chesneycat

I have odd dreams.  Seriously odd dreams.

Last night... well, I know where it came from - reading about aranel13's potential new kitten shortly before bed and a discussion with tekaranlady a few days ago somehow combined in my subconscious to produce the following.

I dreamed that I was breast-feeding a cat.


Help?

I was a little premature with my last post.

The next [and hopefully final] addition goes thusly:

I never expected to find myself vomiting blood.

*sigh*

I've just got back from hospital, having had the full german ambulance treatment on wednesday night. A day and a half of blood tests, monitoring and an endoscopy later, I apparently don't have any bleeding in my throat or any bleeding ulcers, but I do have a minor hernia, and can add antacids to my daily menu for the foreseeable future.

Huh.  This also explains all the belching.

Then there are the things you read about, but don't give all that much credence to.  My skin is wonderfully soft and glowy - it gave me away at my cousin's wedding this weekend.  Dad had mentioned my pregnancy to his brothers after the ceremony, but hadn't got round to all the nephews and nieces yet, when one of them mentioned to our mutual uncle how, well, glowy I was looking.  "There's a good reason for that!"

Ah well.  It's all going well, as far as I can tell.  I've got a couple more appointments tomorrow, one with the haematology professor, and the other for a nuchal translucency scan.  Fingers crossed...

... I was lying in a bed in the Hallamshire, just down the road from here.

Today, I'm a little over twelve weeks with number four, and I've got a hell of a lot to be thankful for aside from the obvious.  Looking back, a few things stand out.  How amazing everyone around me was, how compassionate and supportive.  My friends around the world who kept me in their thoughts, my family, and those I know who've been through the same thing and reached out to me, some of whom were in the middle of their own dark hours at the time.

This is Roo's legacy.  A helluva lot of love.  We were deepened by what we went through, Jez and I, and given such a great gift alongside the pain.  Everything wonderful in the world was thrown into bright relief, our selves included. It broke our lives apart, a crucible or a chrysalis, and it fucking hurt.  That's change, I guess.  Change and growth, and the fact that nothing truly worthwhile ever comes easy.  Growing and healing took time, and it was undeniably hard, and I won't pretend we're anywhere near finished with it.  I don't think I want to.  Coming of age, growing up... you set yourself all these landmarks as a child and as an adult, and they really mean nothing.  What use are they, except as walls to hem yourself in?  Life is a continuum, in every way. We're analogue, unquantised, the butterflies of chaos.

So.  I'm not just thankful for current little one, though that does take an immeasurably large part of it. Nor my own strengths, the parts that were lent or given and the parts I always had unfound within me, though they were certainly invaluable when we faced the same pain again and again, and through all the crises we've been through in the last three months.  I certainly don't pretend that it's all going to be plain sailing from here onwards either; it'd be nice if these experiences gave you a kind of get out of jail free card for life, but it doesn't work that way.  And it doesn't matter, because we've been gifted, all of us, with the scope to keep going and to keep living, to see those crumbs of hope, the lights in the darkness, the people we love or who love us that keep us living. I think Yoda said it best.

Luminous beings are we.

This kind of stupid-inspired injustice really hacks me off.

TK Diagnostics is my favourite pregnancy/ovulation test e-bay seller, and definitely not today's featured idiot.  They're fantastic, and I'd recommend them to anyone. I was just looking out their details to pass on to someone here in the UK, when I spotted that, bizarrely, they'd had some negative feedback.

Here it is:
    all tests gave a negative result even on a 7month pregnant person

Er, yes.  So?  You're seven months pregnant, dearie, and probably have enough HCG floating around in your urine to sink the Titanic.  What the hell kind of chance does a 10mIU/ml ultra-early test have when faced with that?  Didn't you read the printed literature that they send out with the tests, specifically the bit that points out the high likelihood of false negatives in late pregnancy due to the 'prozone' effect?  Look, I'm sure no-one expects you to understand the science behind it, but surely you can still read.

No? Then let me spell it out in words of one syllable.

If you're up the duff BIG time... They. Don't. Work!

Idiot.

