Week 6: Sweet Pea

Baby's now the size of a sweet pea!
Growing like crazy, baby is starting to sprout eyes, ears, nose, cheeks and chin. Those little hands and feet- still webbed like paddles- might wiggle by week's end, the heart is beating (almost twice as fast as yours!), and blood is starting to circulate.

http://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/blogs/1sttrimester/pages/week-6-sweet-pea.aspx?r=0

post ultrasound update

Well, apparently good things can come from ultrasounds too, not just miscarriages and ovarian cysts! We had our first ultrasound yesterday at 5w0d, and everything looks as good as can be expected at this very early stage. It was too soon to see a heartbeat or even the embryo, but we saw the "apparent intrauterine sac." So the good news is that this isn't an ectopic pregnancy and it's probably not multiples. Now our next step is to wait until 7w3d (Friday, Sept 9) for our next u/s. Hopefully we will see a heartbeat then! I spent over 45 minutes on the phone yesterday setting up my transfer back to my regular ob/gyn from the reproductive medicine clinic. So we also have an u/s scheduled on Mon 9/19 (8w6d - just past the dreaded 8-week mark!), a "new patient" visit on Tues 9/20 (9w0d), and another u/s on Mon 10/17 (12w6d). It's hard to believe that I might actually be able to keep these appointments and still be pregnant in October. I'm trying to have trust in my body to do the right thing, and of course I'm hoping that that means having a full-term pregnancy! (Please, please, please, please, please....)  So, cautious optimism for now...

Week 5: Appleseed

Just got my bloodwork results from this morning:
My HCG was 1,969 - definitely doubled from the 400 or so it was at on Friday! Yay! Now we get to have an early ultrasound tomorrow afternoon to make sure that everything physically looks like it should so far. It'll be too early to see a heartbeat or anything, but at least we should be able to see the "yolk sack." Fingers crossed!



BTW, we should be at 5 weeks today.

Baby's now the size of an appleseed!
Your embryo, which doesn't look like much more than a tadpole right now, is actually starting to form major organs (heart, kidney, liver, stomach) and systems (nervous, circulatory, digestive). Baby's presence in your uterus triggers production of HCG (the hormone detected by pregnancy tests), which triggers the production of other hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which triggers all those great symptoms you've probably been noticing!


http://pregnant.thebump.com/pregnancy/first-trimester/articles/your-pregnancy-week-5.aspx

Waiting, waiting, and more waiting

Here I thought the waiting to get pregnant was the worst part. Now I'm remembering that the waiting for the first trimester to pass is just as bad. I'm trying so hard to use all my skills (mindfulness, self-care, relaxation, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, etc.), but I'm still so stressed. I'm getting my bloodwork redone tomorrow (hopefully my HCG will have doubled, which means we have a potentially viable pregnancy and not just a "chemical pregnancy"), but then it will probably be at least another week or so before an early ultrasound can be at all useful.

But what I'm really most nervous about is getting past the 8-week mark. Our first miscarriage was at 7w6d (when I thought I was at 10 weeks) and our second miscarriage was at 8w0d (when I thought I was at 8w2d -- and this was after seeing a heartbeat at about 7wk. Awful!). Seeing good numbers tomorrow would definitely be reassurance (fingers crossed! knock on wood!), but getting past 8 weeks is the bigger and far more important test.

And when is the 8-week mark, you ask? Oh, yes, it's on my birthday.  This could either be the best birthday ever, or the cruelest trick the fates have ever played.

Countdown...

10:30am: 
My first doctor's appointment is today at 3:50. Basically it's just an appointment to do bloodwork to confirm that I actually am pregnant (and that I didn't just happen to get false positives on the THREE tests I took). Regardless, I am very anxious. Remember that sense of calm I told you about in my last post? That lasted all of about 24 hours. Now I'm starting to get increasingly nervous. Doctors' offices are where the bad things happen - that's where they tell you that you've miscarried, or that you need surgery, or that you only have one ovary left. I'm really hoping that this time doctors' offices can become a place of celebration!

5pm  update: 
So I didn't get any good news in the office (I had to wait for all the tests to be run, so they sent me home to wait for a nurse's call), but I did get good news over the phone!! So far all my numbers look great! Apparently my progesterone is 20-something and my HCG level is 430-something.  According to these sites that I later googled (since I, of course, wanted to double-check the nurse's reassurance that everything looked great), that's right where my numbers should be. Whew! So now I get to have new bloodwork done on Tuesday (to make sure my HCG levels double by then), and if that looks good then we get to schedule an "early ultrasound." Fingers crossed!

Surprise!

I'm still in a bit of a state of shock. I was convinced that it was just another month of disappointment on the baby-making front. Convinced. I had already taken two home pregnancy tests (one at 10 days post ovulation, which I know is ridiculously too early and totally pointless, and the other 3 days ago at 12 DPO, which at that point was about 50/50 for accuracy so also fairly pointless) and both were negative. Like usual. Like basically every other time (except twice) that I've taken an HPT in the past 47 or so months since we started "trying." I had all the signs that I was about to get my period, but then I didn't. So I peed on yet another dollar-store stick, just to be sure, while also "knowing" that it was dumb to do so because I was just going to get my period later in the day. So I did it, just to go through the formality. After waiting the requisite wait time, I glanced at the test strip. Yep, just one line (the "control" line), like always. "Wait, is there a little shadow there?" I asked myself, "That's not a second line, is it?"   I scrutinized that thing from all possible angles, frantically trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I've heard people say that "a line is a line, no matter how faint," so I decided to pull out the big gun: the $7 HPT that I'd been saving from the 3-pack of digital tests that I'd bought the very first time I got pregnant in late 2008. The two-minute wait on that thing was agonizing. But the advantage of the $7 version is that there's no question about whether there's a second line or not, becuase it just spits out "pregnant" or "not pregnant" with virtually no risk of a false positive. And there it was. In black and white. Clear as day. Printed in plain English. Pregnant.

I started shaking. Really?!? After sharing the news with Mike, I immediately calmed down and an amazing sense of peace came over me. I thought I'd be even more nervous this time, after two previous losses, but for some reason I really believe that this is finally it. So I'm just going to let that feeling be there and not second guess it. We'll see how long that lasts. ;)  Mike did "make" me meditate for 10 minutes before I left for work, so hopefully that will help me remain calm and keep my perspective.

Wow.