Update on weeks 15-17

Having a hard time getting sleepy...guess I'll update this thing :)  

So this past Monday marked 17 weeks!   It's very exciting to say that since we've never gotten this far before :).   Since my last post we saw the doctor again last Monday and they didn't do an ultrasound, but we did get to hear the heartbeat-151 bpm :)   Since I had seen some light spotting, she also checked to make sure I wasn't dilated, which luckily I wasn't.

Our next ultrasound isn't until the end of November, which seems like so long, but I guess that's part of having a regular pregnancy :).  We've thought about getting a heart rate Doppler, just for that reassurance whenever we want.    Another thought was to get a basic ultrasound done at a place like Womb with a View, here in town, to get a little peek in a couple of weeks, so we don't go 6-7 weeks without getting to see our little gummy bear :)

Physically, I either am completely exhausted or super charged with energy.   I have "popped" out a little bit, but it's hard to see unless I wear form fitting shirts, which I've been avoiding at work, because I was waiting until Halloween to announce my pregnancy (tomorrow!).   For some it may look like I've been eating a pizza a day for lunch :) but my belly has started to round out and has gotten firmer.   I've been able to keep the weight off that I lost in the first trimester, despite the growing roundness up in front.   I've also started to feel a pulling/pressured feeling at times, which apparently is normal.  I've also started to feel a little movement on my left side (where the baby is)!   I can't feel it on the outside yet, but when I'm hungry, sing, sitting in my tower class I can feel it moving more.
Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we'll be able to find out the gender :)
I know I'm a dork, but we've been taking some "weekly" pictures and the baby is as long as a _____ picture (in the what to expect book/app it tells you approximately how long your baby is every week, i.e. an orange, poppy seed, cantaloupe, pineapple, etc).   I tried to take a profile picture as well so you can see the "bump" :)
Thanks for checking in! :)

                                             Week 15, baby is as long as a navel orange.   

                                                      Week 16, baby is as big as a turnip (we didn't have one :)), 
                                                         roughly about 5 inches long. 

                                           Week 16 profile.  Some of this is me, but I'm definitely 
                                                           feeling more round these days :)  

I'll post my 17 week belly and Halloween baby shirt after tomorrow.  This week, the baby is as long as a sweet potato :), about 5 1/2 inches long.    Those of you who saw Ethan (baby #2) or saw pictures, he was 5 1/2 inches long so this baby should be about that long now.   

We're almost halfway!  Here's to hoping everything keeps going well!  :) 

Week 13, Appointment, last week of 1st trimester! :)

Week 13!   I can honestly say 9 weeks ago when I found out I was pregnant, I didn't think I would make it this far.   I suppose with all the problems we've had in the past, it feels like I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.   It is hard to believe the fairly uncomplicated journey we've had so far with this baby.  I'll take boring any day over constantly worrying every second.   Almost every comment out of my mouth about the baby has been prefaced with "Knock on wood...", i.e. "Knock on wood, I haven't had any abdominal pain with this one...".  I was joking with Josh that I should have a little piece of wood to carry on a key chain :) I feel we've been blessed with the good, (fairly) normal pregnancy so far.  

Not to step onto a soapbox, but I feel that anyone out there that is thinking of getting pregnant or very early in the 1st trimester, should definitely get everything checked out long before it's too late.   I had NO idea that I had a low thyroid or that when pregnant my body can't produce enough progesterone (what nourishes the baby while the placenta is being formed, then the placenta produces it's own progesterone).   I can only wonder what a difference knowing that information would of made with my first three babies.   I am just thankful that we took the initiative to go push for answers.   Taking medication for both the the thyroid and progesterone is the only difference in this pregnancy.   Hopefully things will continue to go well with this one. :) 

So next week we start the 14th week and we'll officially be in the 2nd trimester!   I've only made it to 15.5 weeks before so I'm going into uncharted territory.  I actually "feel" pregnant this week, with all my regular pants out of commission :) and my "bump" starting to push forward.   I haven't wanted to share the good news quite yet, with the stupid superstition that I'll jinx myself somehow, so not being a skinny mini has been a good disguise, haha.   I suppose I won't be able to hide it much longer.   Knock on wood :) if we make it to Halloween, I'll announce it to the "world" around that time.   

