A Mummy-To-Be…

Well, it’s been confirmed. We are pregnant! There is definitely a baby growing inside me (and in the right place too… phew!) 😀

11.15am was my scan appointment time. Nerve-wracking is not the word for how I was feeling this morning. I felt sick, cold and shivery (and it isn’t even cold out today!)

We got called in and the woman started with an external ultrasound. She said she could see the gestational sac and was quite sure there was something inside but she needed to do an internal just to be sure.

I went off to the loo to empty myself of the litres of fluid I’d consumed since my last wee this morning and went back to the room. I was told to strip from the waist down and wrap myself in a sheet (all done behind a curtain – all very discreet indeed). I lay back on the table and the internal ultrasound began. Within a few seconds she had located what she was looking for (what a pro!) and asked if we wanted to see. They let Matt come over (who was in the room the whole time) and she showed us the fetus and the tiny heartbeat on the screen. Joy! We both just looked at each other and I just kept saying “thank goodness, thank goodness”.

She has put me at 6 weeks and 2 days. I thought I was 6 weeks and 6 days but that’s no biggie. The length is currently 5.5mm CRL (crown to rump length). That makes the EDD (Estimated Delivery Date 10th March 2008 now).

This is what my report shows:

Scan reason: Bleeding
Gestation Sac: Present
Fetal Pole: Seen
Uterus: Bulky (whatever that means!)
Sac Site: Normal
Shape: Regular
Yolk Sac: Seen
Fetal Heartbeat: Present
Gestation: 6 weeks 2 days

The comments say that the FH (fetal heartbeat) was seen and that there is a small subchrionic haemorrhage adjacent to the sac which she said was probably why I had the small amount of spotting. I am not to be alarmed if it happens again and that it may well just be re-absorbed back into my body.

I am really pleased we have now seen our baby and more relieved that I could ever say! The chances of everything progressing well now that we have seen a heartbeat is something like 96% I think so all is looking very good 😀

The only thing I am disappointed in is not getting a picture to share. Oh well! Next appointment is Monday with the Midwife for my booking in appointment. Can’t wait!

Who would have ever thought that being pregnant would be so stressful. In my naivety, I thought that I’d get pregnant, get bigger, waddle around for the last few months, buy lots of baby things, decorate a nursery and then give birth.

Never for a second did I think that even in the first few weeks that I would be worrying myself sick over the slightest twinge. It almost feels crazy.

This weekend was going well until Sunday. We had been to Gosport to visit Matt’s family as it was his Mum’s 60th birthday. We’d had a nice day – apart from the “not-so-comfy” 6 hour car journey (there and back). When we got home we were shattered but in good spirits.

Sunday morning I woke up, looking forward to seeing my sister and her family as we’d not got to see them the previous day due to our travels. We decided to do something we never do these days and stay in bed a bit longer and have breakfast up there too. Matt went down around 10.00am to make some toast and I went to the bathroom.

Two minutes later, I felt ill. Without going into details, things didn’t seem to be right. When I told Matt, I burst into tears thinking it was the start of something terrible. He ran and got all of our books so that we could look up “bleeding in early pregnancy”. We scoured the books and each one reported that it was normal – unless you were really bleeding and with proper red blood and pain. I had neither. Not even close.

I went to the bathroom several times after that and all seemed to be okay so I calmed down a bit. We popped out for a couple of hours – took it easy anyway – then came home.

Again, I experienced the same kind of thing as I had in the morning but nothing too bad. By 10pm that night when I was ready for sleep, I once again felt sick. The colour had changed to a light pink. I think I only managed to sleep that night as I was so stressed out.

Monday (yesterday) came and I didn’t wake up in the best of spirits. I was feeling tired, emotional and extremely worrid about what had happened the night before. I was in tears to Matt and my sister was trying to persuade me that everything was fine too. It’s hard to accept that when all you feel is negativity.

