Entering the thirties…

October 25, 2016October 25, 201612 Comments

For some reason I always had it in my head that I wanted to be married before I turned 30. I don’t really know why, but it was some kind of milestone. Perhaps I thought I might turn into a pumpkin or something horrifying and wrinkly on my thirtieth birthday if I hadn’t gotten married by then. 30 simply seemed like a pretty scary age to reach. I can’t remember if I ever told Chris this at the time….but we did get married when I was 29. Phew! It was actually more about coincidence than any secret desire to not get married in my thirties. Well 30 came and went and it was just another year like any other. I know, I’m weird. It shouldn’t make a difference.

Anyway…I digress… I am now THIRTY weeks pregnant, and this same number seems equally as scary. For me, entering the third trimester wasn’t the scary part – it was entering my 30th week of pregnancy! And to top it off, I have been travelling for work when I hit this milestone. When I am travelling on my own I have waaaaay too much time to think deeply about life and what the future holds. And that is dangerous! It doesn’t help that October is Pregnancy and infancy loss month and I have read MANY stories of women losing their babies. I have seriously gone through a whole box of tissues this month.

Plus there has been a lot of discussion after the third presidential debate where Trump and Clinton discussed abortion, particularly on late term abortion. These issues have really connected with me emotionally, where ordinarily it wouldn’t – perhaps it is just the hormones thinking too much! I have blogged about how it took me a while to not be in denial over this pregnancy and to accept it, so I hadn’t really thought about the outcome of this pregnancy and how scary everything can seem until now. It was really around week 27/28 when Chris and I started to seriously prepare for Rocky’s arrival that I have started to truly embrace this pregnancy and fall in love with her, so I feel there is even more to lose with this recent strong emotional attachment I’ve developed to the little pudding I am baking in my uterus. I guess this week has been when I have started to truly worry about how this child birth thing is going to go down! But I know that it is natural to worry for most woman who are approaching child birth for their first time (and in fact I will hazard a guess that it is equally worrying for any subsequent pregnancy!).

Getting ready. We have been busy bunnies – knowing our diaries were getting pretty full over the next few weeks we decided to get all the basics ready for Rocky’s arrival. The weekend of Hurricane Matthew we made all our big purchases –

Strollers/buggies (one jogger, one ‘umbrella’ lightweight style) which all ‘click and connect’ to a car seat. I think they call it a ‘travel system’. Wow choosing a stroller is intense! It was perhaps easier than choosing a new car (Although I suspect Chris would argue otherwise with my multi-criteria analysis for buying my car!!). We chose the Graco Modes Jogger Travel System (bah which I have just noticed on sale) and Graco Breaze Click Connect Umbrella Stroller.
Pack n Play – this is basically a travel play pen/cot/changing table/bassinett system. It even has a a vibrating chair and a mobile with music. Very cool. Who knows if it will be practical?!?! We went with the Graco Pack n Playard Nearby Napper.
The Layette. We went to a few consignment/second hand baby clothing stores/boutiques and bought the basics to get us started. Burp clothes, muslins, sleep suits, sleep sacks, socks, onesies, a few adorable outfits, swaddles, baby health care stuff. And yes, we did actually buy some clothes from the boys section.
Baby video monitor. This one completely overwhelmed me. There were so many different choices. In the end we chose one based off reviews online because how else do you choose these days?
Baby Carrier/ Sling. We had a bit of fun trying these all on in babies r us. We tried to find one that suited both Chris and I…basically it is one big long piece of cloth right? You would think it is easy to choose a sling! Well ummmm no. We went with the Moby Wrap Evolution Baby Carrier in DENIM! Oh yes the colour is very important of course ;-p
A diaper Genie! Basically a diaper/nappy bin. Do we really need one? Apparently so!
Diaper/nappy bag. Sooooo many different choices – rucksack/back pack/messenger back/giant purse! Colours, fabrics, goodies, flaps and sections inside.
Nursery. We have almost finished the nursery, we are just waiting on a few items to arrive that we ordered from http://www.thelandofnod.com (wow they have some adorable stuff – at an extortionate price too!) The majority of the furniture we bought from ikea or is second hand. So this meant we could splash out on some of the decor items – such as the wall decals.

I love these decals and rug!!!

Pregnancy woes. I have been lucky with my pregnancy so far, so I guess it is expected that the last trimester will have a few woes, I can’t escape lightly.

