Thalia's fertility journey

8w0d: Still pregnant

Embryo measuring 8w3d with a lovely fast heartbeat (not measured but could clearly see it going at least 2-3x/second). Clear view of yolk sac, the developing amnion and umbilical cord. Embryonic sac measured 8w4d. So everything on track.

Of course I'm worrying still. The embryo wasn't moving. At 9w Pob was positively bopping around, and one or two of you commented you were confident that she didn't have a chromosomal defect because your own experience was that embryos where there was something wrong often had an indication at this stage in that they were slower to move. The sonographer says she does see embryos moving at 8w, although Visembryo says that spontaneous movement isn't possible until a certain stage of brain development at about 9w2d or so. So perhaps I shouldn't worry about that.

I do worry about a chromosomal problem, regardless of this movement issue. To learn the likely situation with that worry, we will do a nuchal scan at the super-duper clinic where the man who invented the quad screen does his work. I was so determined to get him personally to do the CVS, should we decide we need it, that I took my worry and superstition in both hands, beat it into submission, and called them one day last week to book the appointment and make sure we got in on a day when he is in the clinic. Monday 22 December, I will hopefully be 11w5d. Before then we will have one last scan at the fertility clinic on 11 December. I can't go too long without a scan, and my clinic are amazingly sympathetic to my needs, I'll have to think of a way to thank them.

I'm sorry I don't sound happier. The effects of some horrible tragedies in the blogosphere, particularly in the last year, the sad story of my work colleagues -the one a few weeks ago and the one last year, they are combining with my natural pessimism to make me very very cautious about any form of celebration. I know that seeing a right-sized, heart-beatingy embryo at this stage has genuinely dropped the risk of losing the baby (the oft-quoted statistic that once you've seen a good fast heartbeat at 6w the risk drops to less than 5% turns out to only be true if you are under 35, if you are nearly 42 it's closer to 15%). But it's not zero, and I'm aware that risk factors are high for this pregnancy, still.

I know this is good. It's really good for now. I look forward to more good stuff to come. Sometimes.

For the record

I feel filled with doom.I know that doesn't mean anything, but still it's how I feel. Scan in 30 mins.

7w1d: Worries

By the way, I'm not withholding photos of Pob, it's just that I'm not very organised, and it takes a while to upload the photos to the computer, compose the post, select the perfect few photos to illustrate the post, then faff around with the formatting etc., and finally get the post posted. It's lack of time, and organisation, and working half the time off the wrong computer, which is stopping me. I'm very aware I haven't done a real Pob post for months, and she deserves a "Pob at 14 months" post - she is 14 months today - so I will try to make time to write and illustrate it.

So 7w1d. I don't feel pregnant. I haven't had any stretchy pully cramps. I have had generalised ache in my abdomen, the kind that feels like you're about to start bleeding. I haven't had any bleeding. My boobs haven't changed shape, or got more visible veins. I am not getting much, if any, nausea, just a bit of extra hunger. I have had a couple of instances of gagging when I brush my teeth. All in all, it's not a very compelling set of symptoms. But it doesn't tell me anything either way, since this is about what I had with Pob, other than that I did have the strechy, pully cramps. Perhaps I just don't have strong pregnancy symptoms. Ever.

Of course it's making me believe it's all over. I have no reason to believe it's over, and no reason to believe it's not. It is what it is. I have brought forward the scan to next Weds, when I will be 8 weeks precisely, partly because I need to know, partly because we are going away for a week on the Sunday so if things have gone wrong I'd rather get things over with before we get on a plane. Cheery soul, eh?

Learning

According to the gurus, there is a developmental spurt at around 55 weeks which involves babies learning that things happen in sequence. This morning we had proof of this. At about 910, Pob started to get a bit scratchy. She hadn't woken up til 730 so it seemed a little early for her morning nap, but I asked her if she was tired and wanted a sleep. She reached out for my hand, and walked me over to the draining board where her clean dummies sit. She gestured to the dummies, I handed her one and she put it in her mouth. She then started to walk over to the stairs, waving to H and saying '"Bye! Bye!". When we got to the stairs she turned round and put her head in between my legs, with one hand either side of my legs, her signal for 'pick me up please'. So I did, and as I carried her up the stairs she kept shouting "Bye! Bye".

She gets it, my baby.

6w2d: possibilities

Because I'm on the crackberry I won't draw it out by telling you of my nightmares all night, but just announce that we have an embyo measuring 6w4d and a healthy looking heartbeat. Only one, mind you!

