Okay, it's the second, really, but the first first thing isn't working out so well. What the heck am I talking about? Baby stuff! Yay!
A couple of months ago my niece gave us her old dresser. It's the right color and size, and the style even works with the girls' room. But my brother and his wife are heavy duty smokers. We have had that dresser and all the drawers spread out over our patio on sunny days and wiped it down with vinegar five or six times. The smell seemed to be gone well enough that we moved it upstairs to our loft. Still didn't notice any bad aromas. We had Mad's party and the big reveal on Sunday (more on that later), and put the drawers back into the dresser just for tidiness. When I took my dad upstairs to show him Mad's "new bed" we stopped and took a whiff of the dresser.
I can barely smell anything, but as soon as we opened the drawer, I could smell that smell. Ugh! If anyone has a workable solution to get the stench out, I would love to hear it. Plan B is to post wanted ads on Freecycle.org and hope we get a better dresser.
So what has supplanted the dresser as the first big thing? We got the baby's mattress. As we've learned more about being green (I'm proud to say we were green before green was cool... but embarrassed to say we're lazy... so maybe we're really teal? aqua?) and health conscious, we have learned about all the nasties that get put into crib mattresses. So Mad has our family's first organic mattress. And by organic, I don't mean the cotton cover is organic, but sprayed with chemical flame retardants. I mean it's got an organic rubber core and cotton and wool padding and cover. Wool is a natural flame retardant.
We love the mattress, but hated the whole process of getting it. I found a website for a company based in Vermont, called and made the order. The 2-3 weeks estimate for shipping turned into 10 weeks. It almost didn't arrive before Madelyn! And when it did arrive, it was folded in half in a box.
Even if that company were still in business, there's no way I'd send them my money again. We found another company, EcoBaby Pure Rest, that not only manufactures their own mattresses, they have a showroom. And they're in my hometown, San Diego! I called to confirm that they had mattresses in stock, Nance and I made the drive and picked one up. It's leaning against the wall in our living room right now. Shipping is only $35, which is about what I spent in gas, but I was glad to have it in my hands immediately (okay, after about two and a half hours of driving). The bonus of the day came when the sales guy, Victor, told me they give a 20% discount for coming to pick it up. I saved $88. Yay!
To make it less of a spent-the-whole-day-driving kind of day, we went over to the harbor and had a fabulous lunch at The Fish Market in an enclosed patio right over the water. The only downside for me is that I haven't completely regained my taste buds from this pesky cold.
In other Baby Fynn news, I had the EKG done yesterday. Her heart is strong and healthy. Even though I have some minor heart things, she does not. The doctor asked if I avoid caffeine. I do, in part because of my own palpitations and mainly because who wants to have a hyper baby en utero? Then he told us something we'd never heard before: Caffeine during pregnancy is linked to babies developing skipped heartbeats, too. Who knew?
After he was done checking out her heart, Doc spent a little time doing another ultrasound. For part of it he switched to 4D. I saw my daughter's face. It felt like meeting her a little. I can't wait to really be face to face with her.
And, causing me to think these ultrasound people are more than slightly obsessed with genitalia, he reconfirmed that we are having a girl. The picture he printed is pretty grainy, so to be sure we didn't forget that we're having a girl, he typed "Vagina" and put three arrows pointing to it. If that wasn't enough, he also typed a message in the corner.
JUST LIKE MOMMY!
Thanks, dude, for the picture I will never show (at least until she's, you know... annoying me around her friends or something).
Showing posts with label ultrasound. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ultrasound. Show all posts
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Do You Know What I Know?
The ultrasound was yesterday. I thought once or twice about coming here and posting what happened, but I was too wiped out. Was the suspense killing you? Probably not, but it is getting to some people. Relatives from California to Georgia have been trying to find out what's up.
Here's your exclusive sneak peek at the real story:
I'm on spring break this week, so I brought the kids down to my dad's house in time for Mad to have lunch and get her nap at Grandma's. Tom was shockingly close to on time. This was an unexpected occurrence, so I went ahead and showed up half an hour later than he had said. I did tell him I'd do that because he never leaves work on time.
He and I went to lunch at our favorite Mexican place. The service is so fast that we were done in 20 minutes. There was still more than an hour to wait. We stopped at the bakery to map out our plans in terms of design for the "big reveal" cake.