...it'd be someone that none of you know, someone that I've never even met.  This woman lost a child a couple of weeks before I lost Roo, and was so kind to me when I began to go through the same thing.  Seriously, she was amazing.  As it turns out, that was the second of five losses she's had to go through within a twelve month period, with two others (one at 25w) before that.  The last one just turned out to be an ectopic, and she's lost the tube as well.

Shit, but life's not fair.

Back in April... well, I know what I'd have given up for her, and I gave it anyway.  Now I have nothing except tears and prayers, and a strong wish for a god both all-powerful and easily coerced.  Enough is enough, dammit.

...And because I'm a masochist.

I've got a number of posts tagged "pregnancy" that I wasn't planning on unlocking just yet, but they may as well be now. Hopes, fears, dreams... if you're feeling curious or ghoulish, or compassionate and with words of advice, or just want to see what I've been thinking/feeling over the last two months, then feel free to read them, and comment or not.


I think I'll go and open a bottle of wine now.

We lost Elizabeth from the group last night.  She had a heartbeat two weeks ago, but nothing yesterday, and the fetus hadn't grown.  Missed miscarriage.  Apparently, once you've seen the heartbeat, the chance of loss is down to 3-10%, and most 1st trimester losses like this are either due to placental clots or a trisomy (extra copy of a chromosone; Downs is probably the least harmful of these).  Her baby was measuring 3 days behind at her previous scan.

Mine was 5 behind.

Statistically, we're likely to lose another two or three people from the group.


Please don't let it be me.

*sigh*

6 days to go until the next scan.

Yesterday morning, I met Sue, my primary midwife.  She's one of a team of seven that work in the area, and it'll be her and Carolyn who I'll have most contact with.  She's really a very nice person, and I feel pretty comfortable with her. I think that's a very good thing.

Well, what I thought was going to become morning sickness... wasn't.  Just heartburn, appearing like clockwork at about 4pm every afternoon, probably caused by the progesterone.  Fingers crossed I'm just one of the lucky ones.  I've had a PM from one of the girls in the buddy group, and she felt nothing much while pregnant with either of her two children - it's great to hear things like that.  God, I must be so typical of a first time pregnant woman, worrying over every little thing!

But the sad thing?  This wonderfully compassionate woman who PM'd me is running out of hope for herself.  I feel like such a cow for stressing over not feeling bad, when she's staring the worst-case scenario in the face. She's been told she's still got a slim chance, and all the christians in the group are out praying for her, while the realists sit there in bitter silence. Statistically, the double-decimation means that we're likely to lose seven girls. We've lost three already. None of us wants to see anyone else go through that, but we'd be amazingly lucky as a collective if we didn't. And that little, selfish part of all of us is quietly whispering "at least it isn't you", while the terrified voice of logic points out that "it still might be". But if I could choose anyone in the group to last the course, it'd be her, maybe even ahead of myself. She's had awful, awful luck with her last three pregnancies, and if anyone doesn't deserve to miscarry, it's her.  You could say that it might be better if that pain is only fated to those who can cope, or know how to get through it from past experience, but there's only so much that the average person can take.

And Mum thinks I should stop worrying and "enjoy" the pregnancy.

I am, and it's an amazing experience, but I cannot do it without worrying as well. I know what's at stake here. I know how hard it was to reach this point, and if I ever conceive again it'll be just as miraculous as this conception was, so I'm taking nothing for granted. And I know I'm nowhere near the end of the road, yet.  You know, this isn't worry, or fear.  This is desperation, frantic wanting. I want this so badly....

It doesn't matter that 80% of us will have brand new babies at Christmas. Right now, I'm crying for those of us who won't.

We have a heartbeat!

It's small, faint and fluttery, but it's there.

The sonographer also measured the fetal pole, and right now it's measuring 6w5d.  According to my dates, I'd be expecting 7w3d today, but it's so small that I can easily believe 10% errors on the measurement she made, if not more.  Plus, it's not uncommon for embryos/fetuses to measure several days ahead/behind at this early stage.

We'll get a proper dating scan done on the 26th.


I'm thrilled.