Matt ended up calling the Maternity Unit and explained to them what had happened. They basically told him that we had to see a doctor as I’m not “on the books yet”, so to speak – ie, I haven’t had my first booking apppointment with the midwife. Helpful for someone in a state of utter dispair!

So, we called the doctor and got an appointment with someone we’d never met before, Dr Attah. He was lovely and could see that I was very anxious so without us even having to ask, he said that he was going to send me for a scan. I expected that there would be paperwork and phonecalls so it would take at least until the following day to hear anything – let alone get an actual scan date. But he was great and picked up the telephone there and then and called the Early Pregnancy Unit and got me booked in.

I have a scan tomorrow at 11.15am. I cannot wait. We’re going to get to see our little bean and check that everything is fine! I’ll be back tomorrow with more news and perhaps even a little photo 🙂

*Fingers crossed please!*

After my crappy appointment at the doctors this morning, I was pleased to hear from the midwife at 7pm tonight.

First of all, she congratulated me, more than I got from the doctor! She then went on to ask if it was my first baby and how far along I thought I was etc..

She said that my local doctors surgery didn’t have any appointments until August and as I would be more than 8 weeks by then, she wanted to get me in sooner. I think as a first timer, she would probably understand you’re very anxious, which is good.

She asked me if I would be able to make it to the actual Maternity Unit for my appointment, to which the answer was ‘yes’. I therefore, now have my first booking appointment on Monday 23rd July at 9.00am (13 days away). It should last around an hour and she will go through loads and loads of stuff with us. (Matt will of course be accompanying me as this is his baby too!!)

So, now I feel that it’s real. Well, I will when I go to my appointment at least. The midwife is called Helen and she sounded lovely. She said she looks forward to meeting me. She has no idea how much I want to meet her! LOL.

We managed to get our first doctors appointment this morning at 11.25am. The appointment lasted just 5 minutes and was generally pointless, really. At least we’re now registered as being pregnant and the Community Midwife will contact us in due course for our first booking appointment.

While I was there, the doctor took details…

Is this your first baby – Yes.
Is this your first pregnancy – Yes.
Then he asked how long Matt and I had been married – Er, we’re not married… so he asked how long we have been living together. I don’t understand why that’s of any importance to them but hey, I answered anyway that we had been together 7 years.
Are you taking folic acid – Yes.

He then went on to take my Blood Pressure which turned out to be the highest I have ever seen it at 146/74. I just looked and went “Wow! That’s well high for me” and told him it’s usually around 110/65. (I know.. I do it often!). He did it again and it was pretty much the same, so no doubt, they will have me down as having High Blood Pressure. Fantastic! Not…

Now I think about it, he didn’t even bother to ask me that date of my LMP or if I had done a home test. Ridiculous!

My usual BP reading… Proof Of..

I got home and did it again and it was elevated but has come down since. I am definitely one of those people who suffer from “white-coat-hypertension” (basically, your BP increases when seeing a doctor – just through anxiety). Not to mention that I am very anxious at the moment anyway about this whole “being and staying pregnant” thing anyway.

Well, I shall look forward to my call from the Midwife. I’m hoping she might be able to fit us in this week perhaps. We’ll see…

I always laughed at pregnant women who said that “pregnancy brain” had set it and it made them forget things and become a bit clumsy. Now it’s happened to me and I am still laughing.

I’ve been finding it hard stringing a sentence together for the past week. I forget where I’ve put things and then yesterday just topped it all off!

I had to ring Cahoot about my account and the woman asked me to confirm the fourth and fifth letters of my password, so I did. She then asked me “Was that M for Mother” so I said, “No, it’s N for…..” and could I think of a word beginning with N? Could I heck! I sat there for what seemed like an eternity trying and trying to think of a word that I could use to confirm the letter was ‘N’ and not ‘M’. I then started to feel a bit silly and laughed. I then told her the letter was ‘N’, not ‘M’, which I think by this point.. we had established.

