11 weeks 2 days ultrasound

I went in today for a little live baby check. I'd been feeling ok about things until Saturday or so...by then I was starting to get pretty anxious about the pregnancy again (just because it had been about a week since we'd seen the baby, not because anything was "wrong").

So today for the first time, I had an abdominal ultrasound.

Baby is still alive!!

Was sleeping at first, but when the OB turned on the doppler to check the heartbeat, this seemed to wake him/her up (interesting because I don't think the baby can hear yet, but it's obviously disturbing in some way). Once it woke up we could see its little arms and legs waving around.

All looks good!

Here's a little peek. Don't be alarmed that the baby looks like Pinocchio. My OB assured me that that was its hand up by its mouth, not a giant wooden nose.

Will and I are trying to let it sink a little. We are pregnant! We are still pregnant. Trying to hold that maybe things are going to be ok. That there is no indication of any problem. That maybe, just maybe we are finally going to be parents, come this fall.

One step at a time. But boy, that would be amazing.

Mo

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Testing testing, 1, 2, 3...

I had blood work drawn four times this week.

I think that might be a record (during pregnancy itself, not IVF with its daily draws).

Join me for a week of pregnancy blood letting, if you will.

On Monday, I had blood drawn for a new test I had heard about from someone in the comments section.  It's called the MaterniT21 Plus test and is offered by Sequenom.  The test is not yet available in New York State, but somehow my hospital has a waiver, or gets a waiver for each patient, or something. It tests for Trisomy 21, 18, and 13. Now we should be in the clear for all of those, because this embryo (fetus?) had all chromosomes tested by microarray before we transferred back. But...I know there is a small error rate on the microarray....and we're very unlucky people. Since the test is noninvasive, we figured no reason not to get it, just to be sure. Our plan is to avoid amniocentesis and CVS, which are invasive and have a small risk of miscarriage, unless something super scary turns up in the next several weeks that seems to suggest one of those is necessary.

Let me pause to note how strange it feels to type "in the next several weeks," as though I'll still be pregnant then. I'm kind of living in both realities right now, the "imminent miscarriage" place, and the "things might just be all right" place. A little bizarre, but true.

Funny too that I would ever consider foregoing CVS and amnio. This is a big surprise to me and not what we thought we would choose. I'm generally a need-to-know person. But honestly we feel this pregnancy is so precious and delicate that we don't want to do anything that could even potentially damage it.

The MaterniT21 Plus test takes a couple of weeks to get results on. Ten business days, I think. I would be absolutely fine with having a down syndrome child, if I knew I could carry him/her to term. We're looking for a child who can live, not a perfect child. My fear is more another loss. Trisomies 13 and 18 aren't usually compatible with life (or with life past the first year). We might not continue a pregnancy with one of those disorders. But I know the chances of any of those being a problem are very slim. This is supposed to be a euploid embryo, and our clinic has a very good track record with their testing, but we just want to be thorough.

Tuesday, at 10 weeks 3 days, I had my progesterone and estrogen tested, which I was a little nervous about given the bleeding episode over the weekend. But the levels came back okayish with estrogen at 852, up from 833 last time (that's with two Vivelle patches) and progesterone down to 28.13 from the last result of 57 (that's with one endometrin suppository and only 1 /2 cc progesterone in ethyl oleate, instead of the previous 1cc). My nurse in Denver said to keep all meds the same and retest Friday. 

Thursday I went to the high risk OB area of my hospital and had my blood drawn for the nuchal translucency screening test. I knew they would be testing my beta HCG and another protein called PAPP-A (pregnancy associated plasma protein A). HCG is higher than average in trisomic pregnancies and PAPP-A is lower. 

It was a little saddening to fill out the nuchal screen blood work paperwork. Have you had a pregnancy with trisomy 21 previously? YES. Have you had other aneuploidies? YES. Monosomy X, Triploidy, Trisomy 16. I had to write down the side of the page because there wasn't enough room for all of the problems we've had. They also asked the savvy question of whether this was an IVF pregnancy and if so, what was the age of the egg at the time of retrieval. Nice. So we get to shave almost two years off of our odds. The egg was from a "young" 38 year old me, not my current "young" 40-year-old self.

I was shocked when the the nurse said the nuchal blood work would only require a finger stick (really? Why all these previous vials of blood to test my HCG then??). They pricked my finger, which proceeded to gush like a fountain, making it quite easy for the nurse to fill her row of paper blot circles with my blood. What can I say, I'm on lovenox. I'm a champion bleeder. We got the job done, and then some.

