough to say "it's a girl!" I need to go back to the tech at my OB's office and tell her that she should just not say anything as early as 10 weeks no matter what she thinks. She says a lot of inappropriate things! I digress....

Everything looked wonderful. There were no markers for Downs. I don't know if I've mentioned here that we opted not to do any diagnostic testing so this is the only look we get at Downs markers. All measurements were perfect for a normal, healthy baby. My husband said that he felt a little bad at how relieved he was. We had committed to happily taking whatever baby God blessed us with. I suppose it's not bad to be relieved, though. We're just happy that God chose to give us a genetically normal baby. That's a really big deal for a couple of 43 yo's.

My peri also checked over my uterus and cervix again. I have a small uterus and a short cervix so there were initially concerns about being able to carry a baby to term without a cerclage and probably a buttload of bedrest. Amazingly, both the uterus and the cervix are of normal size/length now. It's true! They are made to change to accomodate a baby and that's exactly what my body has done. Take that RE's that made me worry more than I needed to!!!

And in a shocking turn of events; my peri released me. Yes, I have been released to the OB with no further visits of the kind necessary for a person of high risk unless something comes up in the future. That'll just about make a crazy girl swoon. "Don't go making me feel almost normal, Doctor!"

DH and I celebrated by going to my favorite little cafe (which happens to be right next to my peri's office) and getting two big, fat, made with white flour, bluberry muffins. Mmmmm, I miss white flour sometimes. However, within 45 minutes of eating it, my fingers blew up like sausages. Oh well, back to whole grain.

Speaking of food. I've been craving my mama's fried chicken lately. I haven't made it in probably about 20 years. Well, we've invited my FIL for supper and I'm going to make fried chicken, mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, and biscuits (yes, with white flour). Mmmm, just like Mama used to make (my parents don't eat like that anymore, either). Don't know why, but the comfort foods of old are really calling to me these days. I'll not deny myself altogether. Once in a while, you've just got to live a little!

Life is good....the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, my cats are huddled around me, my sweet husband is upstairs playing video games, and my precious baby is growing just as she should.

I think I'll go take a shower now so that I can go out and buy something PINK... :-) Time to start the name negotiation. Good times!

New Kitty

Welcome Little Girl! We have a new addition to our home. After the loss of my Sunshine, my little 6 yo kitty started getting depressed. So 2 weeks ago, I got a new little kitty. I won't post her name b/c it happens to be the same as the female character of an uber popular series of v*mpire books and I don't want every 'tween that searches it to find themselves here. I read the whole series, but it had absolutely nothing to do with naming my kitty that name. In fact, it didn't even occur to me until my BFF said something about it. After living with her for 4 days, it was just the only name that kept washing through my mind. If you're not familiar with the books, it's Italian for beauty.

New Kitty likes watching tv, taking long naps, and reading chick lit.

She also likes to chase the cursor on the computer screen, but I haven't been able to capture an image of that. :-)

"Hmm, I think the boyfriend did it."

"Don't scratch my tummy while I'm sleeping!"

"Thanks for making that run to the bookstore. I'm just about done with this one."

6 YO Kitty hasn't totally warmed up to her, but she has started playing with her a little bit in between the growling and hissing...and she's come out of hiding. She can even stand to sleep with me with New Kitty in the bed. New Kitty is super sweet and most importantly, she loves Daddy. A big goal for New Kitty was for her to not be afraid of Daddy as 6 YO Kitty is.

In pg news, I'm 19 wks today. I'm definitely feeling the baby move. So weird. Back to the peri on Friday. I had some cramping on Sat night that was a bit scary, but it didn't last long and hasn't come back. When do you know when you're supposed to worry? This is such a foreign land for me.

Wasn't I supposed to relax now?

I told myself that once I got that 16 wk u/s behind me that I would relax. Sadly, it's just not that easy. I have had some relief, but it's not like I can just let go and wait to get to 40 wks. The thing that I can't get out of my head is my local RE saying to me last year, "that uterus is never going to support a pregnancy!" It haunts me. I'm so afraid that she may be right. Every day of this pregnancy I have been amazed that nothing has gone wrong. I hate that I feel like I'm spending the pregnancy waiting for something bad to happen. I'm trying so hard to enjoy it. What's a girl to do?

