(I wanted to show a picture of our bean, but my scanner isn't plugged in and that was all the resistance it took for me to throw the idea out.)
After what were nearly the longest 10 (and a half, haha) weeks of my life, I'm pleased to announce we are 15 weeks prego! I don't think it will come as a big shock to anyone, seeing as Charlie is 3 in December and we were likely going to have more than one kid (at home). We're due April 4th, and we will have an ultrasound on November 15 to (hopefully) find out if it's a boy or a girl. (Place your bets, I think it's a boy, Charlie and John say girl.)
I know it's not really politically correct and you're just supposed to suck it up and not say too many bad things out loud, just to close girl friends in confidence as it's a miracle and all, but because I'm a whiner, I will now elaborate on about the longest 10 weeks of my life. Unfortunately I don't journal, so anything I do remember about anything in detail usually comes from my poorly kept blog, bad as that may be. However I feel like I want to prelude this with two warnings...
*If you struggle with infertility, this may not be a blog post you want to read. I am about to whine and vent about one of life's biggest blessings, one many women would do about anything for... I am not ignorant of that fact. I am blessed to have the physical ability to create babies, it's not lost on me... however, be that as it may I'm still about to complain a lot and I feel like that may hurt some people, and if you're in that boat I'd urge you not to read on and do that to yourself!*
*This post may cross the line into the TMI category if you're at all squeamish about pregnancy (mostly puking and the like), then maybe this is also not the post for you... I don't feel like it's graphic, but sometimes people have a low tolerance for this sorta thing.*
I appear to be very very lucky in certain ways when it comes to having babies, that we've actually never 'tried' to have a baby. Our first two were first day off birth control type pregnancies, so this time around we figured we should really 'decide' (very approximately of course) when we wanted the baby to get here, not just randomly stop birth control! In other words, no more December babies (cuz seriously, that's a hard month to have your b-day as a kid, and the newborn through the Utah winter is a bit scarey) and I also thought it would be ideal to not be prego during hot summer months, etc. So we essentially talked all the ins and outs and decided to go for the, 'as ideal as being prego can be', timing and see what happened. We were hoping for an April/May arrival, thus being really prego through cold months and the baby arriving as the warm weather came on... Well our 'first day off birth control' approach was true to form! I am a completely consistent 28 day (almost to a specific hour) "cycler" so I have always 'known' I was pregnant like later that day of my missed period. We checked the dates online, and it was April 4th. (Dr. later confirmed w/ ultrasound measuring, etc, but we didn't need it really.) Now the last two times I was pregnant, I knew I was and it was exciting and I didn't start feeling any symptoms till late week 6, early week 7. With this pregnancy I was slightly shy of 5 weeks pregnant when I began to feel it. I was shocked and very scared about this omen, because my previous two pregnancies have involved soooo much nausea, tiredness and puking, that it had already given me a pit in my stomach to even consider getting pregnant again with that experience still to vivid in my mind. But I kept hearing that 'each pregnancy is different' so I thought that there was maybe, just maybe, some hope that this time I wouldn't feel so awful! Well each pregnancy might be different, but this one has most DEFINITELY been even WORSE! I guess I didn't account for that possibility - or didn't think there was much worse it could get! WRONG!