There's still a lot that can go wrong, but fewer things than there were.  Fingers still optimistically crossed.

Really, I simply must dig out my old Babylon5 videos...

Of course, I'm not talking about that. 

I'm starting to feel... unsettled, I think is the right word.  It began yesterday and last night, and is still lingering this morning.  Not quite nausea, yet, but I think it's on the way.

I knew this would happen the minute I started worrying about not having morning sickness....


Oh, and GB, assuming you ever read these posts when I reclassify them?  I'm highly amused by your podcast on birth.  And yes, I am looking forward to the miracle of childbirth.  The whole system is miraculous, if you ask me.  Right now, I have a brand new human being growing within me.  And yes, the HCG is giving me nausea, the progesterone is making me hot and has expanded my breasts from a C cup to an E cup in three short weeks, and he/she is leeching all the energy and iron from my body (no prizes for guessing why I'm craving red meat and broccoli right now...).

None of that matters.

Tomorrow, we should be able to see how fast his/her heart is beating.

Just a general update today, so time to re-post the changing picture (now removed, for obvious reasons.):


In two days time, we'll be heading back in to the Hallamshire for my second scan.  At that stage, there really ought to be something to see: either a fetus somewhere in the region of a centimetre long, with a rapidly beating heart, or, anything less than that.  The less you see, the worse things are.  It's hard to believe it's been, what, eleven days since the last scan? There was nothing to see at all on that, but we weren't expecting to see anything then. Reading the posts on the late November buddy-group thread, I do have a fairly good idea of what's normal, and what's not, and although a few of the girls have been encouraged to keep hoping after bad results, I know that this scan will be a make-or-break moment.

Strangely enough, I've been having a number of stress dreams.  Can't imagine why...

I saw the doctor today, to get the travel insurance claim form filled out.  She did reassure me that this extreme tiredness IS quite normal - not that I thought tiredness wasn't, just that it is rather extreme! - but then went on to say that she always worries about women who aren't suffering extreme morning sickness at this stage.  Oh, you mean like me?  I guess the tiredness is there, and the cravings for iron-rich food, but all that guarantees to my mind is a growing sac/placenta, and not necessarily the contents.  Oh, and the expanding boobs, but that's the progesterone from the corpus luteum.  Nausea right now would be very reassuring, a sign that my system is indeed chock full of HCG from the fetus him/herself.  I might be starting to feel it, but I've got a feeling that it might just be Easter over-indulgence.  The in-laws, oh, they DO put on a good spread!

Earlier this week, I had some fairly sharp, one-sided cramping.  This set off the alarm bells of course - both the Oh my god, is it in the right place? bell, and also the Oh my god Kath, you're acting like a stupid hypochondriac! bell.

Both were valid reactions, and my GP believed I was right to raise it with her. The next step was cancelling all my travel to Cornwall, and informing the parents that'd I'd be going into hospital (the early pregnancy emergency unit ward no less) for an early scan, but NOT that I "might be in surgery on Friday" as the doctor so kindly informed me.  She was also very reassuring about the fact that it was probably nothing, but always liked to err on the side of caution for pregnancies after infertility.

Anyway, the nurse and technician were thrilled to be dealing with someone who didn't expect to see any more than a gestational sac at this stage (apparently some women expect a LOT more), and also glad that I was already familiar with "dildo-cam".  What did we see?  Exactly what they'd expect, and hope to see at this stage - a nice, clear gestational sac in the right place, and a healthily lined uterus.  Just the one, and I'm certainly not going to complain about that.  Twins would be cool, but they ARE higher risk, and all I want right now is a healthy baby of more or less any description.  They do have a policy of not discharging people until the viability of the pregnancy has been confirmed (or not, as the case may be), so I'm back for another trans-vaginal ultrasound in two weeks time.  The ward registrar also said that I really shouldn't fly anywhere, and although they couldn't stop me, they'd want me to spend my time in a non-stop loop of drinking water, munching aspirin, and prancing around in embolistic stockings.

