Thalia's fertility journey

Lurgies

I got ill on Christmas Day. One of those things where various diseases have been floating around me all autumn, including Pob having multiple colds, but it takes being on holiday for me to get ill with one of them. I've been in bed on and off since the end of Boxing Day, just managing to drag myself into the shower yesterday morning when I couldn't stand it any more. I stretched to doing a load of laundry, one sink of dishes and emptying the dishwasher after my shower before collapsing back onto the sofa. Poor H has been on single parent duty, although we managed to get my mum over to help today and she was great - looking after me as well as Pob, bringing soup and magazines and delicious juices, and making the bed for me. H is pretty good at single parenting but less good at knowing how to look after me - he hasn't even felt up to cooking, which is his usual care-giving role in our family. I think it's end-of-year ennui for him.

The lurgy has meant we skipped on our usual trip to the cold north for New Year. I am sorry, but I couldn't face the travel - it's really a long way and not a straight forward journey. I don't think this will be a banner New Year for us - H has bought a lovely bit of steak to cook tomorrow, but I don't have a big appetite right now and it will just be the two of us with sadly no fireworks over the bay to look forward to. No doubt I'll be in bed at 10. Which is fine, just a little bit of an anti-climax. I wanted to have a lovely break as a family, so this is a lot less fun.

I'll be 13 weeks tomorrow. Hard to credit that things are going ok. I know I shouldn't write that, as cue for disaster, but this is really pretty uneventful so far.

More interesting posts to follow I hope as I start feeling a bit more human again.

11w5d: All normal

I've never been good at the 'save the strapline til the end of the post' thing. So the longer version is, we had the nuchal scan today. Everything was normal. Nuchal measurement between 1.9 and 2.2mm, heart with four chambers, all organs that we could see developing normally, a little bit of fluid in the bladder which means at least one kidney is working normally, fingers present (she couldn't get a good look at the toes as the fetus kept kicking and twisting and rolling over and generally making her job difficult), the nasal bone present, bloods normal. This gave us a risk of 1 in 1529 for Downs, and 1 in 2600ish for Trisomies 13 and 18. The risks are higher than Pob's, but then I'm 21 months older than at the same stage with Pob, so it's hard for the risk to get down to the same levels we had with her.

The good Dr Professor spent about 25 seconds looking at the scan, and another, ooh, maybe 50 seconds looking at the combined results, then told us that all was fine and to enjoy our Christmas. Oh ok then.

H is feeling very happy, but then he was sure that all was ok anyway. I am feeling, well, surprisingly flat. It could be the continued sleep deprivation (insomnia after 3am last night), or, I dunno, the knowledge that so much can still go wrong? I'm not sure. My mother is very disappointed in me. I'm not unhappy, I'm just not celebrating yet. It's a tremendous relief, but it's a long way from a baby.

I celebrated by buying clothes for Pob in the sales, then got my hair done and splashed out on a bright red manicure and pedicure. At least I look festive. And I came home to Pob and H and they were both very pleased to see me. I have a lot of joy in my life, and this new life will hopefully become part of it in July. Until then, I'll make the most of the joy I have.

Holiday family entertainment

We've just returned from a Chanukah party day at my mother's house. It was good and bad. Good in that we got to see my brothers, one sister-in-law and my three nephews, and eat nice food and be together. Bad in that one brother went off into the deep end after a remark I made which pushed a button for him. It wasn't an offensive remark, and I immediately apologised, but he wasn't having any of it, and when I apologised again when he left, he had another go at me. It's left me incredibly tearful - weirdly so - and I'm trying to figure out why.

To understand this I have to give more family background than I have before. My family is not very Jewish for two reasons. The first is that my mother's mother's family came to England over 400 years ago, so they are very very anglicised and so my mother didn't grow up with many of the so-called traditions like many 'jewish' foods (actually often Ashkenazi foods) and didn't keep many cultural customs, although they did keep most of the religious ones like Friday nights, Synagogue, High Holy Days etc.

The second is that my father isn't Jewish, and given the drama my parents had when they wanted to get married, they gave up religion at that point - both of them - and brought us up to be nothing. When I was 7, though, I decided I was Jewish, and after that I would go to my grandmother's for each religious festival, did Jewish religious education at school, etc. So I'm the most practicing member of my family.

Previously my brothers haven't been interested in the Jewish side of our background, and neither of the mothers of my nephews have been Jewish, so it isn't a big part of their families. One brother has just started to get interested, so it was partly his encouragement that led us to have a Chanukah party while he was in London with his family this weekend.

The tension was that today is one of the most important football matches of the season for the team that my brothers, father, cousins etc all support. So the younger brother - who is single after a bad separation from my nephew's mother 2 years ago, and a bad break-up from the woman who looked like she was going to become our sister-in-law a few months ago - was very not thrilled at the idea of having a party today and hence missing the football match. He reached some kind of compromise with my mother that said he would go home to watch the game late in the afternoon, having recorded it so he didn't miss any.