I talked to Nance, who was on her way. She arrived a few minutes after us (still about 20 minutes early). I'd already completed the paperwork. Tom went to the restroom and, of course, my name was called. Three minutes later we were still waiting for Tom. There was only one other man in the waiting room, a big guy with those huge rings inside his earlobes. His girl was dressed in full 40's style. He was my only hope.
"Excuse me. I have a very weird request. Can you please go into the restroom and tell Tom Somethingorother that he'd better get his ass out here ASAP? I was called in for the ultrasound several minutes ago."
As is often the case with big, somewhat scary looking men, the dude immediately got sheepish on me. He looked scared to go in the restroom and call someone out. Clearly this is his first baby. Any mom who's shopped with a son beyond the age of using the women's restroom knows what I'm talking about. But this was Tom, not Corey, and I didn't notice how many other guys might have been in there, so I wasn't going in. If it had been Corey (back in the day, not now), I could have told you the number of people and given complete descriptions.
So the guy faked it. He went in and came right back out saying, "I think he's finishing up." Dude, my husband's one of those guys for whom a trip to the bathroom is a chance for some "me time." Last time we were here, it took a long time to be seen. He could be finishing up for the next 15 minutes. Argh!
In the meantime, we found out that I could only have one person in the room with me. This made no sense to me since the rooms are spacious. When Tom and I went in, it made even less sense because there were two chairs.
The woman who took us back gooped me up (hooray for warm gel!) and asked, "If it's able to be seen, do you want to know the baby's gender?"
YES!!!
Before leaving home yesterday I had printed out a paper with
Here's your exclusive sneak peek at the real story:
I'm on spring break this week, so I brought the kids down to my dad's house in time for Mad to have lunch and get her nap at Grandma's. Tom was shockingly close to on time. This was an unexpected occurrence, so I went ahead and showed up half an hour later than he had said. I did tell him I'd do that because he never leaves work on time.
He and I went to lunch at our favorite Mexican place. The service is so fast that we were done in 20 minutes. There was still more than an hour to wait. We stopped at the bakery to map out our plans in terms of design for the "big reveal" cake.
I talked to Nance, who was on her way. She arrived a few minutes after us (still about 20 minutes early). I'd already completed the paperwork. Tom went to the restroom and, of course, my name was called. Three minutes later we were still waiting for Tom. There was only one other man in the waiting room, a big guy with those huge rings inside his earlobes. His girl was dressed in full 40's style. He was my only hope.
"Excuse me. I have a very weird request. Can you please go into the restroom and tell Tom Somethingorother that he'd better get his ass out here ASAP? I was called in for the ultrasound several minutes ago."
As is often the case with big, somewhat scary looking men, the dude immediately got sheepish on me. He looked scared to go in the restroom and call someone out. Clearly this is his first baby. Any mom who's shopped with a son beyond the age of using the women's restroom knows what I'm talking about. But this was Tom, not Corey, and I didn't notice how many other guys might have been in there, so I wasn't going in. If it had been Corey (back in the day, not now), I could have told you the number of people and given complete descriptions.
So the guy faked it. He went in and came right back out saying, "I think he's finishing up." Dude, my husband's one of those guys for whom a trip to the bathroom is a chance for some "me time." Last time we were here, it took a long time to be seen. He could be finishing up for the next 15 minutes. Argh!
In the meantime, we found out that I could only have one person in the room with me. This made no sense to me since the rooms are spacious. When Tom and I went in, it made even less sense because there were two chairs.
The woman who took us back gooped me up (hooray for warm gel!) and asked, "If it's able to be seen, do you want to know the baby's gender?"
YES!!!
Before leaving home yesterday I had printed out a paper with
It's a
Boy! Girl!
I also brought notecards in envelopes so that we couldn't possibly see inside what the tech had circled.
She did some measurements before calling in the doctor, who simply verified the existence of all the necessary parts. Doc had a hard time finding one arm, but eventually did say, "Upper extremities." And she reiterated that we'd need to come back for the baby's echocardiogram (appointment was already scheduled based on my age, so we didn't freak out); she just couldn't see enough to know everything she wanted.
We did learn a couple of interesting things. Unlike my OB's statement about it being "impossible," I am allergic to Benadryl. No surprise to me. I remember what happened when I took it. But she also gave me some alternatives should I ever choose to do shot therapy for my allergies.