So immediately (4 1/2 weeks in) I felt drained, and all time like I was walking through water or wearing a weight vest to do anything... held down, winded. And I started to get that queasy feeling at the sight and smell of food - no food sounded very good. A week, week and a half after that I was in full blown 'this could be the serious, worst flu' mode. I felt like I was going to pass out when I so much as lifted myself out of bed... From the moment I woke up my body felt the way it normally feels if I'm terribly ill, or like when you've had a really long day and are finally falling in to bed in the wee hours. Like there's nothing left inside you to move you places. Food was a nightmare, I had to eat it and didn't want to, made me sick to look at food, definitely couldn't grocery shop, but if I avoided it like I wanted to I paid the price. Anything I ate once, even if I felt okay going down the first time, suddenly got added to the list of things that made me sick to simply think about for the future... saltines, ginger-ale, cereal, ice cream, etc all made the list. The biggest problem was that water, or even just waterish items (gatorade, juice, soda) were my new worst enemy. Especially water, but even a lot of times juice or whatever would make me puke almost instantly - I figured I was puking in the neighborhood of 10-12 times a day during my worst weeks. Which led to dehydration, which led to me having about a full two day period where I couldn't think of any food or drinks I'd actually kept down. Nothing in the tank, literally nothing. I was thinking that was a bad thing for the both of us so I finally called the nurse - I hate taking meds when I'm prego, even if they 'say' they're safe, I feel so guilty. She told me to get on the 1/2 tablet of unisom and 25 mg of B6 right away. She also felt hesitant and worried that I needed to get in to the hospital for some IV therapy because of dehydration. I was supposed to call if I didn't keep anything down in the following 24 hours. But fortunately that drug cocktail actually kept me from puking, well at least 90% less puking. The downside was that I still felt just as nauseous and I just felt even more tired. In addition to the body fatigue my brain was in a fog. I kept on in this way for awhile until I had my meeting with the nurse... I was doing pretty good at that time, felt like crap, but small amounts of food got down, but she was still concerned about the drinking issues. I told her I'd call if it didn't improve. The next week it got worse again (mooooorrrreeeee puking, fun fun) for no apparent reason so when I met with my Dr (week 10) by this time even though there were some improvements I'd lost like 12 pounds, still struggled with liquids and she decided I should change to the Zofran. This helped the most. I actually felt the brain fog lift and felt actually hungry on occasions (though I still didn't think anything in particular sounded good)... a lot of the nausea was gone which felt like heaven, meaning I didn't feel nauseous every SINGLE moment just now and again throughout the day which felt like a win to me at that point.
Feeling dead sick and tired every second of every day for like 5 straight weeks (5-10) takes a toll on your sanity. I was talking with John around week 9 and I said trying to pump myself up, 'best case scenario I might start feeling better in like 4 weeks' and then I just BURST INTO TEARS and said, "I can't, I can't do it!" Clearly there weren't other options, but I did ask if it was possible for them to put me into a medically induced coma and wake me up when it was over.
The few weeks after the Zofran I at least saw strides toward sanity, the insane amounts of fatigue were gone, and I didn't feel as exhausted constantly. I didn't feel sick every second, but just randomly - again usually if I've waited too long to eat, or I catch a wiff of something bad, or someone mentions that one common kind of meat that comes from farm birds (Shhhh). I didn't wanna eat things, but some things at least didn't gross me out and make me sick just to think about. I still have trouble with water.... which of course is ALL I want to drink... all the sugary additives are so sick and all I want is nice clear cool water... but unless I'm feeling amazing AND have a full stomach it's a sure way to puke to drink water. Which has been making it still hard to get to the gym... The other week I wanted to go and did and felt okay (still feels like I'm wearing around 50 extra pounds at the gym, so that's hard), but anyway, after I was thirsty, I desperately craved and drank some water, it started turning my stomach, by the time I got home I was running for the toilet.
Also, really really really bad constipation (I know, TMI) but I suppose that's what you get for being kinda dehydrated.
Most currently the weirdest thing is EVERYTHING seems to go rotten in my mouth (it's disgusting and doesn't help nausea) but most commonly and strongly sugary stuff and dairy, that happens in about 60 seconds after eating something sugary (and I don't just mean processed sugars... apples, oranges, grapes do it just as bad.) I am walking around with permanent halitosis and it's gross.
THE GOOD PARTS (I really have tried to keep these in mind, but with limited sanity it's just really hard...whether that's awful or not.):
- Where it's easing up a bit I'm hoping that I'm on schedule for feeling a lot better at 20 weeks which is what happened with the first two, and not being one of those crazy unlucky few who puke the ENTIRE pregnancy.
- The baby is on track and seems healthy!
- They did a Nucal Trans ultrasound like we did with Charlie measuring the babies 'neck fluid' and it was again small (they have found babies with chromosome problems tend to have more fluid back there then chromosomal-y average babies), which is excellent.
- They also did first trimester blood work screening for T18, T21, Spina Biffida, etc and I got extremely low risk factors for all those.
- Evidently babies are extremely parasitic creatures, so they can thrive in hostile environments like mine.
- And best of all, we will hopefully be adding another (and let's face it, I'm thinking final) little one to our family in early April! :)