We decided to cut our losses at this point, and ditch the holiday.  I need to get a doctors note, but the insurance company ought to be happy with that.  Hey, it'll give Jez a chance to prepare for the year 8 head interview, and I have no illusions about the fun of long-haul travel.  There'll be other holidays.

So... I didn't get a print-out of the scan, but this is kind of what things look like right now:



Not much to see yet!  Watch this space in two weeks time...  Oh, and they decided I didn't need to beta-HCG tests, as things are looking fine so far.

Over at the Ovusoft forums, I'm part of a buddy group for women expecting between the 15th-30th November.  There's quite a lot of us involved in it, well over a dozen and probably closer to two.

And the attrition seems to be starting.  You want to hug the individual, you empathise with their pain, you share the dismay at the spotting, the cramps, the pessimistic betas.  But at the same time, there's a little thought in the back of my head that's just reminding me of the statistics.

One in six.  Or maybe one in five.

Over the next seven months we are, quite literally, likely to be decimated nearly twice over.

And the thought that always lingers longest is "Thank God it isn't me/Please don't let it be me".  It's nasty, and it's not even reliable stats, but you also find yourself thinking that everyone who leaves makes your own position a little more secure.  It doesn't, of course.  I don't think this makes us nasty people for thinking that way.  Desperate, perhaps, and willing to clutch at any straw, to scramble over the backs of drowning men.  Is that a cause for genuine guilt?  Or survivor's guilt?  I don't know.  But I want to be there for all of us, no matter who ends up taking the blow we all dread.  Because it's a certainty that some of us will.

Right now, Jez is stressed, I've yet to tell Mum & Dad about the scan, and I'm just praying.

Please don't let it be me.

What else can I do?

I've been having a few left-sided cramps.  They don't seem to be coming from my ovary, and they're definitely not coming from my uterus.  They're not too bad, but they have been pretty intense once or twice.  So, I saw the doctor this morning, to mention that and also check on the best way to medicate my tonsils.  The good news is that I can have as much paracetamol as anyone else (yay for working drugs!), and the... other... news, is that this GP used to work at the Jessop, and still lives by their mantra of paranoia: "Assume that all women are pregnant, and that all pregnant women are ectopic".  And so, I'm off in to the Hallamshire tomorrow to have an early scan.  Because my dates are a little off - my marginally delayed ovulation puts me about two days behind the date you get working from the LMP - it's debatable whether or not a heartbeat will be detectable at this early stage.  I've been trawling through the Ovusoft forum, and while some women have had heartbeats as early as 5w, others have had to wait until well into 6w or 7w before the pregnancy/embryo is advanced enough.  But, they should be able to figure out where the sac/yolk-sac is, at the very least. 

If there's no heartbeat, well, it's probably still too early.  But they want my HCG levels checked as well.  A level of 2000 should be associated with a h/b, but it takes time to get the levels doubling that far.  By my calcs, I think I'd expect 1000-1200 by tomorrow, maybe as high as 1500, but I reckon I'll still be a good 24 hours plus away from the 2000 level and the heartbeat.  If the HCG level is >2000, and there is a heartbeat, all is well.  If it's >2000 with no heartbeat, all is NOT necessarily well.  If it's <2000 with a heartbeat, we pat the u/s technician on the back for detecting it early.  If it's <2000 with no heartbeat (and guess which option is statistically most likely here?) it's almost certainly just too early to see anything, and I'm looking at sequential blood tests over the next week or so, monitoring how rapidly the HCG levels are rising (in theory).  Worst case scenario, it's ectopic, but we won't even go there for now.

Bottom line - I'm going to be in and out the Hallamshire for the next week if I don't see a h/b tomorrow.  I won't be going to Cornwall, and we won't be flying to Hawai'i.  And I'll be on the phone to the insurance company YET AGAIN!

Anyway... time for some more paracetamol, at last!

Still 4w4d & counting...

Anyway, today I rang up Continental and my holiday insurers to see what my options were for rearranging my flights to Hawai'i.