She also said that my latest miscarriage was probably because my eggs are old and decrepit (okay, she didn't use those words exactly, but close enough). Since I'd had genetic testing done after all the miscarriages before Corey, she attributed those to incompatibility with my ex-husband. Well, DUH!
Oh, and did I happen to mention we're having a daughter? Fynn Willow. I'm getting teary-eyed again just thinking about her.
When Nancy and I talked before getting to the perinatology center, she said something about how there wasn't any difference between learning today and finding out on the 11th. Tom thought she meant it was no big deal to wait, but I knew she was saying, "Can't we just find out now, huh? Can't we? Please?"
Before she got there, Tom and I talked some more about it. He agreed rather quickly and we went for it. (Nance and I learned later that his mom had given him a lot of grief for not wanting to find out last time... go Mom!)
The tech told us first. Tom asked how certain she was.
"As sure as can be. Labia, labia, clitoris." She pointed out those three lines over and over. In fact, we have no fewer than five cooch shots. That's almost half of the pictures!
The doctor came in and, not knowing that we'd heard the news, did her exam and said, "Looks like you have a very healthy baby and everything's fine, unless you were expecting a winkie, 'cuz if you were expecting a winkie, everything's not fine."
Well clearly I was stunned, but I'm over it now.
Baby Fynn.
There's something so different about knowing who is in my womb.
On the one hand, I'm sure our doctor was right that the moment of birth will be different. When Mad was born, Tom was the first to see and call out that we'd had a girl. Hearing the tech and the doctor each quietly tell us we were having a daughter could never compare to that.
On the other hand, I have four and a half months or so to get to know little Fynn. This is something I've never gotten to do.
Now we just have to wait until Mad's party on the 11th to tell everyone else. In the meantime, our answer is, "Nancy doesn't know any more than we do. I handed her the card that says, 'It's a Boy/Girl.'" Shh!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Dree-ee-ee-ee-eams, Dreams Dreams Dree-eams
I have always had bizarre dreams. I am known for them; my sign name is a derivative of DREAM. Most of the time they drift away as I become more alert in the morning. One time I almost broke a two and did get two large hematomas on my knees from trying to save my son from a blue shadow man. (Note to self: If you're going to leap from the bed, go with the leg that's closest to the side you're on... and hope that your toe isn't wrapped up in the sheets.)
You know the suggestion to write down a dream immediately upon waking so that you can recall it later? I tried that recently. I don't keep pen and paper near the bed, but I do usually have my cell phone handy. I texted myself all about the craziest dream I'd ever had (until that day anyway). There's no point in trying to go into details; whatever I thought I was jotting down came out gibberish. Two days later, however, the dream was crystal clear and stuck with me, probably forever.
A couple of points for context. First, no matter how much I've declared that I'm not worried about this pregnancy and baby working out, I'm kind of an internal mess about the whole thing. A week or so after seeing the doctor I'm great, but then the worrying begins and progressively grows stronger until I get to see Doc and hear the heartbeat again.
Second, I don't eat or drink chocolate, coffee or most teas (only peppermint... and at this point, sparingly) while pregnant. I know, people have those things with NO problems. They just aren't me. Even without the caffeine, I've had more heart palpitations in the past four months than I've probably had in the last 10 years. No coffee or chocolate sometimes wears on me. Oddly, chocolate deprivation sometimes bothers me more even though it's not something I have often, whereas coffee is my life.
My latest dream was set on the same day of my real life; the day before my next appointment. In it, I delivered the baby that day. It didn't survive and it looked more like a malformed space alien wax figure. Tom and I were absorbing the shock when he suddenly said, "But someone brought you a small box of chocolates."
It turned out to be a giant box of rather large chocolates, covered in chocolate shavings.
I remember reaching for the box with a smile and saying something like, "Well, no baby, but there's chocolate." (I would just like to add that I haven't even gotten to that level of chocolate interest, let alone desire, yet.) Somewhere in there I must have known that everything was okay, because I wouldn't eat anything until I could confirm what I didn't really believe had happened. I woke up right after that.
So no surprise that I almost burst into tears on the exam table on Wednesday, right? Baby's heartbeat is strong and fast. It's more like Madelyn's than Corey's. We didn't get to hear it for long because this baby is a mover and a shaker. Even at the first ultrasound (around eight weeks) the little bean was moving like I've never seen happen before.
