we are nearing the end of the first trimester and (fingers crossed) things are going as well as i could hope. i am starting to feel more like my normal self again, which i am enjoying. instead of a constant low-grade nausea, i feel mostly ok but then occasionally (on trains or buses) i am hit by intense waves that make me think i'm actually going to vomit. but i still haven't vomited. i am still a little tired but not so zombie-esque. the end is in sight!
also, i stopped taking all of the hormones this week, as well as the blood sugar medication. that will likely affect how i feel as soon as my body adjusts. it also cuts way down on my medicine-taking time in the morning, which is lovely. so now i just take seven pills (vitamins and supplements) and only one injection, and that's the Lovenox (blood thinner) that is a pre-filled syringe. so no more extracting oil from a vial and switching needles and all of that. plus the Lovenox is a subcutaneous (i.e. "stick it in your fat") injection so it's fast and easy and mostly painless. yippee for being (almost) drug-free!
we went back to the perinatologist yesterday and everything is great. the placenta is half-moved off of my cervix, which is great and means that most likely things will continue to shift and it won't be anything to worry about. i still have the blood clot, but the doctor insists it's nothing to worry about, especially since i'm on the Lovenox, and they'll keep monitoring it and if I have to increase my Lovenox dose that will be the worst of it. I will trust him since he's the expert and I really don't want to stress over something that i don't have to. they also said the blood flow to the baby has increased, which is obviously great. so everything looked perfect!
the baby itself was nothing short of a miracle yesterday. they did my first-ever through the belly ultrasound, like you see on TV with the gel all over the lady's stomach and the wand pressing on the outside. they also did their standard vaginal ultrasound because that's how they check the uterus and cervix (which both looked great). but when they did the regular ultrasound, we could see the baby so much more clearly. it also probably helps that the baby totally looks like a human now! i was amazed. it has a face and hands and feet and it was moving around like an acrobat. the most incredible thing was seeing it move its hands and open and close its fingers. it's also incredible that all of this is happening INSIDE OF ME and i can't feel anything. yet.
as the last step of the first trimester genetic screening, they measured the length of the baby's neck (an early indicator of down syndrome), which came out exactly average. they called that number into the lab so that the lab folks could compile it with the results of the bloodwork i had done last week, and within a few minutes they faxed over a summary of the risk of the baby having down's or another of the trisomy disorders. i continue to be impressed by the efficiency of these doctors... no waiting! anyway, everything looks great. they told me my risk of having a baby with genetic disorders is equivalent to that of a 20 year old pregnant woman's risk. which is very low! so we declined the CVS (chorionic villus sampling, where they take a sample of the placenta) and will wait for the next round of bloodwork that will give us at least a 97% assurance of the risk. if something weird happens with that bloodwork, we can still do the amnio to find out for sure, but the doctor didn't seem to think we have anything to worry about.
in other news, i have nearly entirely converted to maternity tops or tops that might as well be maternity. i am struggling with pants at the moment. i'm hoping the weather may suddenly turn to spring so that i can transition right into skirts, with which i am better stocked, but in the meantime i'm wearing the elastic belly band so that i can wear my old pants without buttoning them. it works, but it's not the most comfortable thing i've ever experienced. my belly still seems ridiculously big to me and i really don't know why, but the rest of me still looks the same (other than my boobs, but who sees those?) so i guess i should just suck it up. i may or may not have gained a pound or two. the past few weeks, my weight has been fluctuating between four pounds every morning (which seems whacky to me), but the past three days it's held stable at the very top of that four pound range. which i take to mean that i probably gained something. which makes sense considering my appetite is back (other than some lingering food aversions) and i am eating a bit more than i usually do. i am doing my best to keep it healthy, though, which hasn't been too hard. my love for chocolate has (thankfully) returned, and ice cream has been appealing on our intermittent spring-like days, but otherwise i'm still not craving sweets and junk food.
overall i am feeling pretty damn good. i am planning to wait until 13 weeks to officially announce my pregnancy at work, though i know it's already obvious to observant folks. but after this trimester is over, especially considering all the potential obstacles we've already breezed by, i will be pretty confident that this baby is sticking around for the long haul. which is very, very exciting.
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