A New Life's Beginning

Yep, I had my NT scan today (ultrasound to screen for Down's syndrome) and everything looks great! The NT measurement was perfectly normal, at 1.2 mm, and the heart was racing away at 177 bpm! If you subscribe to certain gender prediction myths, you'd swear this baby is a girl.

I learned that I have an anterior placenta. According to the doctor, this means the baby's movements will be muffled and less distinct than they otherwise might have been. This makes me a bit sad, although ladies on the Nest have reassured me that they still felt plenty. I hope so!

The only bad part about today was the bloodwork. They did the initial bloodwork for my OB at the same time as the NT stuff, and together they required 10 vials! My poor vein stopped producing partway through, and the tech kept pushing my wrist down to further straighten my arm and pressing my skin around the needle to squeeze out a few more drops. It seemed to go on forever.

And... I finally got ultrasound pics! Here they are. Keep in mind that these are photos of printouts, so not the best quality. Also, apparently my bladder wasn't as full as it should have been, so the images weren't the best to begin with. Oh well. I can still see my baby!

It was a good appointment! But first there was the wait. Our appointment was at 11:30 and, after some Jennifer confusion — there were three Jennifers in the tiny waiting room at the same time — we didn't get in to see the doctor until 12:45. Is this normal? Cuz it rather sucked. But I digress.

The doctor is lovely, really very nice. She asked the usual questions about medical and family history, explained her practice, took my blood pressure and weighed me, and finally got to the good stuff. She said she wanted to try to hear the heartbeat. She warned us that at 12 weeks it could be a bit early to be able to detect it with the doppler, and she wouldn't even try it if she didn't have the ultrasound machine there as a backup. Well, sure enough, she couldn't find it, so we had a quick abdominal ultrasound. The image wasn't very clear, because my bladder wasn't full, but we were still able to make out our little baby kicking around. I couldn't see its heartbeat, but the doctor assured us it was there and that everything was good. Keith thinks the baby looked like a turtle on its back. Nice!

I have decided to go ahead and do the NT scan (nuchal translucency; a test for Down's syndrome), so I will be having another ultrasound sometime in the next two weeks. I hope I will be able to get some great pics then!

This weekend Keith and I drove to my hometown (in a rented Toyota Matrix — nice!) to visit my family with the intention of sharing our news. I was feeling weird about it, kinda wishing we could have waited until after my first OB appointment, but I also really wanted to tell them in person, so this weekend was it. I didn't want to just blurt out the news. My original ideas all involved an ultrasound picture, but alas we didn't get one, so I came up with this:














Last weekend at Thanksgiving, I dragged Keith outside to pose and made his brother take pictures of us. This was my favourite. I added the text and printed up a few copies, along with about 100 other family pictures. The idea was that I would casually say, "Wanna look at some pictures?" and hand over a pile, with this one stuck somewhere in the middle. My mom got it. Surprisingly, my grandma also got it, only because she immediately saw the word "baby" at the bottom. Almost everyone else was confused, looking for someone hiding in the bushes. I didn't think it was that subtle! LOL (Oh, I should add that when I printed them, the due date line got cut off. But still!)

Anyway, it was fun. Everyone was thrilled for us. Apparently my grandpa had said just the other day, when talking about having dinner with us on the weekend, "Wouldn't it be great if Jenny told us she's pregnant?" Hmm, maybe he's a little psychic! Or maybe he has some sort of intuition, because I was pregnant last time I saw him — just not ready to share yet.

Big symptom of the week: FATIGUE! I'm so sleepy. In fact, I think I'm going to have a half-hour nap right now before House starts.

First OB appointment in six days!

It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and this year especially I have so much to be thankful for. I know I tend to focus on the negatives in life, and I don't see that changing, but the least I can do is take a moment to write a nice thankful blog post to acknowledge all the good things. So here goes.