We go for the ultrasound in less than three weeks, and my biggestreal concern is that he/she won't be still long enough to learn what I'm dying to know. After that we only have one last insurance-covered opportunity to see the baby before birth (one of the true the joys of being of "advanced maternal age"). In any case, my goal right now is to match my internal chaos to the external calm.
You know the suggestion to write down a dream immediately upon waking so that you can recall it later? I tried that recently. I don't keep pen and paper near the bed, but I do usually have my cell phone handy. I texted myself all about the craziest dream I'd ever had (until that day anyway). There's no point in trying to go into details; whatever I thought I was jotting down came out gibberish. Two days later, however, the dream was crystal clear and stuck with me, probably forever.
A couple of points for context. First, no matter how much I've declared that I'm not worried about this pregnancy and baby working out, I'm kind of an internal mess about the whole thing. A week or so after seeing the doctor I'm great, but then the worrying begins and progressively grows stronger until I get to see Doc and hear the heartbeat again.
Second, I don't eat or drink chocolate, coffee or most teas (only peppermint... and at this point, sparingly) while pregnant. I know, people have those things with NO problems. They just aren't me. Even without the caffeine, I've had more heart palpitations in the past four months than I've probably had in the last 10 years. No coffee or chocolate sometimes wears on me. Oddly, chocolate deprivation sometimes bothers me more even though it's not something I have often, whereas coffee is my life.
My latest dream was set on the same day of my real life; the day before my next appointment. In it, I delivered the baby that day. It didn't survive and it looked more like a malformed space alien wax figure. Tom and I were absorbing the shock when he suddenly said, "But someone brought you a small box of chocolates."
It turned out to be a giant box of rather large chocolates, covered in chocolate shavings.
I remember reaching for the box with a smile and saying something like, "Well, no baby, but there's chocolate." (I would just like to add that I haven't even gotten to that level of chocolate interest, let alone desire, yet.) Somewhere in there I must have known that everything was okay, because I wouldn't eat anything until I could confirm what I didn't really believe had happened. I woke up right after that.
So no surprise that I almost burst into tears on the exam table on Wednesday, right? Baby's heartbeat is strong and fast. It's more like Madelyn's than Corey's. We didn't get to hear it for long because this baby is a mover and a shaker. Even at the first ultrasound (around eight weeks) the little bean was moving like I've never seen happen before.
We go for the ultrasound in less than three weeks, and my biggest
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Pardon Me While I Squirm
I figure if you follow my blog and you were dying to know how things went today, you have probably guessed from my previous post that everything turned out just fine. You have guessed correctly, Grasshoppah!
So let's get into how it went, shall we?
What's the first thing every woman dreads about getting an ultrasound? Waiting with a full bladder, right? No fricken kidding!
The appointment was at 11:00. Tom and I arrived with my very full bladder at 10:30, spent 15 minutes finding parking spots and one another and thenwaddled headed in. I hadn't been told a number of ounces to drink, just "a lot all morning" but I figured it was good to stop at, oh... 42. Almost a Super Big Gulp, as Tom pointed out.
Not surprisingly after seeing the parking lot, the place was packed. I asked the receptionist if I had to have a full bladder for the test. She said I could go ahead and use the facilities because they had water available
Blessed relief.
As soon as I came out, I began refilling. I had my own water (I'm a water snob... I know... I suck), but this time stopped after 36 ounces and hoped it was enough. It's not like I'd peed 42 ounces, right?
NINETY minutes later, it was finally our turn... to meet with the genetic counselor. I truly wanted to hear what she had to say, especially with my history, but I interrupted her at least once with, "Pardon me while I squirm."
Fortunately for me, I'd had genetic testing done after all the miscarriages before Corey, and I was okay. And with the last pregnancy being chemical, Doc concluded that my risks were not greater than 2% of having a genetic abnormality. Yay! Even better, instead of sending us out to wait in the lobby until a tech was available, she found a room for me right away.
The ultrasound tech was about seven months pregnant, herself. She felt my pain. When I laid back, it looked like I was maybe two months farther along... and it hurt. She said that laying back should make it a little better, but as soon as she saw it wasn't, she stopped everything, wiped off my belly and told me to go empty my bladder.
