Thalia's fertility journey: May 2009

My medscape subscription just offered up an article on predicting pregnancy outcomes, and I want to copy it and stick it up on the front page of every community board where someone is posting "no heartbeat at 7w does this pregnancy have a chance?" and getting lots of responses like - "Don't give up hope honey, I know someone who never saw a heartbeat and her son is now 4!!!"

The article says that three factors correlate to successful pregnancy outcomes. All factors can be measured by dildocam at between 33 and 36 days post-conception, or 6w5d - 7w1d. The three factors are fetal cardiac activity, yolk sac between 2 and 6mm and gestational sac diameter of 12mm or above. Importantly, "These markers were associated with favorable pregnancy outcome even in the poor prognostic subgroups of women of advanced maternal age and those with recurrent pregnancy loss." For women with recurrent miscarriage, 94% of pregnancies with these three markers resulted in take-home babies. For the over 40s, it was 82%. I know that's still a big grey area, but it's not a bad step in the right direction.

We all sort of knew this, but good to have it confirmed by 1092 pregnancies.

I'm not looking up how long it's been, but someone emailed and said it had been a month, so that's probably right. There is nothing wrong, I am just completely washed out with work, which has stretched into a 730-midnight kind of thing, with (most days) 30 minutes to get Pob up in the morning and an hour or so to put her to bed at night. And weekend work too, and pretty much anytime I'm sitting still not with Pob, I'm working. It's getting really old and I'm very tired, but I don't think it will let up much until I go down to 50% the week of 15 June, and stop completely the week after.

To compound my stress, the builders who are doing our bedroom and bathroom are (of course) taking much longer than planned, so we're sleeping in the attic which is 6 long flights of stairs up from where we spend most of our time, which at 7.5 months pregnant is really no fun. Plus everything is in boxes, and the boxes and everything else is covered in dust, and I want to get stuff organised for Junior but there is no space to do it. So actually I think we are considerably less prepared for Junior than we were for Pob. Poor old Junior.

We also have no name for him, which is starting to worry me a bit. I like slightly avant garde names, but H doesn't, plus Pob's names have real meaning for our families so I feel there is a high bar that we need to meet for him, too. Our shortlist is currently very uninspiring, and I feel a bit stuck about the whole thing.

Of course this is nothing to those still in the trenches. I am not meaning to whine, I'm just being descriptive. Pob is doing lots of cool stuff, including her first three-word sentence a few weeks ago - comprised grammatically correctly of subject/verb/object. When I approached her to help her with a bowl of yogurt which was proving too much for her relatively new self-feeding skills, I went to take the spoon away from her. She pushed my hand away. "[Pob} hold it!" She said. So she kept hold of the spoon and I guided her hand to make things easier. Various other things not to forget about this stage:

Nighttime routine still working ok, but increasingly she is taking ages to settle once we put her down - up to an hour of chatting, alternating with throwing everything out of the crib and then crying inconsolably for her dummy/teddy until we go and rescue her. Part of this I think is that she really suffers with her teeth - she has been getting the first set of four molars for the last 2 months. One is pretty much through, two are peeking, and one is still under the surface after all this time. But I'm not sure pain from teeth is enough to explain the lack of settling
Waking up earlier in the mornings. I think this is the light. We are about to experiment with blackout blinds. Currently we lie in bed and listen to "Hello! Teddy! Park! Up up up up! Park! Hello! Mummy mummy mummy! Daddy daddy! Granny Granny granny! Outside! Morning!" for about 30 minutes before she gets really fed up and starts whinging
She did her first pee on the potty after her bath a few days ago. A bit of a fluke, she hasn't done it again, but she's very interested and forces us to read the inane potty books I bought her at every available opportunity
We have spoken to her about a baby brother, and she has various books about new babies, but I don't think she gets even a little tiny bit what it will mean for her
She loves loves loves doggies, and her favourite treat is to be taken out on her trike so that she is at their level and can get licked all over when they find her
She is not interested in dolls particularly, but loves her soft toys with a passion
When she says 'yes' she shakes her whole body to emphasise its importance
I can see her get tense with fury as she cries when she can't do something she wants to do, but it seems to pass relatively quickly
When she wants us to do something she reaches for our hands and pulls us along until we are where she wants us to be. Sometimes this means just walking around the kitchen/playroom for a while, a little stroll together.
She adores the teletubbies, and asks to watch them frequently. Less frequently we give in.
She loves some of her local friends, when she sees them she runs around holding hands with them and giggling, offering lots of kisses and chatting away in their own toddlerese. And sometimes pushing them over and snatching their toys away, too.
She loves apples and will eat a whole one, including the core, given the chance. Just like mummy.
She has just discovered cake and now asks for it regularly
She is not allergic to eggs in cake, biscuits and french toast, but still has a reaction to scrambled egg.
There seems to be little limit on what she will eat
She has started to get the hang of hiding to play hide and seek, but can't bear to stay hidden for too long and always reveals herself as soon as we ask ' Where's Pob?'
I don't spend enough time with her