#1: Obviously I am so very thankful to be pregnant. After Thanksgiving dinner last year, I snuck into the bathroom with my drug paraphernalia to secretly administer my Gonal-f shot during my first IUI cycle. I can't believe that this year I am nearly ten weeks pregnant. I am incredibly grateful that we didn't have to go any further along the treatment path — that we were spared further heartache and expense — and that we managed to conceive on our own after so many months. It's the most amazing gift and I am very aware of how lucky I am.

#2: I am blessed with a wonderful husband. He's been taking such good care of me since I've been pregnant — and always, really, but especially now. He's been making dinner and doing more than his fair share of the housework. He is my rock and my voice of reason.

#3: My family is great. They're going to be so excited for me when I tell them my news next weekend. :)

#4: My few good friends. I need to make a greater effort to see them more often.

#5: My new job, though very boring, is stress-free and located a lovely forty-minute walk away from my apartment. The work conditions are a vast improvement over my previous job. This is a good thing.

All in all, I guess life is pretty good. Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians.

Here's the thing. We live in a one-bedroom apartment and get around by public transit. Obviously we're going to have to move, but to where? How? When?

Option 1: My dream, as I've stated here before, is to move back to my hometown (a two-hour drive away) where we could actually afford to buy a decent house. I want to do this about two months after giving birth, if at all possible. In fact, I'm going to be pretty upset if it can't happen. But there are obstacles...

Option 2: Buy a two-bedroom condo somewhere, at the top end of what we could possibly afford — probably in the metro region and not in the city itself, which means a longer commute, higher transportation costs (whether for gas, public transit, or both), and being more isolated from everything. Oh, and I should mention that even if we had a car, Keith doesn't have a driver's licence. I've been nagging him to get one, but no move in that direction yet.

Option 3: Move into a two-bedroom apartment in our current area and continue to rent. Sigh. I guess this would work out okay, but we both really want to own a home, and we do have some savings that could be a downpayment. Considering the sad state of our RRSPs, I'd say owning a home will be a very important part of our financial well-being in retirement. Also, one of my biggest objections to living here is the isolation and loneliness I feel. My friends and family all live elsewhere. Keith's friends and family are all here, but we don't see his friends often and he's not as close to his family as I am to mine.

The aforementioned obstacle to achieving my much preferred option is, of course, the employment situation. I don't care about my job. I will gladly get a new one after my maternity/parental benefits expire, or I will try to earn enough as a freelance editor to get us by. Keith, however, likes his job and makes enough money that he is loath to leave it. He will be asking to work from home full-time, or at least three days a week, so that we can finally escape from the city. If his employer says no, well, I don't know what we'll do.

The uncertainty is more than a little unsettling. I know things will work themselves out somehow, but I just wish I knew how and when.

Dr. L's parting words to me were, "Remember that pregnancy is not a disease. Try to enjoy it!" I'm not really sure how to enjoy it right now. I'm sure that later, once everyone knows, and once I can feel the baby move, etc., I'll enjoy it, but for now, I'm just anxious and a little bit sickly.

I feel like I'm hunkering down to endure the wait. Thank god for my wonderful husband, who has been making dinner and doing enough cleaning to get us by, because these days I'm not doing much more than curling up in a blanket in front of the TV or computer. (It has been so damn cold in our apartment lately. Turn on the heat, already!)

I worry that I'm not eating well enough — not getting enough veggies, of course, but looking at the well-balanced diet outlined in my pregnancy book, I'm not sure I'm eating enough of anything. I'm trying, and I promise to try harder, but I'm sure I won't ever meet all of the recommendations in any one day, and I can only hope I'm not doing my baby irreparable harm with my crappy diet.

My first OB appointment is on October 27, when I will be exactly 12 weeks pregnant. Is that a little late? I'm going to call and ask about the NT scan, which I believe needs to be done by 13 weeks.

Update: My OB (well, my OB's receptionist) says 12 weeks is perfect and we will be able to schedule the NT scan in time. Apparently we're going to have an ultrasound at that first appointment. Yay!