It's a ????

Well, thank goodness that I had been questioning the sono tech's belief from the 10 wk scan that we were having a boy. I went yesterday for my 16 wk visit with the peri and he thinks it's a girl. He didn't seem totally convinced so I'm not settling on anything until the next visit in 3 wks.

Oh my...

Well, tomorrow I'm off on a long weekend to NYC with my MIL and 2 SIL's. This will be the first time that I've ever been around any of them this much. I'm very nervous. It will also be the first time that I've seen my pg SIL since finding out about her pgy. I had this trip planned before knowing about her pgy.

It would make it so much easier if I could drink! A nice little buzz maintained through the weekend could make everything seem a little nicer. I hope I'm worrying about nothing.

More thoughts

So I've realized that my last post could have given the impression that people who've had multiple pregnancy losses are or should be without hope for success. That couldn't be further from the truth. I want to talk a bit more about this. I hope that I didn't hurt anyone by my comments in that post.

My point was that in the 1950's there were so few options available to women with fertility issues or RPL. We are so fortunate today to have a plethora of diagnostic testing and treatment options available to us. My mother had none of that. Given the despair and loss of hope that I felt as I went through my journey, I thought that my mother may have felt something similar. However, she did not have the looming age issue that I had.

In other news, I had a good OB appointment on Friday. Everything is just as it should be.

A Talk with Mama about Pregnancy Loss

I grew up knowing my whole childhood that my mother had suffered multiple pregnancy losses b/t children numbers one and two. In fact, the matter of fact manner in which she always spoke of her losses did not serve me well when I had my own. B/c of the way she always spoke of them, I greatly underestimated the great pain and depth of despair that goes along with such a loss.

I am the 5th of 5 children. By the time I came along, the losses were a memory 8 to 9 years old and older than that by the time she was discussing them with me. It's so strange to me now how it was just something that we always seemed to talk about. Did we really or is that just how I remember it? Anyway, she went on to have 4 more healthy children after those losses and had a baby at home while they were happening. I suppose that makes all the difference.

Allow me to digress a moment for background purposes....My sister also m/c her first pg and went on to have 4 healthy babies in 12 years. My mother's sister had 3 or more m/c after her 1st over a 12 year period until giving birth to number two. All of these women seemed to sail through these losses. How is that possible? Was I too young to see the truth? Does going on to have a baby change it all? I don't know the answers to these questions. I know that I still ache for my lost baby even while I nurture and grow this one in me.

Okay, back to the story...

This weekend I went home for... Well, you know what I went home for. I don't think we have to name it here. And to tell my parents about the pregnancy. Sat night my mother and I couldn't sleep. We sat up in the living room talking. I started asking questions about her miscarriages. So now she tells me that maybe there were 4. I always knew that one of them was a 2nd trimester loss and that she almost died from blood loss, but now I am just heartbroken by the story. She was taken to an Army hospital and was knocked out immediately without being told anything. They took the baby, by a D&C I suppose. She doesn't know any details of what they did to her. The procedure was not abdominal. She knows that it was a boy. She did not get to see the baby. The Army, an organization that has to give a name to everything, made her name the baby that she never saw. She has no idea why she lost the baby because, as she says, "the Army doesn't tell you anything." It sounds like placental abruption to me. They did not tell her how far along she was, but she thinks 4 or 5 months. I'm so thankful that I did not come of age in the '50's. She was treated as if she had no brain.

Oh, the story will be so much more poignant if you understand that my mother got married at 17 in 1954. She had her first baby 11 months later at age 18. All of these losses were happening when she was 19 years old. Can you imagine that?

Now, here's the thing that I really wanted to tell you. I asked her, "when you had all of those miscarriages, did you get to a point where you thought you would never have another baby?" I almost fell off my chair when she said, "No, uh uh." I mean, it was so obvious that it had never occurred to her.

Youthful naivete or faith? What do you think?