Then at lunch today he started talking about leaving and taking the older brother and the two older nephews with him, at about 1530 - very early if we were going to get to the park, play dreidel, light the candles etc. They were discussing logistics and my sister-in-law and I raised eyebrows at each other and I said, lightheartedly - "Next year can we have a family get-together where there's no football or it can be recorded?" And as mentioned above, younger brother lost it, and had a little diatribe at me about how we could have showed up earlier since he'd been there 2 hours before us (we didn't know he'd got there so early, and were home cooking for the party and wrapping presents this morning, having also done so last night til gone midnight), how he is the only person who ever has to be flexible (also nonsense, he's decided he wants to go and spend Christmas Day and the few days afterwards with the older brother so we won't see him again til sometime in 2009, while we are left to spend Christmas Day with H's parents (without his brother and family as they are off to my other sister-in-laws' family) and Boxing Day with my mum and my mentally handicapped Aunt, which is fine, but much less fun than being with my brothers and their families), no one appreciates him etc.

It was all a bit unpleasant. I immdiately apologised and everyone glossed over it. Sometime during the afternoon the plan changed and older brother and family stayed to have tea, while younger brother went off alone, leaving his son to stay for tea - fine with nephew since he worships his older cousin. On his way out I caught younger brother to say goodbye as we won't see each other again, and I simply said I was sorry for having upset him, and I got another diatribe. This time I interrupted him and said I was just trying to apologise and I didn't want to row about it, just to say sorry, so he stopped, said sarcastically that everything was fine, and stalked off.

I am irrationally upset. Which is a combination of horrible tiredness from working like a dog since September without a break, having had several late nights this week due to combination of work and work socialising and cooking, and being up in the night due to Pob having yet another cold to go along with her constant cough. So tiredness is part of it. Sensitivity to general family tension is another part - I have always tried to be the family peace-maker and taken a lot of responsibility for that. Concern that my brother is clearly having a crappy time and is generally not happy is another. Concern that he's angry at me, which I always hate. And fury at the unfair judgement he's handing out. There are probably additional less savoury emotions underneath.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of holiday dramas it's not bad. But it upset me anyway.

Nuchal scan tomorrow. Think that had anything to do with it?

10w1d: Pregnant with an alien

Dr Shoes turned round the monitor to immediately show me that the current passenger (TCP?) is doing well. He or she actually measures 11weeks, so is a bit of a giant, but then the accuracy of the vaginal scan at this point is apparently not great so not to worry. It wasn't moving initially, but a small movement of the probe woke it up and it wriggled around - mostly moving arms and legs, and even looking as if it was rubbing its eyes at one point. I know it wasn't, but that's what it looked like.

So we are discharged back to Dr OB with the best wishes of the clinic. I've made an appointment to check in with the good doctor next Wednesday, and then we have the nuchal the following Monday, so possibly by Christmas we will know how things are looking - past this trimester's major hurdle.

I think this is the first scan I've been really excited at. The new passenger (TNP?) is starting to look like a human, albeit more of a humanoid at this point. And it moved in a human-like way. And it measures great. And the heart was going like the clappers. It's still early (heard another awful miscarriage-at-15-weeks story today) but it's looking ok for now.

Just busy

Thank you for checking in. We are all fine, but I am snowed with work, not to mention holiday issues, so I just haven't had the time to more than briefly check in on some of your blogs. We were away all of last week too, with me working approximately 7am-11pm each day, with about 30 minutes at lunch time to see Pob and H, and on a few evenings I got 45 minutes or so to put her to bed. H did a sterling job as single parent, but was rather worn down by the end of the week.

Pob is flourishing, despite the number of bruises on her face. She confidently walks everywhere, although with that little frankenstein waddle, and many pirouettes mid-journey when she finds she suddenly has misjudged the distance between foot and floor, or decides that another direction is suddenly more attractive. She is very verbal and imitating everything we say - 'hiding' came out this evening in the bath.

She has developed a real criminal mastermind tendency, too. Yesterday when on a playdate with a little girl who doesn't walk yet, she decided she needed the book this other child was playing with. So she took it away to the other side of the room. When the nannies intervened, Pob put the book down, and said "Gone." "Gone" (which sounds like 'ga') is accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders and both hands outstretched in a shrug to demonstrate they are empty. I didn't know toddlers knew how to lie? She shook her head and said "no" and "gone" again several times before the nannies managed to persuade her to share. I'm a bit worried about where this is leading.

She has also managed to teach a few of her small friends her favourite signs. One little boy who she sees once a week has started signing 'hot' to his parents when they serve up his dinner. They asked his nanny what she thought he was doing, blowing on his fingers like that, and she suddenly clicked that he'd picked up this sign from Pob who enjoys it tremendously and uses it whenever possible, often associated with things she's not allowed to touch - we have an open fire to which she signs, "No, hot" on a regular basis.

The new passenger (yet to find the appropriate moniker) may or may not be doing fine. My stomach seems to be expanding, but that could just be greed. I'm tired, but I'm also working like a dog. I gag occasionally when I brush my teeth but shoving the toothbrush against your tonsils will do that. So the signs are not clear. Another clinic scan on Thursday, we'll see what the story is then.