Birth Story Part 1 - The final appointment

Well here it is, my birth story. Almost a full 12 weeks after it happened.

At 8:30 am on 1/14 I headed out to my 39 week appointment. N had to work his 7 nights straight starting that night so he was passed out at home.

As I stepped on the scale at my appointment, I knew there was going to be trouble.. I was up a full 7 lbs from the previous week. There wasn't a place on my body that wasn't swollen, my feet were balloons and even my trusty slippers were too tight!

The nurse took my BP and it was high, so she had me relax on my left side and took it again. It came down but I could see the concern on her face. The dr came in, and said, "How much of a hassle would it be to go over to Labor and Delivery right now?" My heart jumped, or sank or something my first words were, "Can I go home and get my husband first so we only have one car here?"

I had developed Pre-E... After flirting with it my entire 3rd tri, there it was at 39 weeks, the protein in my urine was the clincher. I was being induced today. I called N, he groggily answered the phone and I said, "Go ahead and get up and get in the shower, I'm on my way home to pick you up, we're going to have a baby today"

I contemplated calling my family the whole way home. We had talked about not telling anyone until the baby was born, see I love my mom, but she drives me nuts and I really didn't want the pressure of a bunch of people sitting in the waiting room all day. Inductions can take a really really long time. So I called my friend in OK to let her know, I had to tell someone... we've waited for so long and the baby would be here, a real baby that I could kiss and snuggle and hold, would be here soon!

I got home and N was moseying around the house at a snails pace getting ready. I was moving a thousand miles a minute (at least it felt that way, but looking back at how large I was... there's no way I was moving faster than a turtle with 3 good legs myself) Here is the last picture I have of me with my nugget tucked away inside

Turns out, N had drank some Nyquil Z in order to sleep the day away... great my hubs was going to be more drugged up than me for this birth!

We stopped and got him a coffee (note to self: If you EVER have to do this again, get food... all the food you can eat at this point).

We checked in to the hospital at about 10:30am and decided that we would alert our families once we got in a room just in case something were to happen. (Mistake.... total mistake, I should have kept my big fat mouth shut)

9 weeks

My nerves are calmed... I had my scan on Friday and Nugget is measuring right on target and his/her little heart was beating away at 180bpm.

I won't post pics but just know Nugget pretty much looks indistinguishable from every other 8w3d fetus... Big head, little arms, very alienish.

I finally told my parents so that was cool. My little sister cried more than I did! Everyone has been so great!

Apparently as much as I sucked at GETTING pregnant, being pregnant isn't hard for me. I've been so lucky to be healthy, no sickness, no real issues at all. I know I'm lucky and I'm not taking that for granted at all.

PG friend is not so lucky, she's been miserable since 3 days before she found out. Nauseous, not able to eat, diarrhea, super exhausted, not able to leave the house and now the vomiting. I worry about her, she is a tiny girl to begin with, I hope it doesn't last long for her.

In other news, the cousin/roommate hasn't made much progress in the way of finding a new home which is becoming problematic. I need that room for a nursery, and frankly, I'm really irritable right now so the extra people/animals etc is just getting on my nerves! I'm trying to figure out how to give her a deadline without coming across as mean. I'm so blunt and upfront, some people take it really personally and I don't mean to be mean!

Anyway... that's it for now.

First Scan

Still no official date but I'm dating myself at 5weeks.

We had our first scan this afternoon. Lovely dildo-cam action,  There is one gestational sac, one yolk sac and a teensy tiny little bright spot that will turn into our little nugget. It was awesome and surreal but I still don't feel pregnant...

I had this overwhelming feeling this morning that I was going to go to the scan, it would be an empty womb and they'd lock me up for insanity because I'd made up the whole thing. Guessing hormones are nice and active....

ANNNNNND not only did I ovulate (which dr didn't think I did) BUT it came from my right ovary!!! So looks like meatwad didn't ruin that ovary afterall!!! So that's exciting.

I go back again in 3 weeks to hopefully see more and even maybe a heartbeat!!

Still no morning sickness and this hunger is getting REAL.. I mean I'm STARVING all the time.. only up 1lb though because I'm stuffing my face with healthy choices... let's see how long that lasts.