Vaccine OUCHIE. I’ve already written about the side effects of the TDAP vaccine!! That took several days before it wore off! But I survived, that is the most important thing.
Turning into a Whale overnight. I am struggling with getting out of our bed – I have to roll off the edge and clamber back in with a lot of huffing and puffing – it’s a platform bed so it’s not easy to get in or out at the moment, I may need a ladder soon and I suspect this is only going to get worse over the next few weeks!
The smallest bladder in the world. Which means I rarely sleep more than three hours in a row, maybe two or three times a week I might get three hours of sleep.
Hemorrhoids. The past few weeks my poo has slowed down to one a day (from three a day) and this has meant that I am now also suffering from hemorrhoids. They are literally a pain in the arse! I am afraid of them bursting and bleeding suddenly and freaking me out that the blood is from somewhere else!

Some mild relief from Hemorrhoids 😦

Anemia. I had a follow up blood test after my initial results came back as slightly anemic during my 24 week appointment. At my 28 week appointment my results just came back to say I am still anemic despite taking iron supplements. But the cause remains unknown because my iron stores are good. So! More blood tests! Perhaps I’m actually anemic because they keep stealing my blood for all these tests 😦 In the meantime I have been told to keep taking my iron supplements (YEY these cause even more constipation which I am trying to combat with fibre supplements) and of course my prenatals (which I have been religiously taking for almost three years now!).

Other exciting things whilst we countdown to R-Day (i.e. Rocky’s arrival!).

Maternity leave planning. I get 20 weeks of maternity leave. In addition I have normal annual leave to take, home leave (where I get to fly back with my family to the UK for 2 weeks) and normal holidays such as Christmas, Easter etc all to account for. My last day in the office will be 4 weeks before the expected R-Day, so 2nd December will be my last day! This means I only have 2 weeks in the office because the rest of the time I am either travelling or training! Whaaat?!! How am I going to keep myself occupied for those 4 weeks?! Well I have my Executive Development Program work to get ahead on before Rocky arrives. Plus I have some knitting to do 🙂 I guess you might see me write a few more blog posts! And we are still writing our book on infertility for friends and family. Plenty to keep me relaxed.
Maternity photo shoot. Although Chris will probably take some maternity photos of me, he can’t do photos of the both of us easily, so we decided to hire a photographer. I selected 6 local photographers, and of course let Chris decide which one to go with as he is the pro! Naturally, he picked the most expensive one ;-p We paid our deposit and selected our location, so the photo shoot will be in a couple of weeks time! All we have to do now is figure out what to wear!
Travelling to Europe. I have two more work trips to fit in….Bavaria, Germany and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. I love love love Bavaria at this time of year – the colours in the mountains are simply amazing! And I am excited to be going to Luxembourg because I have never been before.

My 30 week bump flying to Germany- and the plane’s seatbelt JUST fits round it! I hope next time I fly I don’t have to ask for an extender belt :-s

Nesting. You may recall we bought a new house earlier this year. We have been slowly fixing things, decorating etc. But the past week or so we decided to get as much done as possible – new sofa, new patio furniture, new kitchen table, hanging pictures, selecting photos to hang, organising the study/filing etc. Chris has also been batch cooking sauces, chillis, stews etc to fill up our chest freezer. Bless him – he has been amazing at getting things ready because I have been, quite frankly, useless! This is what is called nesting!
Party planning. I am not having a baby shower…but we are having a house, baby and birthday party to celebrate our new home and to enjoy some time with our friends before our family grows into three. Oh and it is Chris’s birthday soon too. So why not have a big bash?

That’s a long post – I’m sorry! But it has been a while and I wanted to capture everything that has happened in the past few weeks. Signing off with a bump pic!

It had been 11 weeks since the last bump pic!

Paranoia

November 7, 2015November 7, 20159 Comments

It’s not always an easy subject to talk about – abortion. It’s not an easy subject to talk about in any country, but for some reason it is something I feel is even harder to talk about in the US. Why? Because it is so politically charged here. It comes up in political debates a lot, and as much as I can debate my socks off about the subject, I don’t really like confrontation. Particularly in front of strangers. Actually, I just don’t like to upset people. So my blog post yesterday about “abortion and the grey space” made me a little bit nervous….talking about abortion publicly, I was afraid I might upset someone –unintentionally of course. Not because of where my points of view on abortion lay, but just because I started a conversation about abortion.

I talked it through with Chris what I was planning on posting. He thought everything I was talking about was interesting. We ended up having our own debate against the world. (I love that we can do this together).

So in the end, I decided to press the ‘publish’ button because I promised this month I would write about things on my mind and open myself up a little…go a bit deeper.

I am now completely paranoid that I have upset someone. Not on purpose of course. But I am also paranoid about attracting haters! Have you ever used the key word ‘abortion’ to search for blog posts about the subject? Probably not, but I can tell you that there are some haters out there. I once got so emotionally upset about one post I ended up correcting someone on their blog. I immediately regretted it.

