stella and/or ben

38w6d - And so it begins....

My waters broke, the night before yesterday. In fact it all started with me loosing the mucus plug at 2 am on Dec.27 (38w5d) and possibly even then I started to lightly drip water. I consulted my smart pregnancy book and was advised to go back to sleep, which I tried to do (not that easy though when your heart and mind are racing). Eventually I slept an hour between 4 and 5 am. At 5 am my waters broke in my sleep, waking me up lying in a wet bed. I called the hospital to let them know what has happened and was advised to come in at 9 am. I was waiting for painful contractions to start.

At 9 am we went to the hospital with still no painful contractions. The doctor confirmed that my waters had broken and that both I and the Insider were doing just fine, and I was sent home with a new appointment for today in case labor hasn't set in....but not before another flush of waters breaking right there in the hospital leaving me with wet pants :-S.

Most of yesterday I slept, trying to gain energy and strength for the impending labor and delivery. This morning we went to the hospital again to have the baby and me monitored and all seems still fine, so we are back home again.

We are waiting for labor to start, contractions that is...we are waiting for contractions. The Insider is doing fine, in fact I think she is preparing for what will be her great entrance. We go back to the hospital tomorrow morning for more monitoring. If all is well even then, we will be sent home again. Labor will be induced no later than Sunday though.

I am in good spirits and I am working on keeping it this way. J is my rock. We are killing time now, cleaning (J), cooking de-frosting (me), sleeping (me), playing with the kitty (J), blogging (me) and watching films (both of us). I am back in limbo land in a way - no longer really pregnant, not in labor and not a mother yet. I am happy and excited and can't wait to have the Insider with us. I really hope I don't have to be induced, but whatever will be, will be, right?

Wish us luck and Happy New Year to all of you!!!

32w6d - Exhale!!!

All is well with the Insiders heart.

After having spent 4 hours at the hospital this morning, having had one 45 minutes blood-flow u/s and a 30 minutes CTG done as well as 2 midwifes and one obstetricians listen to the Insiders heartbeat manually with one of those old-style wooden thingys (that I am too lazy to look up the English word for now), the diagnose is

"there is nothing wrong with the Insiders heart and its beating rhythm".

Exhale.

So why then the strange rhythm yesterday? Why the scare? We all saw the heart doing little irregular jumps yesterday on the screen.Everybody seems to agree that it most probably was due to the fact that the Insiders heart is still growing and developing and irregularities in the rhythm can be very normal.

I won't go back to the hospital until birth. My regular midwife has been instructed to do extra thorough heartbeat examinations with the wooden thingy (it's supposed to give a better sound of the actual heart beat than the electronic dopplers) as well as the doppler.

So we exhale. Due to the past days drama I am going to do something I didn't plan to do, I'm going to share yesterday u/s, showing her face (the face is turned up and her hand next to her mouth/chin). Click on the image in the brackets ( ) if you want to see the u/s in a pop-up.

Thank you for you well-wishes also for the kitty, which I have named Sweetheart. They mean a lot and helped as always tremendously.

32w5d - Cry Baby?

It was all going too well, wasn't it?

Remember the IVF/ICSI#1 debacle? Remember how it all started with a dead kitty?

Well, we are back there again. Actually not quite yet. The new kitty is not dead - yet. Temperatures are freezing by now and most parts of Sweden are covered in snow. J and I have started to feed a kitty, which is doing fine so far (as fine as one can be freezing outside). My heart is aching for the little fur ball and I am determined to not have a dead kitty again. This one will be different. This one will have a future. I have cried a lot about this the past days. The misery is just heart-breaking. Maybe it is the hormones as well.

Today we had our 32  weeks growth scan. She is growing fine. BUT, and I wish I never ever had to write this fucking BUT. Her heart is beating irregularly. The heart muscle itself looks anatomically correct and well developed, the rhythm is just not the way it should be. The u/s tech immediately booked us in for and extensive blood circulation and heart u/s tomorrow morning at our hospital (same one where we did the dIUI, just one floor up). She isn't too worried herself, she says she has seen this several times before, not meaning anything other than the heart growing and developing. Thus, she told us to try to keep worrying until the u/s to a minimum, and that is what we are trying to do. Succeeding so-so, it's difficult. We are so worried for our Insider whom we love so much already. I hope tomorrow will give us more information.

On the way back from the u/s our car almost broke down. We just made it to the repair shop in the last minute. 800$ and one hour later the car was working again.

I hope tomorrow will be a better day with better news. I can't stop thinking about the Insiders heart.

28w3d - OK

The Insider is doing well. No major stress signs. Good heart rate. I am still contracting a lot, which the midwife thinks is ok as long as the contractions only are about 30 sec each. She was a bit alarmed (not freaked out like I was though) about the rapid increase of contractions, i.e. from 3-4 to 30 in one day during last week but as it seems that the amount is no longer increasing it is ok. I am ordered to rest though. I don't have to stay in bed but I should take it easy and of course drink a lot. Luckily one of my main pg cravings has been water so I think that I have been drinking enough since the start, which is quite an achievement for me being someone who always had a hard time keeping myself hydrated (if you don't count the Cosmos).

I can't say that I am not relieved that a) the Insider seems fine and my cervix looks fine too. Apparently I am not having a baby tomorrow ;-) and b) that my partial sick leave has been increased to 100% until the end of November. I found it very stressful to be a work 50% of the time and work on 100% of my projects. I will returning to work to pick up my laptop to do some administrative work during next week. From home. No day-to-day ad hoc panic work. I just had a long talk with my boss and he sort of admitted not having handled the whole "working part time" situation as good as it could have been handled. I am relieved.