I felt like such an idiot when I could hear her giggling down the phone and also Matt giggling behind me. I actually went red through embarrassment and told her that my brain just isn’t in gear at the moment. She was still giggling when I hung up. She has to call me back today so hopefully she will have forgotten about the letter ‘N’. At least today – I know a word… November! That’s what I am going to use and I will make sure I have a word sorted out for each letter in my password… just incase!

If this is me at less than 6 weeks, what on earth am I going to be like at 6 months! (I’ll be asking what my own name is!)

HELP!

Signed… “Embarrassed”

So I decided to do my daily test and I was quite amazed at just how quickly the positive line appears now. I usually do the cheaper tests so it doesn’t get TOO expensive, but I felt this morning that I wanted to do a ‘better’ one so I did one of Boots’ own.

I’d no sooner dipped it when the positive line appeared (at the same time as the other 2 lines), so I am happy again and feeling positive. I have no pains this morning so all is good.

Here is todays test:

I never realised for one second, how worrying being pregnant would be.

In my ignorance, I thought you got pregnant and you were happy about it. I didn’t know that with every little twinge and every pain that you would convince yourself something bad is going to happen.

When my sister got pregnant, she spent most of her time (all 3 times), worrying about all the bad things and all I could think was “You’re pregnant! This is what you wanted, now enjoy it”. I now understand that it isn’t that easy.

I now know that the first 12 weeks are going to be really difficult as it is in these first few weeks that if anything is likely to go wrong, it will. I’m not saying that nothing can happen in later pregnancy – I know it can – I’m not stupid, it’s just that you are so desperate for the pregnancy to really “stick” and right now I am petrified it won’t.

I’ve avoided reading about miscarriage myself as I truly believe that sometimes the more you know about the symptoms you will have when something bad (and often good too) is happening, the more you will possilby start ‘feeling’ those things and therefore drive yourself mad.

Matt had told me that one of the signs of miscarriage is a sharp pain on one side….

Last night I had a pain on one side of my stomach. I didn’t tell him until he asked what was worrying me (I must be like glass to him – he ALWAYS knows!) When I did tell him, he asked me what the pain was on a scale of 1 to 10, (1 being nothing, 10 being deathly). When I said “not bad”, he asked if it was 4, 5, 2? So I agreed with about a 2. He kind of laughed and said it was nothing to worry about then. I told him I know it probably isn’t but it’s just so hard not to worry. Then I burst into tears.
I’m trying so hard to be positive but it’s diffucult when you know you are pregnant but have nothing to show for it. I still look exactly the same – nothing has changed apart from me looking a bit more tired than usual and having a bit of dry skin on my face (as my 7 year old nephew, Ryan, so kindly pointed out on Friday night. “Oh, Aunt D, what’s wrong with your face? Aww, poor Aunt D” – like my face is about to fall off or something. It’s nice that he cares so much, bless him).

We are 6 weeks away from a scan, so even that can’t bring comfort right now. It’s another 3 days before the tiny ‘poppy seed’ sized heart of our baby starts to beat anyway so they’d likely not be able to see much as of today.

We haven’t been to the doctors yet – simply because we found out only a week ago and thought we would give it time and make sure. We’re going to make our appointment this week so perhaps that will make it more real? We’ll see.

After the ‘upset’ I got myself into last night, we went to bed to watch a film. I find it impossible to stay awake past 11pm these days so I missed around half of it (The Guardian). I fell asleep and didn’t really wake up properly again until about 5.30am-6.00am. That’s very unlike me.

Anyway, I’m still doing at least one test per day. Obviously, they are still coming up as positive. We worked out last night that we have done 36 in total so far. That’s quite a lot!

I’ve not done today’s yet… but I will! Maybe morning sickness will kick in this week. They reckon it happens around week 6 (which begins on Thursday). In a way, I hope it doesn’t, simply because I HATE being sick. I know no-one likes it but I have a real issue with it. Then again, it’s a very good sign in pregnancy so I think on this occasion, it’s something I could deal with…

A ticker to keep track of how far we have gone and have far we have to go. 🙂