"I'm a woman, too, and I just can't push on you in this state." As if she'd read my mind... or heard me telling Tom, "And she's going to push on my belly. I'm going to die!"
The term "... like a racehorse" would be very appropriate here.
The ultrasound went very quickly and very well. Immediately I saw the heart beating. There was a very beautiful little baby face with a tiny little nose. We saw his/her hand going up to the mouth. Maybe this baby has already mastered thumbsucking. Mad got the hang of thumb chewing around three months old, if I recall correctly. Corey never cared one way or the other.
The important part is that I have screened negative for Down Syndrome and Trisomy 18. I'll have more blood work in a few weeks to further rule those out, along with some other big nasties.
We got pictures, but they weren't nearly as good as the images on the screen. Plus, Tom has them and I'll probably never see 'em again (he'll probably put them in the second drawer of the filing cabinet), otherwise I'd put one here for ya.
I go back at the end of March for the ultrasound (you know... the one where Tom has to keep his end of the bargain and we all find out if we're having a boy or a girl) and again two weeks later for an echocardiogram of the baby's heart. Apparently these are all standard practice here in California. So much has changed in the very few years since Mad was en utero. With her, I ended up doing exactly the same stuff as I did with Corey, which was the AFP test to screen for Down Syndrome. No other genetic testing at all. I mean, I could have done the amnio with Mad, but I never would, and nothing else was offered. I kind of like these chances to see the baby. And now that, yet again, my fears have proved unfounded, I'm going to just deep breathe my way through the next six and a half months.
So let's get into how it went, shall we?
What's the first thing every woman dreads about getting an ultrasound? Waiting with a full bladder, right? No fricken kidding!
The appointment was at 11:00. Tom and I arrived with my very full bladder at 10:30, spent 15 minutes finding parking spots and one another and then
Not surprisingly after seeing the parking lot, the place was packed. I asked the receptionist if I had to have a full bladder for the test. She said I could go ahead and use the facilities because they had water available
Blessed relief.
As soon as I came out, I began refilling. I had my own water (I'm a water snob... I know... I suck), but this time stopped after 36 ounces and hoped it was enough. It's not like I'd peed 42 ounces, right?
NINETY minutes later, it was finally our turn... to meet with the genetic counselor. I truly wanted to hear what she had to say, especially with my history, but I interrupted her at least once with, "Pardon me while I squirm."
Fortunately for me, I'd had genetic testing done after all the miscarriages before Corey, and I was okay. And with the last pregnancy being chemical, Doc concluded that my risks were not greater than 2% of having a genetic abnormality. Yay! Even better, instead of sending us out to wait in the lobby until a tech was available, she found a room for me right away.
The ultrasound tech was about seven months pregnant, herself. She felt my pain. When I laid back, it looked like I was maybe two months farther along... and it hurt. She said that laying back should make it a little better, but as soon as she saw it wasn't, she stopped everything, wiped off my belly and told me to go empty my bladder.
"I'm a woman, too, and I just can't push on you in this state." As if she'd read my mind... or heard me telling Tom, "And she's going to push on my belly. I'm going to die!"
The term "... like a racehorse" would be very appropriate here.
The ultrasound went very quickly and very well. Immediately I saw the heart beating. There was a very beautiful little baby face with a tiny little nose. We saw his/her hand going up to the mouth. Maybe this baby has already mastered thumbsucking. Mad got the hang of thumb chewing around three months old, if I recall correctly. Corey never cared one way or the other.
The important part is that I have screened negative for Down Syndrome and Trisomy 18. I'll have more blood work in a few weeks to further rule those out, along with some other big nasties.
We got pictures, but they weren't nearly as good as the images on the screen. Plus, Tom has them and I'll probably never see 'em again (he'll probably put them in the second drawer of the filing cabinet), otherwise I'd put one here for ya.