We had an appointment yesterday.   I'm so tense until I see that ultrasound.   I was so excited for Josh to see this ultrasound.  When I made it to the 2nd trimester with Ethan, our second pregnancy, the last ultrasound we saw him alive in was when I was taken to the ER in Tracy by my school secretary (God Bless Sue :)), and was about 12.5 weeks and Josh was working and couldn't get there in time, so he had only seen the very early ultrasounds where they baby isn't quite moving yet.   It was so great to see our little one kicking around, waving it's arms around.   We saw the bladder and a couple other tiny internal  organs, it's little head and alien looking eyes :).  Josh swears he saw it trying to suck it's thumb.   Everything look okay and the heartbeat was normal.   The baby is in the left side and I've been feeling...something on that side, but wasn't sure if I was imagining it, but the baby is exactly where I'm feeling flutters, and round ligament pain :P ( the ligaments in the abdominal area are stretching and loosening up to accommodate the baby and growing).   So it seems everything is okay as of right now.  Our next appointment is on Oct. 22nd at about 16 weeks.    

Below is a couple of pictures from the appointment.  They aren't very clear but I'll try to explain: 

On the left side is the baby's head, the whiter part is the baby's jaw, the spine runs along the bottom. 

This one is looking at the baby straight ahead, he/she was facing us.   The baby's head is again on the left, the dark circles are the eyes (hence the above alien eye comment), and the two little arms are the white stick looking things sticking out.  The one below is in the mirror image and more enlarged.   

Thanks for checking in on us.  We definitely feel the love :)     

Week 10, ER scare, ultrasound :)

Before I start this blog, I want to let you know that the baby and I are okay.  I don't want you to worry or have knots in your stomach the whole way through :).

I had a prenatal appointment on Monday and had intended to do my blog then sharing a happy update with our first ultrasound that we've been able to get a copy to keep.   On Monday afternoon we went to our appointment, excited to see our little boy/girl.  However, just like in Fremont, our doctor had a hard time seeing the baby and sent us down to the radiology department to get a better view.   Of course the usual anxiety sets in when they can't find the baby, but I was rewarded with a great view of our baby and saw the little head and eyes, an elbow and little buds of arms and legs.   Also a very strong heartbeat.