Survey says....

Hubs SA came back today, I'll get more specific numbers tomorrow but the Dr. said his count was "phenomenal" so I'm pleased with that. Morphology was a little on the low side but nothing to be concerned with.

OB/GYN wants to do 3 rounds of Clomid. I'm ok with that now. Hubs and I had a long talk and he's more comfortable doing things with as little intervention as possible to start. I get it and maybe we'll be that couple that just needs the Clomid kickstart and we're good to go. In the meantime, we're going to start saving up the extra cash for further treatment if necessary. The clinic I want to go to is typically around $500 for the first round of labs/HSG/consult. He's been picking up extra shifts to help put most of it back for baby and some back for basement finishing :)

Nurse C is going to call tomorrow with specifics on protocol so I'll know more. I think he wants to push Provera to start my cycle but... well I need to time that so N's days off are 8-14 because no amount of Clomid will help if we don't see each other before ovulation :)

That's the update for now.

-h

Results are in

CD21 test came back... Progesterone was 1.3 so just as I suspected, I didn't ovulate. Yay for paying $60 for something I already knew.

Called the RE that my Dr was sending hubs to for his SA like 6 times last week with no answer, finally left a message. Still haven't gotten a call back so when my Dr. called with results, I asked what to do. They referred me to a different clinic and it's the one I want to go to anyway! So this is good news, hubs won't have to do a second one if/when we have to go there. His appointment is on Tuesday. He's not exactly thrilled about the change in clinics because instead of taking his sample in and dropping it off, he gets to do it there. Performing under pressure is NOT his strong suit. We'll see how it goes.

I think I'm going to call the RE and see about getting in, find out how much the initial consult will be and then stick with my Dr and do a round or two of Clomid if there's a wait or if it's going to be more than we want to pull out of savings right now. However, that might change at any time.

First appointment update

Well I'm not super happy with how my appointment went. First of all let me say I love my OB/GYN, I've been going to him for as long as I can remember and usually, his calm/cool/collected demeanor is refreshing but this time, not so much.

He basically ignored the fact I've been charting for the last few cycles. He seemed rather unconcerned with the fact that my average cycle is over 35 days, with most being in the 40+ range. "Not ovulating every month is fairly common" Yeah, but not ovulating MOST of the months isn't... Ovulating on day 28+ ISN'T NORMAL. Basically all he wants to do is a SA for Hubs (that gets sent to an RE that's about 40 mins away... Hubs is NOT happy about that) and a CD21 panel for me to "see if I'm ovulating". Look fucker, I can tell you right now I'm not, and if I am it's late and I surge multiple times before I finally do... so let's skip the baby step bull shit and get down to business. This isn't like a game of Monopoly where you just play and play until someone wins... this game has a sand timer and a fucking buzzer each time your turn is up.

Oh and I asked him about his thoughts on Clomid vs Femara... he looked at me like I had 4 heads. He said "plenty of women have gotten pregnant on Clomid and it's cheaper" I specifically asked about lining issues he said he thought they were "grossly exaggerated". Now I'm pissy and taking that kind of personally for all my new found friend that DID have lining issues on Clomid.

Mom went with me to the appt, I'm really glad she did but at one point said that she thought I was too worried and if maybe connecting with people that have been struggling with this for years might be doing more harm than good. Mom has Hashimoto's disease that was recently FINALLY diagnosed. I asked her, point blank, "If you had access to multiple people that were struggling with this disease for YEARS longer than you, that had already taken every drug, ran every test, seen every doctor, wouldn't you listen to them? Wouldn't you want the same tests ran? Because even if the problem isn't the same, it's something that can be crossed off the list that COULD be the problem. And when you're living on borrowed time, why not start at the top and work your way down instead of starting at the bottom and taking the long route?"

I think a light bulb clicked with her then.

So I'll be scoping out RE's this month. I just joined up with the local Infertility Awareness group and they're actually doing a conference this month so I'll have to find someone to cover soccer for me. I'm going. The 4 RE's here in town will have booths there to help answer questions. Hopefully we figure something out.