I go back at the end of March for the ultrasound (you know... the one where Tom has to keep his end of the bargain and we all find out if we're having a boy or a girl) and again two weeks later for an echocardiogram of the baby's heart. Apparently these are all standard practice here in California. So much has changed in the very few years since Mad was en utero. With her, I ended up doing exactly the same stuff as I did with Corey, which was the AFP test to screen for Down Syndrome. No other genetic testing at all. I mean, I could have done the amnio with Mad, but I never would, and nothing else was offered. I kind of like these chances to see the baby. And now that, yet again, my fears have proved unfounded, I'm going to just deep breathe my way through the next six and a half months.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Ultrasound
Early in November, 2007 we had the ultrasound. I brought Corey with me, but he absolutely did not want to go in and see anything. Tom was supposed to meet us there. He hadn't missed a single doctor appointment, but I had a sense that this was about to change. It annoyed me that his job seemed to have a greater hold on him than the chance to see our baby looking like a human for the first time. I mean, it had been months since we'd last seen the little bean/peanut with a heartbeat!
Each of those (three) early ultrasounds generated a different due date. Add to that the original doctor's date and our current doctor's guesstimate and we could only be sure that the baby was coming sometime in April. We'd already thrown out our due date guess because we didn't understand that "40 weeks" really means 38 weeks. So one of the things we were really hoping to do was get the due date to end all the guessing.
Sure enough, when I arrived there was no Tom. After getting called back immediately, I took as much time as I could with getting changed. But really, how long could it take? The technician took me into a very cold room. She offered to turn the air off if I needed it, but said the machine made the room extremely warm. During pregnancy I will always choose cold over hot.
I explained that my husband was allegedly right around the corner.
***I tend to use the word allegedly with a sarcastic bent. Sometimes I count on people not realizing this so I can vent. I don't care at that point if they can just think I'm too wordy.
She said she'd "just take the measurements and then we'll bring him in for the fun stuff." The measurements took a long time. Maybe 45 minutes or so. The baby was clearly on Dad's side when it came to revealing its sex. Although I was mostly rapt with the parts of my baby ("there's the spine... that's right, Baby, you've got a backbone and you're going to use it!"), part of me was watching the clock, wondering where Tom was. About 20 minutes in I got a call saying that Tom had arrived. I was more than a little peeved by then, because I knew that he not only stayed a little too long at work, but he took side streets instead of the freeway. ("Dude, when you're leaving at 2:30 in the afternoon, the freeways are okay. No, really. Way better than that 25 mile per hour street with stoplights every 100 yards. Seriously. Try it sometime." Ugh! Do I sound like Kate Gosselin? I hope not, but jeez!)
Although I wasn't supposed to spy it, I saw on the monitor at the end that the estimated age was 18 weeks, 2 days. If that was accurate, we were looking at an April 4 due date. The technician wouldn't answer any questions about our due date exactly, but she did say that the early ultrasounds (before 12 weeks) are usually more accurate because babies don't all grow at the same rate, and that ultrasounds at this point can be off by as much as two weeks. She also wouldn't say if everything looked okay (which I knew she wouldn't but I had to ask anyway). She did say, "... but I can tell you that I was able to take a lot of accurate measurements for your doctor. He should get the results within 2-3 business days, and congratulations." I assumed (and hoped) that the "congratulations" part was code for, "Yes, of course everything is fine with that baby of yours. Have you met the parents?!? How could it be otherwise?"
Once all the measurements were done, Tom did get to come in for what amounted to about 10 minutes of viewing. Although we knew nothing about the baby's sex, I told the technician that I was going to lie. And I did. Or I tried. When he came in I said, "We found out what the baby is since you weren't here... oh, alright, we didn't." I'm not good at lying (not really a problem for me, as it happens), and I can't hold out for more than a few milliseconds when giving it a shot. I still feel kind of like a bitch for even trying, honestly.
So, we didn't find out the gender, we didn't know for sure that everything was A-OK (did I mention that I had a hard time trusting everything was going smoothly?) and we didn't even have a definite due date. In fact, now we had six potential due dates, ranging from April 4 to April 25.
Here's what we did find out. It was a toad. He or she was face down a lot of the time and looked to be on it's hands and knees, but the feet kept kicking around. We considered naming it Prince.
I'd post pictures, but we forgot to grab them from the technician before we left.
Each of those (three) early ultrasounds generated a different due date. Add to that the original doctor's date and our current doctor's guesstimate and we could only be sure that the baby was coming sometime in April. We'd already thrown out our due date guess because we didn't understand that "40 weeks" really means 38 weeks. So one of the things we were really hoping to do was get the due date to end all the guessing.
Sure enough, when I arrived there was no Tom. After getting called back immediately, I took as much time as I could with getting changed. But really, how long could it take? The technician took me into a very cold room. She offered to turn the air off if I needed it, but said the machine made the room extremely warm. During pregnancy I will always choose cold over hot.