Cue heavy sigh of relief. Next scan in 2 weeks.

5w6d: Pob in the wars

Still no more symptoms to speak of. Wondering if, as some of you suggested, the nausea last week was in fact a stomach bug and nothing to do with pregnancy!

Meanwhile poor Pob has had a tough week. The least of it was that she had her MMR on Wednesday, which didn't seem to bother her much. She had an afternoon of grumpiness and that seemed to be it.

Her second trauma came on Friday morning we noticed she had a swollen eye. NHS Direct didn't seem to be worried by it, nor did our local pharmacist. Another pharmacist saw her at lunchtime and told us to take her to the doctor, the doctor told us to take her to A&E. So at 6pm on a Friday night we were in A&E. Luckily one of our local hospitals has a paediatric A&E, so we were at least in an area designed for children with friendly nurses. By the time we'd seen the nurse, the medical student, and finally the doctor, it was 1930 and Pob was a little scratchy. They agreed it was a case of peri-ocular cellulitis, but not too bad, and we were ok to take her home with oral antibiotics, she didn't need an IV. We were relieved. She slept badly but woke in the morning with the eye much better, and our return visit to A&E that lunchtime resulted in a discharge. So no big drama.

Then this morning the drama. She was going backwards and forwards to the bookshelf to get me books to read to her. She picks up the book, stands up, then totters over to me. It's a change she's made in the last three weeks, she's now decided it's easier to walk and carry a book than it is to crawl over to me, bringing the book by sliding it along the floor underneath one hand. This morning, however, balance was not her friend, and she chose a somewhat circuitous route back to me. As she headed towards me she lost her balance,and fell headfirst onto the edge of the coffee table. I'm sure you could have heard the crack several streets away, it made me feel sick to hear it. She screamed and screamed. We tried to put ice on the bump, but that made her scream more loudly. We put on some arnica cream and she snuggled in my arms for a few minutes, occasionally letting out an outraged yell, crying a bit then snuffling for a few seconds. After a few minutes we asked her if she wanted breakfast, and she struggled out of my lap and onto the floor, then held out her hand so I could walk her over to her high chair. She's been fine all day, apparently, although she looks awful, with a livid purple bruise in the middle of her forehead.

Oh, and the antibiotics have given her nappy rash for the first time in her life. Poor baby.

So life is plenty distracting. Too busy, not enough time with Pob, but distracting.

Three sleeps to go.

5w4d: Hmm

I felt really quite ill all week. Monday was definitely the worst day given the compounding effect of lack of sleep, but the acid stomach, lack of appetite and the fact that my stomach basically HURT all the time lasted all week. Until Saturday morning, when I woke up feeling fine, ate a normal breakfast and a proper lunch for the first time all week. No nausea. I managed to wear tight jeans, having struggled with my work clothes all week as they dug into my stomach. I felt fine all day although at dinner with friends last night I didn't eat nearly as much as I would usually, felt a little odd on the way home, and did gag brushing my teeth for the first time in this pregnancy. That reassured me somewhat.

This morning, no nausea, have been nicely hungry on and off all day, ate a big lunch at my mother's with no after-effects, and am still doing fine now.

As you can imagine, this is all making me very nervous.

I'm trying not to let it wind me up as I'm sure morning sickness can come and go (someone?), but it is nevertheless winding me up. It was really quite unpleasant and hard to concentrate on work all week, but at the same time was a lovely secret feeling of things going well. It's much harder to do without it.

I imagine possibly, given I had almost no nausea with Pob, my body is just good at adapting to pregnancy hormones. But equally, a few days before my first scan on pregnancy #1 I was sure it was all over, I no longer felt pregnant. And it turned out I was right. I'm not yet convinced that this pregnancy has all gone pear-shaped, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to figure out how I last til Friday with any semblance of sanity intact.

Congratulations

I missed the exciting points of last night. I felt crap and tired, so I went to bed at 2030, long before the first results came in at about midnight. I woke up this morning to the expected, but no less exciting, result. Congratulations, USA, you have elected someone who wants to change things. I hope he can achieve his exciting vision and help realise the potential of the US as a world leader.

I couldn't help but wonder if Hilary would have won as convincingly. I have to say, given the state of the economy and the fact that GW is currently the worst rated US president since they started polling - six points behind Nixon the week he had to resign - I'm fairly sure she would have done.