Which brings us to today....Friday....and another progesterone and estrogen check. Results coming later today. I will add them here when they come in. Hoping the progesterone hasn't dropped any lower. The estrogen seems to be hanging in strong, even rising a little bit, which makes me smile.

Thank goodness I work at a hospital. If I had to commute to get this done this many times, I would have an awful lot of explaining to do at work. As it is, I can duck out quickly and am not even missed. Job perks I didn't think of when hired.

Next ultrasound live baby check is Monday. And then...if the baby is still alive, the nuchal ultrasound is scheduled for Thursday. Feels like an important milestone. Not sure why. 

I sent my mom, who lives across the country, a framed ultrasound picture this week that should arrive tomorrow and knock her over with surprise. She doesn't know we even did the FET. We will be telling Will's sister in person on Easter morning. That's it for family telling for a while - we'll tell our other siblings, and my dad, later. These are all of the "most intimate" people. Our moms, his sister. We've always told them every time we're cycling, so keeping things mum this long has been very different. 

Wow. Really hard to believe time is still passing and that as far as I know, we are still pregnant. How lucky am I? Pretty damn lucky. Unbelievable, really.

Mo

  

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Telling (part 1)

On Tuesday, I told my boss that I am pregnant.

I didn't really want to tell her so early, at 10.5 weeks. It feels weird...and dangerous (this is my 7th pregnancy after all....and I have no children). But we are in the process at work of hiring a post-doc, and my boss was vaguely considering trying to hire two, but leaning towards only one. She really should hire two, in general, I think. And especially if I am going to be out for a few months next fall/winter.

I also am strongly suspecting I will not go to California for my two talks. I needed to let her know that as well. The Rochester talk must go on - there is a contract, and there is no one else to give it.

I had previously told one person on my team, who is in a senior position to me, and who knows my boss very well, that I am pregnant. She is a good friend and knows that we have had a long road with many losses. She has been advising me to tell my boss for some time. Has said that my boss will be very supportive and protective. That my boss is smart enough to know that I have been married five years, am on the older side, probably want a family, and obviously don't have kids. That she probably knows we've had some troubles, and that she would be a big advocate, but only if I tell her. I was scared, though. One, I think it is weird, and too personal, to tell too early unless someone is a good friend. Two, I wasn't sure she would be super supportive. She's a tough woman, and a single mom, and I honestly thought she might go either way. She's not the most sympathetic in general. She's internationally known, a big player in a male-dominated academic medicine clinical research area, and has the savvy and the thick body armor to prove it. Also, although we work on a larger team of clinician-researchers, the three of us (my boss, my friend, and me) make up the core of the team. I didn't think my boss would be very excited about me maybe not being at my best and then taking a bunch of time off.

So, yeah.

But because of the hiring and presentation issues, I felt I had to take the risk and speak up.

So I met her in her office alone after another meeting, told her a few other things of importance, and then slid this in at the end. Saying I knew it was early, but for planning purposes, and because I trusted and respected her, I thought she had to know. That anything could happen and I very well may not have a baby, but that just in case, I needed to tell her.

And damn if she wasn't just wonderful.

Her response was so genuine that I almost teared up (the pregnancy hormones make this easier, but still...). She was thrilled for me, for my husband Will. She said she wanted to do anything possible to make things easier on me. When I told her I might not want to go to the California conference, she said no problem. I told her I started to miscarry in 2010 at another work-related conference and that I associated the travel with miscarriage, even though it was likely not causal. She said that I shouldn't go to California. That I "don't have to do exposure therapy during my pregnancy" by traveling to a conference if that makes me nervous. That she would try to travel in my place (!) and that if not, we'd have someone else give my talks. That if I didn't want to fly to Rochester, I could drive or take the train and take more time off. That if I still felt that was too stressful, I could just cancel it, contract be damned.

She did ask me pointedly if I would be returning to work after I have the baby ("after I have the baby" - ha! ha! egads!). I looked her in the eye and said yes.

She asked if I was 100% sure.

I said I've never done this before, so I can't be 100% sure (she started looking upset at this), but that I spent many years training to enter this field (8, including my post-doctoral fellowship), and that I loved my work. That seemed to mollify her a bit.

She said I'm entitled to three months off, and that she assumed I would take all of it. Then she said that given how long we have struggled for this baby, I might want to take additional time off, another month or two, and that she would strongly support that. This shocked me, and moved me. I told her that was wonderful, but that right now I really can't imagine that I'm even going to have a baby, so I can't really envision the time off aspect yet. That much further along, should I be so lucky to get that far, I would look into that, if that was ok. She seemed to understand. But WOW. That she would suggest I could take extra time off...that's pretty amazing.