If you are not sure what you are looking at ;), the baby is laying on it side, with his head on the right side by the little white x and it's feet are by the x on the left side.  There little arm and leg buds and if you look very carefully at the head you can see two black dots that are his/her eyes.
We celebrated with a small celebratory lunch with my mom and went on to do a little maternity pants shopping. Despite losing about 12-15 pounds since I found out I was pregnant (yay!) I have busted out of all my pants.  Those of you that I work with may have noticed that even though I'm not a dress/skirt person normally, I have been wearing more of my dresses and skirts because they are the only things I fit into comfortably :).   So with some more comfortable clothes and an ultrasound in hand, I went home a very happy person.
The next morning  I woke up with nausea, a pounding headache, and some dizziness, and stayed home.   It turns out that was a good idea, considering what happened later in the day.  Later that afternoon, Josh had left to go get us some food because I finally felt okay to eat, and I was washing a couple of dishes for when he got back.  Just a warning: if you don't want to read the exact details that you may find to be TMI or too gross you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph.  While washing a dish, I felt a surge of fluid passing and immediately went to the restroom.  Sure enough there was some blood. As I got up the entire toilet had been filled with the color of the blood.  My brain went on high alert and since I unfortunately have experience with the worst case scenario I began looking for signs of miscarriage, which luckily I didn't see.   I knew that if I called Kaiser or went to the ER they'd ask how fast I was filling a pad, I put one on to check how much blood I was losing.  I called Josh to hurry home, and while he was on his way back, I had a couple more trips to the bathroom with the same results.  Although I saw no signs of miscarriage(blood clots, tissue, etc) I was still scared enough to want to go to the ER.   I was so scared and started crying and praying very hard.  As soon as Josh returned I filled him in and he drove me to the ER.  Thank goodness we only live about 5 minutes away from the Kaiser hospital here in Modesto.
Luckily there was no wait and we got in right away.  They ran blood tests and those of you who have been pregnant before know what an HCG test is, but for those who haven't-the pregnancy hormone HCG number should double  every 48 hours.  In previous pregnancies, I had this test done when I was worried about miscarriage and saw these numbers drop which is a major indicator of miscarriage.   I have to go back tomorrow to give blood again, to know the results of this test, but all the other things they were checking for came back okay.  They did another ultrasound in the ER and there was our baby, with his/her strong heart beat, wiggling around.  I swear, I have never been so happy to see a heartbeat as I was yesterday.   His/her heartbeat was normal, not to low or high, so it appears the baby was oblivious to what was going on and it wasn't affecting him/her at all.
So my next question was, what's going on?   They are still not 100% sure, but it could have been a number of things.  With my bicornute uterus, I could be prone to random bleeding; it could have been a blood blister or something similar on the cervix that was manipulated by the internal ultrasound done the day before; some women just bleed during their pregancy; a side effect of the progesterone I have to take; dehydration, causing little fluid for the amniotic sac the baby lives in.   Since there wasn't any clots or tissue or sign that I was passing the baby or miscarrying and I wasn't cramping, I was sent home to keep an eye on the situation and was told to stay home the next day to let my body recooperate-also if I was miscarrying it wouldn't be good to be at work and many miles from the closest Kaiser hospital.
The good news, as of this posting, the bleeding has almost completely stopped! :) I never saw anything passed or had any cramps.  So hopefully this was just a fluke or one time deal.  I am waiting to talk to the Modesto ob/gyn specialist and will continue to keep an eye on myself.   The ER nurse was nice enough to let Josh take a video of the ultrasound so we could have his/her heartbeat on video.
It's been a stressful couple of days but I'm glad there's a happy ending.   I will continue to keep you posted and hopefully there will be more posts to come :)  In the video below, I know it is hard to see much of anything, but the baby is on the left side of the "black circle" and the long string looking thing is the umbilical cord.  The baby was moving slightly up and down.   Video isn't loading I'll try putting it in another post.  

Baby Stime, 8 week check up, and a scare

Yesterday was a crazy Kaiser centered day, that went even into the night.  

If you are pregnant and have Kaiser, they make you go to a 2 hour prenatal class where they go over all the info a first time mom would want to know, the screenings you can have done, what to expect, etc.  You also have to fill out all the paperwork for your blood tests for genetic screening, HIV, RH, etc.   Well I have had to sign up for this "class" now 4 times in the past 4 years.  After the 2nd time, I had asked the teacher if it was okay to just fill out the paperwork and leave and she was fine with this ;)   Yesterday however, I was scheduled for this class 9-11 and in Fremont at the Fertility center at 11:40.   I got all the paperwork done and was waiting for a chance to ask her about leaving early but this lady didn't even take a breath to get a word in.  Eventually, I was able to go and we had to rush over to the Fremont Kaiser.

Last week, although we saw the heartbeat, it was still fairly fuzzy on the screen and they weren't satisfied with what they saw and asked me to come back this week to see if letting the baby grow for a week would allow them a better view.   After about 10 minutes, our doctor could still not find the sac or the baby that we had seen the week before.  I started to worry, because during the exam in the ER of our 3rd miscarriage they also couldn't find anything and it was like a bad flashback.   Our doctor said that the actual Fremont Kaiser hospital across the street would have a better ultrasound machine in their radiology department.  Our appointment wasn't for an hour so we had some time to sit and worry.