I explained that my husband was allegedly right around the corner.
***I tend to use the word allegedly with a sarcastic bent. Sometimes I count on people not realizing this so I can vent. I don't care at that point if they can just think I'm too wordy.
She said she'd "just take the measurements and then we'll bring him in for the fun stuff." The measurements took a long time. Maybe 45 minutes or so. The baby was clearly on Dad's side when it came to revealing its sex. Although I was mostly rapt with the parts of my baby ("there's the spine... that's right, Baby, you've got a backbone and you're going to use it!"), part of me was watching the clock, wondering where Tom was. About 20 minutes in I got a call saying that Tom had arrived. I was more than a little peeved by then, because I knew that he not only stayed a little too long at work, but he took side streets instead of the freeway. ("Dude, when you're leaving at 2:30 in the afternoon, the freeways are okay. No, really. Way better than that 25 mile per hour street with stoplights every 100 yards. Seriously. Try it sometime." Ugh! Do I sound like Kate Gosselin? I hope not, but jeez!)
Although I wasn't supposed to spy it, I saw on the monitor at the end that the estimated age was 18 weeks, 2 days. If that was accurate, we were looking at an April 4 due date. The technician wouldn't answer any questions about our due date exactly, but she did say that the early ultrasounds (before 12 weeks) are usually more accurate because babies don't all grow at the same rate, and that ultrasounds at this point can be off by as much as two weeks. She also wouldn't say if everything looked okay (which I knew she wouldn't but I had to ask anyway). She did say, "... but I can tell you that I was able to take a lot of accurate measurements for your doctor. He should get the results within 2-3 business days, and congratulations." I assumed (and hoped) that the "congratulations" part was code for, "Yes, of course everything is fine with that baby of yours. Have you met the parents?!? How could it be otherwise?"
Once all the measurements were done, Tom did get to come in for what amounted to about 10 minutes of viewing. Although we knew nothing about the baby's sex, I told the technician that I was going to lie. And I did. Or I tried. When he came in I said, "We found out what the baby is since you weren't here... oh, alright, we didn't." I'm not good at lying (not really a problem for me, as it happens), and I can't hold out for more than a few milliseconds when giving it a shot. I still feel kind of like a bitch for even trying, honestly.
So, we didn't find out the gender, we didn't know for sure that everything was A-OK (did I mention that I had a hard time trusting everything was going smoothly?) and we didn't even have a definite due date. In fact, now we had six potential due dates, ranging from April 4 to April 25.
Here's what we did find out. It was a toad. He or she was face down a lot of the time and looked to be on it's hands and knees, but the feet kept kicking around. We considered naming it Prince.
I'd post pictures, but we forgot to grab them from the technician before we left.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Under Pressure
When I was pregnant with Corey my mom told me that people would be falling all over themselves to open doors and take packages out of my arms. It just wasn't true. The only person who ever did help me, came to my rescue when I was trying to go to the laundry room with a newborn placed on top of a pile of his dirty clothes. But she didn't stay to help, she just got me to the room and that was it. So I didn't expect much when I was pregnant with Mad. However, I have a job that can involve some pretty heavy lifting at times, and that had to be cut back. My doc recommended, but didn't insist on, a 10 pound limit. I mentioned that to Nance and my days of lifting anything were over.
My office consists of a group of women, all but three of whom are mothers and/or grandmothers,(oh, and one happy-to-be-the-lone-male guy). Women declared themselves surrogate grandmas. One person said it really was the *place of business* baby, not just mine. All of this was said in good humor and with love. I was extremely well cared for during my pregnancy.
In the beginning I was exceptionally concerned that I could lose the baby or that the baby might at that very moment not be doing well. So I was at the Ob/Gyn more frequently than the average mama bear in the beginning. It's sort of strange, because I'd taken exactly the opposite stance with Corey... I figured that if "this one took" after so many miscarriages, then it was meant to be and if not, I was done trying for a while. I didn't even rush off to the doctor as soon as I suspected I might be pregnant. Once I heard his heartbeat at the doctor's office, I don't recall ever worrying again that he would be anything other than perfect. And he wasn't.
