how long can you hold your breath?

however long it is, i bet it’s not as long as the little fishlike widgetized kid to the right of your screen says it’s going to be before gestation is complete. i can’t hold my breath that long, but i feel like i am. or need to. or something. i certainly feel like the breaths i am taking are short, shallow things, enough to keep me functional but not enough to let me relax, gather myself, refocus — because, in that moment of letting my guard down, who knows what could happen? well, i do, and that’s the problem.

i do know that we have the first ultrasound next week; from previous experience, if the heartbeat shows up, and things look right, i will breathe one huge gasp of relief, maybe even shed a tear of hope, turn to my dogeared checklist of items to worry about — and begin holding my breath again.

you know you’re not feeling well when…

a widget-picture of an embryo sends you running to the bathroom.

the new kid is kicking my butt. i have a long and icky history with morning all-day sickness, but in this pregnancy it has hit EARLY and HARD. (my new motto: puke early, puke often.) i’ve gone so far as to actually ask the doctor for antiemetics (which make me only marginally better while making me want to sleep, sleep sleep), and shannon has gone so far as to speculate that perhaps we’re having twins (gagh!). i would mostly like to chalk up this extra yuckiness to age and exhaustion with maybe a bit of emotional hangover thrown in for good measure, but who the hell really knows.

normally when i’m sick food helps. this time, i’m having a hard time eating. normally the kid inside has some very specific desires, very early on: earl loved grilled cheese and tomato soup; mairin loved cheeseburgers; ruby loved, well, everything. the new kid apparently wants me never to eat again. if she turns out to be a finicky eater i’ll tell her it all started in the womb. and that she gave me so much grief then that she damn well better eat her broccoli now.

i guess “normal” for the new kid is just plain ole’ disgust-o-ville from me. that’s ok. i’ll get ‘er back.

it is just possible that i have the best ob in the universe

the doctor’s office called me this morning. one of the nurses was reviewing my chart and realized that she needed more information and she actually called me. amazing.

at first, i’ll admit, it was terrible. they had an lmp (last menstrual period — i warned you about tmi) of november 9, which makes my stats, um, worrisome, and means i need to get in there now. but no, no, i assured her (heart in throat) that my lmp was december 8. i could almost hear her sigh of relief.

well, since i have you on the phone, she says, why don’t i set up your next two appointments?

february 5: first ultrasound. we should see a tadpole-like embryo, and if the new kid is still living, we should see and hear a heartbeat.

february 19: first ob appointment. a silly name for a woman’s fourth visit to the doctor for the same pregnancy, but it’s where they get serious: check my history, blood pressure, weight, mental stability, and so on. dr. lum likes to make sure i still have a sense of humor — he’s been checking on this since ruby died – so i’m sure he’ll tell a few jokes to check my funnybone.

i know some of you think i don’t have a sense of humor. you’re wrong. my humorlessness around you is a choice. i’m actually quite funny. dammit.

a little bit of math, a little bit of chemistry

pregnant women who have suffered multiple losses generally CRAVE information. and early in the pregnancy there is little to no information to be had. the baby won’t show up on an ultrasound, the heartbeat can’t be detected yet, and those tummy-flutterings are generally only gas.

but we can get bloodwork done. and it can be a beautiful thing.

one week ago my beta-hcg was 2257. that number is supposed to double every 48-72 hours in a “healthy” pregnancy. the higher the number, the longer it takes to double. so, to know that things have been progressing well between my test one week ago and my test yesterday, we hoped to see a number anywhere between 13,542 and 27,084. and the magic number is…

…

…

17,969.

there is a lovely site that tracks women’s self-reported beta results; according to them, the median beta for women who are on the same day of their pregnancy as i was yeterday is 5509. the low is 290, the high is 36924.  i can handle being ever-so-slightly above average.

the site also calculates beta doubling-time for those of us who are math impaired. my doubling time is 55.8 hours, which fits right into this table:

1st column: beta range; 2nd, median doubling time; 3rd, slowest doubling time; 4th, # of women reporting

2048 – 4096	45.32	12.46	230.55	1422
4096 – 8192	49.80	15.64	266.06	1013
8192 – 16384	61.20	20.02	19557.84	649
16384 – 32768	72.04	21.92	4695.28	386

so again, i’m totally, perfectly, squarely average.

on another interesting note (remember, you signed on to all this tmi crap), betabase tells us that:

you won’t expect to see a gestational sac or the fetus until the HCG level reaches at least 1,200 mIU/ml.   And you probably won’t see a heartbeat until that level reaches at least 6,000 mIU/ml.

this puts the new kid, right now, in heartbeat range. which seems appropriate, because just today a suspiciously-looking-like-a-heart type of thingy has appeared, in shadowy form, pulsing in the new kid’s widget. freaky. but since i’m not allowed to go for a transvaginal ultrasound for two more weeks, we’ll just keep waiting….

the beginning of icky

last night after i snapped at him for the umpteenth time (i will say i was snapping at him for illegitimate reasons, like he was breathing, so that he feels better, but in truth i was snapping at him for perfectly legitimate reasons, like he was breathing SO LOUDLY!), shannon turned to me and sweetly asked:

“i really don’t remember, honey, so can you remind me how long the pms-y type symptoms of early pregnancy last?”

the rest of yer life, bub. the rest of yer stinkin’ life.

when i was pregnant with mairin i asked shannon to help me remember, when it was time to get pregnant again, that i would survive the woes of the first trimester. when i first found out i was pregnant with ruby i told shannon that i really only wanted two kids but i love being pregnant so much that he would have to remind me that we had planned to stop and that really, we shouldn’t have a third child. and then the morning sickness struck, and he had to remind that i would survive it.

well, now the new kid’s morning sickness — seriously, let’s just call it the never-ending-but-always-increasing nausea that will plague not only me but everybody near me for the next two months — is here. and i’m glad, because it’s such a good sign that the pregnancy is progressing well. and i’m sad, because ruby’s due date is in two weeks and i shouldn’t have nausea, i should have hemorrhoids and lower back pain and a big kid bouncing on my bladder. and it’s a little hard to be reconcile that with happiness at just being sick to my stomach because some little tadpole-like parasitical creature is kicking my ass.

it’s the kind of feeling that calls for a good stiff manhattan. since i can’t have that, i guess i’ll just grow throw up.

new kid newsflash

yep, it’s true. we’re expecting the new kid september 2008.

this happened sooner than we had reason to hope for, and more easily than we worried it might. we are so excited scared excited we could vomit. and that’s not just the morning sickness.