When it was time for our appointment, I forgot that in radiology, the ultrasounds are done by technicians, not doctors or nurse.  This means they can't interpret or diagnose what they are seeing.  They also don't allow anyone else in the room, or even the patient to see what they are seeing.   So I'm sitting there worried as heck, and my rock of support has to sit outside in the waiting room, and even after the exam, she can't tell me what she sees either, so I have no idea how the baby is doing.   The exam included both an internal and external ultrasound, and because she was having a hard time, at first , seeing anything, she was pressing down kind of hard on my hip, which is still sore today.

So we head back to the fertility center to get the results of the ultrasound from across the street.  I think at this point we are both sitting on pins and needles, and I could feel Josh grab my shaking hand.   "So it looks like everything is great!"  the doctor told us.  He continued on to tell us that I had a fibroid (which is common and nothing to worry about), but that it was blocking the view of the baby.   Although the ultrasound pictures had not had time to be loaded yet for us to see them, the doctor at the other Kaiser had interpreted the ultrasounds and diagnosed that the baby was positioned well in the left side of my uterus, (for those of you who don't know, I have a bicornute uterus, which is more heart shaped instead of triangular-so there are "false walls" that the baby can attach to that can end in miscarriage) and that the left side is the bigger side, so the baby will have room to grow.   Everything looked fine and the size of the baby is fine.  

We left Fremont in high hopes, one of the few times I've left an ultrasound appointment in good thoughts.  However later last night, after returning home, I woke up to use the bathroom and saw an uncomfortable amount of spotting :(  My stomach and back were also sore.  Not a good sign.   So I call the Kaiser 24 hour triage nurse and she suggests staying off my feet for the next 24 hours and watching the amount of spotting-if it were to increase to go to ER or call in for an appointment in the morning.
The amount of praying I have done in the past 30+ hours...
Today, thank God, the spotting has been steadily decreasing and most of the pain is gone.  I can only hope that the spotting and pain was related to the number and length of internal exams I had yesterday, which is normal, but still very scary to see.  
So for now, I feel better and think everything is okay.  I will be keeping an eye on myself and hopefully won't have any more scares like last night.  Now that we have been released back to the normal ob/gyn back here in Modesto, we will have to wait until at least week 10 or so (supposedly when most people get their 1st ultrasound) for our next appointment.   However if something happens in the meantime, I will definitely be calling in before that for an appointment.   Unfortunately, I don't have an ultrasound to show all of you, because I didn't even get to see it, but we will get a copy of it at our next appointment and hopefully will be able to give you a glimpse of baby Stime.

Thank you for all the kind thoughts, and especially you GKE people who have been making sure I'm okay :)     I hope to have more good news to share in the coming weeks!

baby 4 and our week 7 visit

So at the end of July I went in for UTI test and asked that they add a pregnancy test to the lab slip.  I knew that if I was prescribed antibiotics that the most common type prescribed is not safe for pregnancy.   Due to my past experiences with the spotting, monthly pregnancy tests had become a commonplace in my life...just to make sure.  For those of you who know me well, I usually experience pain comparable to post miscarriage pains during PMS and without a test could never be sure if it was "normal" or indeed another miscarriage.  

Anyway, back to the test.   I received my results a day or so later, accompanied with a letter from my doctor, that yes I had the UTI, but that I was also pregnant!   After trying for 2 years after our last loss, it was a pleasant surprise.   But unlike many couples who find out they are pregnant, our joy was immediately followed with worry and concern.  All those old questions started running through my brain again...Will we lose this one too?  Will he/she be okay?   And even though I know that most of what I do will not cause a miscarriage, I have become too aware (and cautious) of my every move.  For example, waking up to find I'm sleeping on my stomach, accidentally eating blue cheese (not advised for those who are pregnant).   We have had a few VERY slight spotting "incidences"  but nothing to be worried about (ha!)