I am hanging out on the couch, the kitty besides me purring (heaven) and several kitting projects on going. You all will get sick of me posting EVERY.DAY.FROM.NOW.ON :-). Knitting post coming up tomorrow.

Oh and by the way I passed the glucose test today. Insulin levels completely normal. Where are Ben & Jerry?

28w2d - Stress!!! Relax???

So, I had this non-pg, non-IF post all planned out. I was going to write about the KAL (knit-along) that I am participating at and some other stuff I am knitting and also about my up-coming trip to northern Krautland. But but, I feel the need to post a different kind of post instead.

Since about week 22 of this pregnancy I have had some minor,non-hurting contractions, about 3-5 per day. Since Thursday I have had between 20-35 of those contractions. Needless to say that I am a bit alarmed (nice word for "freaked out"). The contractions don't hurt and they are over after ca. 15-25 seconds. Nevertheless, I am alarmed. On Thursday I just thought that I might have stressed too much. On Friday too. But then the whole weekend I didn't stress at all and still I had all these contractions.

I am trying to be as calm as possible, which worked out quite ok so far ("alarmed" see above). I feel her kick inside me, which is a good sign. Tomorrow I have the diabetes screening test coming up and I am going to see my midwife. All the time since Thursday I told myself that I will wait until that appointment and get clarification about the contractions then. Today I am no longer only "alarmed". Today I am terrified. I decided not to go to work. I decided to go to bed instead again (after a long night with unsettling sleep). Then I started to cry. Which made the contractions come more often, which made me cry more, which made the Insider give me a fat kick, letting me know that hyperventilating crying isn't good for anybody. Then I had to laugh and cry. Hrumpf.

I eventually calmed down. Freaking out is no good. I called my midwife and left a message that I need to speak with her immediately.

While waiting for my midwife to call back I thought about the whole situation a bit more, and here is what I have come up with.

1) Since the 6th week of this pregnancy I have been in pain in my pelvis. This pain is starting to take it's toll. Being in pain constantly is stressful not only for the mind but also (especially) for the body.

2) Since I only work 50% now but still have 100% of my projects to cope with I am more stressed than i have been in a very long while at work. Working part-time is horrible in a way. I talked to my boss and my doctor about the fact that this arrangement isn't working too well. My boss doesn't get it and my doctor says that "this is normal" particularly in small IT companies where there is nobody around to take over some of my tasks. I am trying not to care too much about work, but in the end, I do care and I don't want my projects to just go down the drain because I work less. I need to relax (mwahahaha) and let somebody else worry about work.

3) So I am stressed out. But I guess a lot of people are stressed about those things, work and pain. Somehow my uterus us taking it personal. Or maybe "she" (the uterus) decided to start hard-core training in preparation for "her" big day - birth. Contracting. Whatever it is, I need to relax.

Then my midwife finally called me with the result that I have a strict order to remain in bed or the couch this week and come see her. So tomorrow I'm going to see my midwife and even my ob/gyn. They are going to take a look at me cervix and I hope find nothing out of the ordinary and tell me to take it a bit slower this week. Relax. Isn't it funny how I am again asked to "relax"? Maybe it works this time? Stay tuned for short update tomorrow and a post about knitting.

PS: Any advice/words of wisdom, except relax? Oh, and my books tell me to take a warm bath. Too bad we only have a shower.

Nuchual drama?

Thank you all for your advice. What would I do without all of you.

We don't need the NT scan, we don't want it either. I think from the start of this pregnancy we knew we wouldn't be doing the scan, but then, when the o/gyn offered us to have the scan done and then when the ultrasound tech doing the scan told us that there is no available time for an apointment, we felt that we were robbed an opportunity. An opportynity we didn't think we'd get and also an opportunity we didn't think we'd need in the first place.

We have calmed down and are very happy with the decision not to do the scan and wait for our regular u/s during week 18, where we'll most probably also find out the sex of the baby.

Happy we are. Happy we were, actually.

The clinic doing the NT scans just called a second ago and offered us an appointment on Monday morning at 9 am. Without thinking I answered "yes" to the question if we want to have this apointment. Honestly, I am not sure if I really want to have the scan done. When calling J and telling him that we were offered an apointment and that I grasped the chance he asked if we really should do it? I'm not sure. I don't know if I want to do the scan. I don't know what to do if we get the "high risk" result. I don't know what to do. I don't know I don't know and I don't feel I can make this decision right now in this second. But I do have to decide right here right now. Gosh why are things never easy? Should we do the scan or not do the scan?

Given that tomorrow is midsummer the most "important" Swedish national holiday we don't have any time to decide. They are closing in about 30 minutes at the NT scan place and open again on Monday right before our NT scan.
I just called them again and asked if we could keep the appointment but cancel in the last minute if we want to? Of course that's not possible - stupid me for asking...but hey, noboday can "force" me to do the scan.

By the way: If we do the NT scan on monday, we most probably loose our appointment for an u/s during week 18.

So now I am off to celebrate midsummer...I'll be thinking about the NT scan the whole weekend...grrrr. My German friend is supposed to be coming from Frankfurt. Her flight was cancelled this morning and she is still grounded in Germany. Grrrrr.

I think I need a hug - and a decision. I can't make this decision.