She also asked when I planned to tell our larger team. I said I hadn't really thought too much about it yet, but I thought it wouldn't be for a long while. Maybe 20 weeks? 25 weeks? She said she would keep things to herself no problem and she understood that emotionally that would feel a lot safer for me to wait a long time, but she cautioned me I might not be able to wait that long. She said people started asking her when she was about 12 weeks pregnant (the audacity!) and she ended up telling sooner than she planned because of that. So hmmm....may need to get clothes that are roomier to try to buy myself more time...some of my regular clothes are a bit snug already.

It was really scary to take the risk and tell my boss. I hope I didn't tempt fate by telling.

Symptomwise, things are a bit strange. I  was feeling a little better, but then I actually threw up on Tuesday night and was feeling very nauseated last night as well. Fatigue had seemed to be lifting too but then yesterday I felt like I was hit by a truck. And headaches! I'm not a headache person, but blinding headaches almost every day for at least part of the day. That was a bit of a surprise. Not sure what's causing it. So, symptoms are still coming and going. All of which is fine. More than fine. Bring them on! I am just so, so grateful to be this far along. I still really can't believe this is happening, one day at a time, pregnant as far as I know. I had really given up on the idea that this could happen for me.

Mo


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The three of us live to see another day

My RE fit us in this morning for a quick ultrasound. Told us to just find him in the back by the ultrasound area at 8:30AM. To not worry about an appointment. (It sounded so clandestine, but we were grateful.)

As of this morning, the spotting is still present but down to just a light brown. I figure whatever was bleeding still has to clear its way out of me, so the brown doesn't scare me so much.

When the RE saw us (huddled quietly in the back), he said he wouldn't be able to tell us anything except whether there's a heartbeat, because he doesn't deal with things this far along.

That's fine, we said. Heartbeat is all we care about at this moment.

So he did the scan.

Baby is big now!

And it has a heartbeat still (phew! I was trying not to totally freak out but was pretty nervous about that.)

Here - you take a look and see what you think...

Measuring a couple of days ahead, according to our RE. Heart rate today was 164 bpm.

So deep exhale over here on both Will's and my parts.

The three of us live to see another day.

Phew.

Seriously.

Looking forward to the "easy" part of this. The part where I'm just moseying along, relaxing, assuming everything will go well.

Maybe that isn't realistic.

But it sure would be nice.

Mo


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Maybe things were going too well?

Will and I went up to Connecticut with Moxie yesterday and took Ms. Mox out for a walk along the beach and then took Will's mom out for dinner.

We haven't told really anyone (except for you guys and our doctors) about this pregnancy and have been weighing when to tell our moms. Will decided yesterday, 10 weeks on the nose, was the day for us to tell his mom. She was very excited for us, a little cautious because of our terrible history, but excited. The first thing she said was that she might cry (and she is not an emotionally expressive person).  She agreed to keep the news to herself, for now, with the promise that we will tell Will's sister, whom he is close to, soon. The only hard part for me was when she asked me, "Is it yours?" She knows we considered using a donor. And I knew what she meant, and she is 75 years old, but gosh, however we get a baby, that baby will be mine, will be ours, 100%.

All in all, it felt good to tell her. But scary. Because what if something bad happens now? What if telling actually makes something bad happen?

After dinner, we stop by her condo, I go to the bathroom, and I am spotting. Red. Not a huge amount, but not nothing.

My uterus is unhappy too. Not cramping exactly, but irritated. Burning almost.

Cue panic on my part. A desperate need to get home. Right. Then.

Which Will obliged me on.

I've been staying close to my bed since then. Had a friend who is in town come over for a casual breakfast and chat because that was previously planned and not strenuous, but otherwise, I am supine. In bed. On self-imposed bed rest.

The spotting is brown now, which is better than pink/red, but still!

I am trying not to panic. Trying not to think that telling someone we were pregnant was enough to end the pregnancy. Trying not to be hypervigilant about symptoms. Am I less nauseated? Less tired? Less acute sense of smell? Whenever I notice my mind going in that direction, I stop myself. I don't need to monitor this. There is nothing I can do.

I pray the baby is still alive. We are trying to arrange an ultrasound check for tomorrow if possible. My OB is out on vacation all week making this a bit more complicated, but we are trying other avenues.

I will keep you posted. But I just wish things were a little more boring over here.

Mo

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