The Pudding Club Diary @ 10w2d

I have been living in the moment for the past week.  Helped by my wonderful family visiting me all the way from the UK (my mum, gran, aunt and uncle).  I took a week of leave and we showed them the wonderful sights, sounds and tastes of Virginia!  Well…local Virginia at least.  This has definitely been one good way to keep in the present.  But not long after they departed I started to begin to worry about my upcoming Obstetrician appointment and scan.  I hadn’t really been feeling the symptoms I had previously – tiredness and nausea mostly.  But then Sunday & Monday came and I felt queasy all day and absolutely shattered.  The yawning was incessant!! So that put me back in my place and I was less worried….but then this morning as I drove to the doctors I started thinking what if there was no heartbeat? What if it was way behind?  Just before we headed into the ultrasound, there was a couple crying.  My heart felt for them, I shed a little tear.  I reminisced to our ectopic pregnancy, waiting to collect the methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy in the Children’s hospital, crying.  I worried some more for us.

We were called back to the ultrasound room and I was excited when the technician didn’t ask me to strip from the waist down.  I was getting a transabdominal ultrasound this time! Woohoo!!!! My ovaries are still super enlarged and it got a bit uncomfortable for a moment.  But that didn’t matter because there was our little rocky, literally waving at us and wriggling! We saw the profile of Rocky’s teeny tiny hands and feet.  We didn’t get to hear the heartbeat, but it was doing a strong 166BPM.  Rocky measured spot on 10w2d.  We were given our souvenir printouts and I was moving onto the next part of the appointment.

As this was my first time at this OBGYN I had the most thorough exam, medical history and tests done in my life.  Probably more than all our infertility testing!!!

I had EIGHT vials of blood drawn for various tests including a few extra for toxoplasmosis (because we have cats) and for my iron levels. Yey.  Should have just donated my blood whilst I was at it!  I also had a pap smear, a breast exam and a very thorough pelvic exam.  My poor tummy went through it all today, it’s a bit sore now 😦

I was given a big information booklet which also included a description of all the prenatal screening tests we may want to have and how much each one cost (helpfully along with the insurance code so I could phone my insurance and check for coverage).

We also talked about a few things that they will check for because Rocky is an IVF baby.  We will see a Perinatologist (someone who specialises in fetal medicine) at the hospital to check the baby’s heart at around 5 1/2 mths (fetal echocardiagram).  We will also not be allowed to go beyond 41 weeks – her explanation wasn’t particularly compelling, but I’ll go with the flow!  She said that as we have an IVF baby they don’t like to get into complications so would induce before then….???!!!

In other exciting news I took my last progesterone suppository last night and removed the estrogen patches this morning…I am now drug free!  A first for quite some time.  Whoop whoop!

Today Chris told me his favourite part of the day was when I was looking at our ultrasound photos and I smiled and excitedly said to him…”It had little cute tiny feet!”.  He said it’s been a long, long time since he has seen me this happy and it was lovely.

And he was right, it was all very lovely too.