But I put so much pressure on myself regarding having a healthy baby with Tom and avoiding anything that would cause heartbreak and disappointment for him and his parents, especially his mom. Not to mention that my own father had been plotting and scheming to convince somebody... anybody... to give him another grandchild. Nobody else put this pressure on me; it was an overactive congeniality gene or something. I just wanted to please them and let them be pleased for themselves. And since Mad wasn't planned, I especially wanted her to be as beautiful as Corey had been. Of course, she was, as evidenced by this, her best photo EVER:
But back then, I didn't know that this was the glorious girl who was waiting to meet us. So I fretted a bit. Okay, Nance would say a lot. But she got to "meet" Madelyn via ultrasound because I just had to confirm one last time that everything was okay before we told the fam, so I don't think she'd complain too much about it.
Pregnancy and I get on very well. I had raging morning sickness for the first and last three months of my pregnancy with Corey, but I still loved every minute of it (well, I didn't especially love puking my guts out in the mall shopping center between expensive cars every time I couldn't make it to McDonald's from the bus stop... and heck, making it there wasn't so great because it always seemed to be filled with moms and kids listening to my insides hit the bowl... but aside from that, it was pretty great).
With Mad I was nauseated most of the time for just over half the pregnancy. One time the nausea was so bad that I went into the bathroom absolutely sure that this was it. I couldn't bring myself to look at the toilet because I knew the sight of it would bring me down faster than anything. So I stood in front of the toilet, facing the wall and talking to myself about how I needed to tighten the towel bar and how I was not going to turn around. Thoughts of the watery bowl behind me kept trying to creep in, but I shot them down with, "what a lovely shade of lavender the wall is despite how shockingingly bright it'd seemed at first, lalala."
It worked. I didn't throw up once during my pregnancy.
My office consists of a group of women, all but three of whom are mothers and/or grandmothers,(oh, and one happy-to-be-the-lone-male guy). Women declared themselves surrogate grandmas. One person said it really was the *place of business* baby, not just mine. All of this was said in good humor and with love. I was extremely well cared for during my pregnancy.
In the beginning I was exceptionally concerned that I could lose the baby or that the baby might at that very moment not be doing well. So I was at the Ob/Gyn more frequently than the average mama bear in the beginning. It's sort of strange, because I'd taken exactly the opposite stance with Corey... I figured that if "this one took" after so many miscarriages, then it was meant to be and if not, I was done trying for a while. I didn't even rush off to the doctor as soon as I suspected I might be pregnant. Once I heard his heartbeat at the doctor's office, I don't recall ever worrying again that he would be anything other than perfect. And he wasn't.
But I put so much pressure on myself regarding having a healthy baby with Tom and avoiding anything that would cause heartbreak and disappointment for him and his parents, especially his mom. Not to mention that my own father had been plotting and scheming to convince somebody... anybody... to give him another grandchild. Nobody else put this pressure on me; it was an overactive congeniality gene or something. I just wanted to please them and let them be pleased for themselves. And since Mad wasn't planned, I especially wanted her to be as beautiful as Corey had been. Of course, she was, as evidenced by this, her best photo EVER:
But back then, I didn't know that this was the glorious girl who was waiting to meet us. So I fretted a bit. Okay, Nance would say a lot. But she got to "meet" Madelyn via ultrasound because I just had to confirm one last time that everything was okay before we told the fam, so I don't think she'd complain too much about it.Pregnancy and I get on very well. I had raging morning sickness for the first and last three months of my pregnancy with Corey, but I still loved every minute of it (well, I didn't especially love puking my guts out in the mall shopping center between expensive cars every time I couldn't make it to McDonald's from the bus stop... and heck, making it there wasn't so great because it always seemed to be filled with moms and kids listening to my insides hit the bowl... but aside from that, it was pretty great).
With Mad I was nauseated most of the time for just over half the pregnancy. One time the nausea was so bad that I went into the bathroom absolutely sure that this was it. I couldn't bring myself to look at the toilet because I knew the sight of it would bring me down faster than anything. So I stood in front of the toilet, facing the wall and talking to myself about how I needed to tighten the towel bar and how I was not going to turn around. Thoughts of the watery bowl behind me kept trying to creep in, but I shot them down with, "what a lovely shade of lavender the wall is despite how shockingingly bright it'd seemed at first, lalala."
It worked. I didn't throw up once during my pregnancy.
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