Milestone #2.

So beyond getting the positive home pregnancy test as an obvious milestone, unfortunately my own experience has caused me to see other milestones at times when most other people would still be in a blissfully happy state of newly pregnant-esqueness. Today marks the length of how long we got to be pregnant the first time, at cycle day 33. As I went to bed last night, I had the worst pain in my abdomen. It came on rather suddenly around midnight, and I was paralyzed with fear that something had gone wrong. Luckily (who can ever say this?!?) it turns out I just have a case of the stomach flu and/or food poisioning. I’m feeling much better now but suffice to say I will NOT be having the green curry takeout EVER AGAIN. I had an epic two hour nap after a full 9 hours of sleep, but with early pregnancy being such that I don’t really have any symptoms aside from increased appetite, mild fatigue and the occasional stomach flutter of nausea (we’re talking seconds of it here, not like my last pregnancy where it was a constant all day nausea) its scary in that anything could happen and I wouldn’t be aware of a change from good to something amiss. There is no way through this, except to take it one day at a time. I haven’t had anything to worry me other than being painted by my past, but last night’s feelings really made me fearful for the first time in this pregnancy. I know, in the big picture I can’t DO anything to help this baby live, that it is literally out of anyone’s hands. But that doesn’t mean I don’t WANT to get through this as quickly as possible so I can relax and actually enjoy being pregnant (for what that’s worth, once baby is out then I’ll just be a Momma and whose Momma doesn’t worry, haha).

I swallowed my fear and booked an appt with the OB for this coming week. I know, its ridiculously early, even I thought so, but it was either this week or early June as she is going on holiday, has clinic and OR days and is ridiculously popular and hence, busy. By early June I need to have my 11-13 week screening ultrasound, so that next appointment would be too late. To boot, here in Manitoba they don’t do ultrasounds until 18-20 weeks unless you fall into a high risk category (which due to our last pregnancy with major fetal anomolies, we do) which means you also need to get into the office as soon as the pregnancy test turns positive as there is a shortage of ultrasound services in this area. I really hope I don’t have to go back to the last place, where the tech fed me false hope, but if I do, I hope then that this ultrasound just proves that this pregnancy really is a go, that our little appleseed is growing right along schedule. I’m hoping to get another private ultrasound afterwards like last time so that Jack can see and bond with the baby too. I wasn’t going to, but he really wants to so I’m glad we have that option (they don’t offer any medical diagnoses aside from the obvious if you were having twins for example). I was really toying with the idea of no early screening, as I never want to have to choose a D&E again, but then Jack convinced me that I can enjoy more of this pregnancy earlier and with less fear of the catastrophic if I know sooner rather than later. Not to mention the ease on me physically if things were to go awry.

Anyways. I didn’t mean for this entry to be full of pessimism and fear, but there you have it. I have some very real fears, some very painful things that I don’t want to see repeated and thus, this milestone marks only one of many before I can really relax, at least about major abnormalities and pregnancy loss.

On a more positive note- I get a lot of joy from taking care of myself these days. I’m not doing shiftwork and am getting plenty of sleep. The days are getting warmer, we actually had our basement flood from the snow melt in our backyard yesterday (not a huge deal, all basements in Southern Manitoba flood so the water went from the backyard to the drain in front of the laundry machines, we live in a giant swamp and don’t keep anything on the floor of any value) and I’ve been less stressed about my final masters paper as of late as it is over 70% completed at this point with 6 weeks left to work on it. Now if only I could convince the universe to let me keep my rainbow baby for just a short 35 weeks longer, wouldn’t that be grand.

FGirl