After we found out we were pregnant, I remembered that the fertility doctor in Fremont we had talked to in 2010 told us to contact them if we became pregnant so that tests could be run from the start.   As a result of these tests,  I found that I had a low level of progesterone.  My levels went from 9.3 to 10.4 and they should of been at least at a 12.  I was immediately put on doses of progesterone and my level went up to a 12.6.  Good news :)   A side effect of this drug...spotting.  Great!  I know that what I've been seeing so far isn't what I saw with the first 3, which is a good sign, (and the doctor also was convinced after a scan that it was either normal or from the drug).   So hopefully with my thyroid and progesterone in check this baby has a chance.  

The Fremont doctors also wanted ultrasounds ASAP and didn't want me to wait till the 9 or 10th week like most normal pregnancies.  Even though we couldn't see anything on 8.7.12, we had our first ultrasound at 5 weeks.  Today we went in for the 7 week ultrasound and we saw....A HEARTBEAT!!!!  After worrying about so many things and bracing myself for the worst, we saw the sac, and a little flicker that was our baby's heartbeat :)   I was so happy to see that little tiny flicker.   I know that we aren't out the "danger zone" yet, but I felt so much better.   We get to go again next week during week 8 because the view was still a little fuzzy and they wanted a clearer picture.  So stay tuned for more updates :)  

I do have to say that I am being watched like a hawk by my doctors this time, which is great, but did it take the loss of 3 little lives to make that happen?  3 miscarriages apparently puts you in the high risk pregnancy category, but still...

The cutest part of today, was a quote from the N.P. when measuring the baby, "Your baby is about 1/2 an inch long, like a little Jelly Belly Jelly bean".  

Now...we wait :)

In the beginning...

So, I have never blogged before, but many in my life have asked how things are going with our ongoing journey to parenthood.  I'm not even sure anybody will ever read this, but's a great way for me to get all these thoughts out of my head.

Taking a step back to the beginning, we have been pregnant 3 times, all ending in miscarriage.  The first pregnancy ended at 11 weeks.  The baby was passed naturally, and the doctor's found that the baby was only 8 weeks along.  This first miscarriage was incredibly hard to go through both physically and emotionally, but over time we began to get on with our life.

About 5 months after the 1st miscarriage, we found out that we were once again pregnant.  We had many miscarriage scares through the pregnancy.  At about 16 weeks I went in for one of these scares and found that the heart had stopped beating.  At 16 weeks I was in danger of passing it on my own and it was too late to have a D and C (standard removal for miscarriages), so I was only left with the option of being induced and going through labor and delivery.  This was also a very physically and emotionally draining day-we were able to see and hold our little boy before we had to say goodbye.  For both of these pregnancies, we held a small service at our in-law's house to honor their memory. Our 2nd baby was far along enough to see him move in ultrasounds, and far enough to know that is was indeed a little boy, whom we named Ethan Alexander.

After these two pregnancies life eventually went on and we become more serious about becoming pregnant.  We went through every "wife's tale" of following/predicting ovulation and after 12 months I went in for a fertility appointment.  By regulation, a pregnancy test was given.  As the result was coming up the nurse told me it was negative, and that little feeling of failure hit me once again.  But then when the doctor came back in, she said there was a faint positive and she told me I was pregnant!  I was happy, but after 2 miscarriages, it was more of a guarded happiness.  Almost from the beginning, I knew that this pregnancy would not last, and at seven and a half weeks, yet another little life passed.  This last pregnancy ended July 6, 2010.  Life eventually continued to go on and we decided that we would let life take its own course and not think about it so much.  More recently we hit the 12 month mark again and because I've had 3 miscarriages, I am in "special" grouping now of high risk for future pregnancies and mostly because of the 2nd miscarriage that ended with no real answer (much testing and an autopsy was done), it has become somewhat of a riddle to be answered.  But that is for another blog.