OB appointment 17 weeks 4 days

My husband Will and I met with the OB today.

And wonderfully, amazingly, all still seems to be going well.

She did an ultrasound and I had my usual immediate thought that the baby had died, but she was fine. This week, we could see her swallowing fluid on the ultrasound. The OB said this is a sign of an intact neurological system. So Yay! My tiny daughter is a champ at drinking her own amniotic fluid!

My blood pressure and weight checked out fine. The OB also answered our questions about my continuing nausea, almost constant leg pain, and fatigue. (I know - can you believe that these are my current "serious" complaints?! I am so lucky). It looks like compression socks may be in my future. The nausea and vomiting are likely to get better in the next month, but may not resolve completely. All that is ok. I am thrilled to be pregnant. Thrilled to be at this place. Still incredulous.

We also would like to take a vacation at the end of June so we were asking the OB's opinion on the safest places to go. She said Europe or Hawaii are both fine, but in Europe, we have to watch the cheese, can't have proscuitto, etc. So that makes me think we might prefer it post-pregnancy. So it seems likely that we will head to Hawaii!! I think the flight will be a bit tough, but it will be a wonderful trip if we can do it.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the little one. To me, it looks like she finds her head intolerably weighty. Poor thing!! She's propping herself up on my placenta!

Mo

My head is sooooo heavy!

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17 week anatomy scan results and picture

Sorry for the delayed post. I know I made at least a few of you nervous. I was totally wiped out yesterday and had to also prepare a talk for today. This morning, I spoke to 400 military service members for three hours. Yowza. Ex-haus-ting. It went well, but I am glad to have the talk behind me.

So...on to the anatomy scan. Yesterday, at 16 weeks, 6 days, I had my first anatomy scan. I thought I would need to drink a bunch of water, but turns out, that was not needed. Will and I were nervous. Me especially. I worried that the baby had died (I hadn't used the doppler in the past several days to reduce the baby's exposure time, since I knew this scan would be long, but of course that left me extra antsy). I was also nervous specifically about heart defects. They seem relatively common, so just at baseline I was worried about it, and then I came across information in the past week that high vitamin E intake in pregnancy is associated with congenital heart defects. I haven't been trying to supplement with vitamin E, but I've been taking high doses of fish oil (10 capsules a day per one of my doctor's instructions)...and it turned out when I checked the bottle that it contained vitamin E also...so inadvertently, I was supplementing this. Once I did the math, I started to seriously panic. I was way above the dosages associated with heart defects in this study. I've been trying without much success to calm myself since then.

So needless to say, a nervous-at-baseline Mo was especially nervous about this anatomy scan. 

Luckily, everything looks good so far. The center I went to has you meet with a high risk OB right when you do the scan, so we were able to get our results and have all of our questions answered. He said that all looked good. There were a few things we couldn't see yet, re: the heart (can't yet rule out a ventricular septal defect), at least one thing we couldn't see yet re: the brain (the corpus collosum), and the OB also said that later on the kidneys could turn out to be polycystic. But we saw what we should see at this stage. A four-chambered heart, a closed abdominal wall, a cute button nose, lips! (with no cleft), two kidneys with good blood flow, the stomach, all the bones where they should be. The OB said we could see 90-95% of what we need to see and that I should come back at 20 weeks, when they will be able to see the rest. 

They also checked my cervix, and although they didn't give me the measurement, it looked nice and closed, even to nervous me. 

The baby, they said, weighs about 6 ounces now (my little petite filet!).

And, they said that they are 99% sure that it is a girl.

Wow. A baby girl! That is just amazing. This whole experience continues to be so completely mindblowing. We haven't been hoping too strongly one way or the other - we just want a healthy, living baby. But a girl is extra special. In Will's family, there are 9 sons between all of his siblings. There are 0 daughters. In my family, 2 stepsons among my siblings, 0 daughters. So this little girl is going to get doted on, I do think.

So without further ado, here she is!

Mo

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In no particular order

1. I had a dream that I was a human marsupial. I was able to look down in my pouch and see my baby, and just carry it around that way. I wouldn't mind this, if in fact it could be a possibility.
   
   
2. According to one of my pregnancy e-newsletters, baby is now the size of my open hand. Really? That seems really big! How did that ever happen?
   
   
3. I vomited Sunday evening. Yeowch. I thought the nausea and fatigue would be gone by now, but they really are not, at least not entirely. I feel fine and then suddenly I do not. And my gag reflex? Out of this world. It's only the second puke of this pregnancy, so nothing to complain about really, but it was surprising in its sudden-ness and in its force.
   
   
4. Someone gave me a seat on the NYC subway. Because I'm pregnant. And because (gulp) I look it. OMG. I just stare at myself a bit in wonder - what is happening to my body? It seems so much larger. Also all of the sudden. Will assures me I'm not overly huge (thanks, Will!) but I feel big. I am out now at work (no big announcement, but have told key people this week and am no longer hiding it).
   
   
5. Despite being fairly pregnant-looking, I feel like a fraud. It still seems like something to hide (before something terrible happens), or like I'm merely pretending to be pregnant. Am I? It's been a long time since my last period, but you never know. 

Mo

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Ainsley

Jen Knepper and her husband from Maybe If You Just Relax lost their beautiful 17-month-old daughter Ainsley on Saturday. They had already endured the loss of Evelyn, Ainsley's identical twin, who died just before birth. Please click over and send your support as they endure an unimaginably difficult situation.

Mo

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Mohs procedure update

I had the basal cell lesion removed from my upper back yesterday. I had a little bit of a scare because when I got there, they didn't seem to have me on the schedule (uh oh!). They managed to accommodate me anyway, which is good because it would have been hard to clear my schedule again anytime soon.

The surgeon was able to do the excision with me lying on my side, which was much easier for me than lying on my stomach. Then I waited for about an hour and a half, heard the margins were all clear, and then they put down pillows for me to lie on my stomach to have the incision closed. That was pretty uncomfortable, between my stomach and my pregnancy nasal congestion (hard to breathe!), but it didn't last too long.

They put a ginormous pressure dressing on that makes me look a bit like the hunchback of Notre Dame, but I think is helping significantly with pain/swelling. I've been icing it as well, per instructions, and so far have avoided Tylenol, but will take it if I need it. Mostly the area is sore and it also feels tight, like the skin is pulling (which it likely is, thanks to less skin + swelling). The doc put in two layers of stitches - a dissolvable under layer and a stronger outer layer that she will remove in a couple of weeks.

I'm really glad to have this taken care of and behind me.

I checked the baby with doppler this morning and he/she seemed fine in there, heart beat beat beating away.

Now I just need to be careful not to lift anything or twist too much for the next few weeks and let this heal up really well.

I scheduled the anatomy scan for next Friday - hard to believe that a week from today we'll get to see the baby again, hopefully finding out everything is still going ok. I cannot even fathom that we will likely find out the gender at that time. Crazy. But then this whole pregnancy thing is crazy. Still makes no sense to me how we finally hit on the right combination of things to have an actual baby start to grow inside of me - and keep growing inside of me into the second trimester. Mindblowing, really.

Thanks for all of your continued good wishes and thoughts! We're getting there, a day at a time.

And baby, if you're listening, stay in there!! Keep growing!! Stay healthy! You are so, so wanted.

Mo

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