If I ever see an article about abortion on facebook I like to read all the comments because it educates me on both sides of the argument. But really, I get sickly engrossed in how intense other human beings get towards other human beings who have never met. It has heightened my awareness (or made me paranoid) of just how nasty people can get online. I have never experienced trolls on my blog or facebook page, but I know that if I did I would probably consider giving up blogging quite quickly. As I said, I’m not one for confrontation. I only meant to highlight some issues I’ve experienced as a direct result of experiencing loss and not upset anyone.

Abortion and the grey space

November 5, 2015November 5, 20158 Comments

We hear this word used in everyday life – abortion. We can all formulate an idea of what abortion is….someone choosing to end the life of their baby. But this isn’t a wholly accurate or fair description and is certainly not what medical professionals use the word ‘abortion’ for.

According to Wikipedia, the term ‘abortion’ can be defined as:

“The ending of a pregnancy by removing a fetus or embryo from the womb before it can survive on its own.”

The unintentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus before the 24th week of gestation is called a ‘spontaneous abortion’. This is the clinical term that is used by medical practitioners in their notes to describe what most lay people would understand to be ‘miscarriage’.

The intentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus is called an induced abortion. Reasons for intentionally inducing abortion are either therapeutic or elective:

Therapeutic abortion is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman; prevent harm to the woman’s physical or mental health; where indications are that the child will have a significantly increased chance of premature morbidity or mortality or otherwise disabled.
Elective abortion is voluntary when it is performed at the request of the woman for non-medical reasons.

And then there are the methods of abortion, including medical abortion and surgical abortion: Medical abortion (sometimes also called chemical abortion) is induced by drugs or pharmaceuticals. Where as surgical abortion includes procedures such as vacuum aspiration, Dilation and Curettage (D&C), Dilation & Evacuation (D&E) and hysterotomy.

The use of methotrexate to terminate my pregnancy of unknown location or ‘ectopic’ pregnancy is described as a medical abortion and can also be described as therapeutic abortion. Clinically, I did not miscarry. Although I am sure I had started the process of miscarrying before I took the methotrexate, and would consider it to be a spontaneous abortion – or – miscarriage – or – early pregnancy loss. However you want to ice it, in my medical notes it will be described using the word abortion.

For those who are not aware that this is actually a clinical term it can come as quite a shock to see those words on their medical records. For example, here is a link to a news article: “Mom to be shocked when miscarriage called ‘abortion’ in medical records” that shows how easy it is mis-perceive the term abortion.

But definitions of abortion vary across and within countries as well as among different institutions. Language used to refer to abortion often also reflects societal and political opinions and not only scientific knowledge. Popular use of the word abortion implies a deliberate pregnancy termination, whereas a miscarriage is used to refer to spontaneous fetal loss when the fetus is not viable (i.e. not yet unable to survive independently outside the womb).

Paul Freeling and Linda Gask* explain the problem well:

“As children many of us learnt the old rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”. As we grew older we discovered that the adage was untrue. For most of us whose profession involved interacting with other people it became obvious that clumsy or inapposite use of language could cause pain. An attempt to avoid such pain has provoked…to suggest that distress in women who have miscarried would be reduced if changes were made in the language used by professional carers…the word “abortion” should be avoided because the lay public interprets it as applying to a termination of pregnancy.”

And then there is the grey space in between all of this. This is where in the US definitions and clinical descriptions are all important for insurance companies.

I recently read about a lady who fell right in between this grey space….

At a 13 week scan several doctors told her that her baby had a heartbeat, but the organs were not inside its body, the hands and feet are curled, one limb was missing, the neck was not right. Overall, the baby was unlikely to survive and should be removed as soon as possible before it could cause serious health issues. By definition, in Ohio, this situation was considered by the insurance company as an optional abortion because there was still a heartbeat, therefore, they would not cover the cost of the $10000 operation at the hospital. Planned Parenthood would be able to perform the surgery at a cost of $800.

Eventually, after the doctors re-worded the case, the insurance company agreed to cover the costs. But it came at a cost. You should read the whole article to fully appreciate what this poor woman went through: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-mann/heartbeat-involuntary-miscarriage-and-voluntary-abortion-in-ohio_b_2050888.html

This blog post is not about pro-life or pro-choice. It is merely a brief peek into the complexities of the use and definition of the term ‘abortion’.

For me personally, the insurance company did not initially cover the cost of my methotrexate treatment because it was being used as an abortion drug. Eventually we managed to claim the cost back directly via our European insurance provider.

I don’t have a solution to propose, I just know that abortion – whether it is spontaneous, elective, optional, surgical, medical – is a confusing grey mess of an area in the US.

* Freeling, P. & Gask, L., Changing terminology is no substitute for good consultations skills BMJ 1998; 317 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.317.7165.1028 (Published 17 October 1998)