But would she have energised the electorate in the same way? Would the same number of people turned out to vote? I'm not sure. What was clear to me this morning, watching Jesse Jackson in the crowds, crying, watching young black people talking about the hope they now had for their future, watching the interview with the black senator, Henry Marsh, talking about what it meant to have a black president, was that as a non-American, I do not have the emotional connection to what it means to have a black President. It was clearer to me than it ever has been before, the extent of the hole in the American psyche that was created by slavery and its aftermath. From my perspective as a non-black, non-American, the oppression of women over the centuries and the continued inequalities in the world today are just as bad, if quite different. But in America, I think maybe they aren't. Maybe the horrific injustices of slavery and the horrific continuance of prejudice and inequality are more of a wound, and that having such a visible demonstration of fixing them provides a greater opportunity for the USA to heal, to come together to help the country and to help the world out of its current hole (despite the fact that Obama's personal family history is not part of that narrative).

So I'm glad. I shed a tear along with my best friend (who is half Afro-Caribbean, half Indian (the subcontinent, not Native American)) this morning as she told me about waking up her daughter at 2am this morning to witness history being made. I'm glad you have a President-elect who has such a vision for his country, and who has captured American hearts in such an impressive way. Congratulations.

4w6d: The grotty stage

Am feeling not very well, no idea the relative contribution of hcg and sleeplessness, since Pob has developed the unfortunate habit of waking at about 4 and crying on and off for an hour or so before going back to sleep. Any ideas? If I go in she's fine, just sitting there hanging out, holding our her arms to be picked up (which I usually don't do). I'm wondering if we should cut back on her daytime sleep. She currently has a nap at 9ish for about an hour and a half, and another at about 1300 for about another hour and a half, goes to bed at seven and usually we get her up at seven. She is clearly tired for both of those naps - rubbing her eyes, complaining etc., and will often take off for the stairs and start climbing up them around nap time. And she doesn't create any fuss about going down. So I'm at a bit of a loss, and very tired.

I do think the hcg is contributing at some level, the queasiness I'm feeling seems unlike the usual tiredness symptoms. I've not had morning sickness before, just an unnerving desire to eat when I was pregnant with Pob, I wonder if this is it. I guess the next few days will tell.

In answer to questions over the last few days:

• There is no particular reason to believe this is multiples. It is of course not impossible but note: (i) hcg values are very similar to Pob's and to my first pregnancy, both of which were singletons. (ii) there is no link between doubling times and the presence of multiples, and (iii) not much link between total hcg value on any particular day and multiples - see betabase for details. So the only thing that will tell us for sure is the scan, but personally I think it's a singleton and I'm just hoping desperately that it sticks around
• I am on clexane (lovenox) and baby aspirin as well as IM progesterone. The clexane (20mg/day) is prescribed, the aspirin is self-medicated. Started both the day after egg collection. I loathe and detest the new clexane syringes which sanofi-aventis has introduced - much harder to use and orders of magnitude more packaging. Hate.
• I had been taking DHEA for one month before the cycle started, and continued through to the positive pregnancy test. I have no idea if it had an effect or not, but have a suspicion based on how much better the embryos were this time. Oficially it's supposed to take 4 cycles to have an effect due to its involvement early in folliculogenesis, but maybe not. But if you are thinking about giving it a try, Dr Candour's response to my question was "can't hurt, might help." So there you go

Thanks for all the lovely comments people, I'm very lucky to have you.

1886

The beta was one thousand eight hundred and something. I can't remember the 'something' because I was so bloody relieved to hear the first two numbers. Even if it's 1800 it's a doubling time of 32.25 hours which is really quite fast. Updated to add, Dr Shoes just emailed to tell me it was 1886. Graph below.

And here's the link to do the graph yourself, I took a while to find it.

This is good. It's high, and I'm trying not to remember that high betas are linked to increased chance of Downs, but just take joy in that I clearly have a passenger who is trying to do their best to get growing in there. It's actually quite similar to Pob's results:

Sorry about the ugly graph, it took a while to get it to look this good, would you believe. Couldn't get a logarithmic scale on the Y axis, which is one of the reasons why it looks so odd.

So I'm definitely pregnant. I have a scan booked for Friday 14th when I'll be 6w2d I hope. With an itchy lumpy bottom, but still, I hope, pregnant. And we should see a heartbeat. I hope we do. Because if we don't I will absolutely assume the worst, even though I know it's not completely impossible to have a healthy pregnancy after no heartbeat at 6w2d. Not completely impossible, but not likely, either.

Here we go, pregnancy #4. Let's hope it's a keeper.