The situation is this: Jez and I fly out on the 3rd April, he flies back on the 12th, which is when I would have gone up the mountain, and I was due to fly back on the 17th.  Of course, being pregnant, I can't go above 12,000ft, and even lower altitudes are not recommended.  So, I need to sort out alternative accommodation on either Big Island or Oahu (potentially with an extra inter-island flight as well), or get earlier flights home.

The girls I spoke to at Continental were fantastic.  I'm damn sure they did everything they could, which amounted to bugger all in the end, but they spent the best part of an hour trying to sort something out for me - and all of this is stuff that they're not obliged to do.  I think I'm going to write them a nice letter, assuming the flights go okay.

My insurers, on the other hand, balked from the start.  Arsetards.  Yes, I know that being less than 36 weeks means that I'm fit to travel.  But no, that does NOT mean that I'm fit to ascend the biggest fucking mountain in the whole world (yeah, I'm counting from the sea floor, but as far as single lumps of mountain go, it's the biggest, so nyaaaah), and no, the observatories don't have a portfolio of hotels scattered across the islands.  I can't cancel full-stop, and I can't recoup the excess costs.

Watch this space.  Paul at work was lovely, seeing me in my utterly distraught-cum-ready to tear people apart mood, and is trying to get something sorted with PATT.  I may come out better off from all this after all... as my flights (and hence Jez's) can't be cancelled due to events which occured after I booked them, the research council may still be footing the bill.  And if they don't, well, I haven't used up my travel grant quite yet.

Final thought.  Tea does, indeed, make everything better. 

4 weeks, 4 days and counting.  This is the first landmark - 18DPO and high temps still present.  No doubt about that at least.

*yawn*

Apparently, insomnia isn't all that uncommon either.  So, I'm knackered due to all of my energy being sapped, in bed by half nine, and even then I wake up throughout the night.    Joyful!  Managed to snooze on and off until 6am, but after that it was just a matter of snuggling into my pillow and waiting for the minutes to pass.  Which they did, rather less slowly than I'd have expected.

Anyway, we had sex again for the first time this week, the first time since we got that positive result.  For the first few days, we were both feeling hugely overprotective, but once the tiredness set in that was the main problem - I certainly wanted a bit of loving, but didn't have enough energy to move, let alone shag!  I made a special effort to wake up last night, and it was good.  No spotting this morning - it'd be unsurprising if there was, but I'm kind of glad there isn't.  Makes me feel that things are all safely sealed away in there, and we didn't jostle the cervix too much.  It's good to get over this hurdle before the mental blocks set in though - I certainly wouldn't want to spend the next 8 months acting like some kind of born again virgin.

Physically, I can still manage a slow breakfast, my tits are inflating, and I feel nice and toasty-warm.  Right now, I've got nothing to worry about.  Whatever happens was decided weeks ago, and all I can do is go with the flow.  And it's a pretty decent ride right now, to be honest.

Four weeks, three days and counting.

I seem to have gone off chocolate.  The apocalypse is clearly nigh...

I wish I could stop worrying.  I wish I could exist under all the illusions of everything working out perfectly first time, without a care in the world.  But I can't, and it's so hard not to over-analyse things.  I'm sure that's all I'm doing, but I don't seem to be able to convince myself to shut the heck up and start just dealing with life as it comes.

Anyway.  What's been going on.

I still have odd cramps here and there - some round the ovary, some round the uterus, and hopefully not from anywhere in between.  My breasts feel like they've been used as a punchbag, or I've been jogging without a bra on.  They feel fuller as well.  I seem to have some minor nausea, but that could be down to the estrogen - I think that's on the way up right now, and I know damn well how it affects me!  Finally, the tiredness.


Oh, the tiredness!

I could sleep all day.

What else has happened.  Oh yes - Jo, my oldest friend, is also pregnant.  And she's got almost exactly the same EDD as me! (Nov 25th cf. Nov 26th.)  Spooky, huh?
In other news, yesterday was chaos.  It's okay to go to 12,000ft while pregnant, but not beyond.  The observatories on Mauna Kea are at 14,000ft, so observing is a BIG no-no.  Luckily, they've found a replacement for me already.  Unluckily, that means our holiday is coming out of our own pocket rather than being partially funded by good-old PPARC.