Other News of the Moment

Obviously, we are beyond thrilled that our anatomy scan went so well. Finding out that we have a normal-looking baby, and that he's got some little-boy parts, was wonderful. But... what about all the other crazy things I've been diagnosed with over the past few months? How is that stuff going?

Sub-Chorionic Hemorrhage This is the best news we got: it looks like both SCHs are gone, all gone! The tech hadn't seen me for any of my earlier ultrasounds and didn't even know this had been a problem for me until I told her. Happily, in an hour of moving the wand all over my belly, she saw no evidence of any hemorrhages or placental abruptions. I'd like to give a shout-out to the very first OB I talked to on the night of my big bleed, who said that these things often didn't fully resolve until 18 weeks. At the time that seemed unimaginably far away, but true to form, it did clear up sometime between 15 and 20 weeks!

DVT and Clotting Issues My leg hasn't bothered me since February, even though they insist on checking it at every appointment, and knock on wood I have had nothing to suggest another clot at all. However, when they test my Lovenox levels - which involves making an appointment at the lab exactly 4 hours after I inject myself and then skipping the line of irritated waiting people who didn't know they could make appointments and who then give me the hairy eyeball - they have consistently come up higher than would be optimal. We're adjusting my dose, which right now means that I have to squirt a little Lovenox into the sink and hope that I'm getting something close to 30 mg. I should also mention that the bruises have almost entirely subsided, so injecting myself doesn't make me anywhere near as depressed as it did in the past. We'll keep testing this.

Placenta Previa This could still go either way. The good news is that most of my placenta is now over on the left side of my uterus, which also explains why I haven't been feeling much kicking on that side. If it's now a side placenta, could it keep pulling away from my cervix as my uterus grows, thus resolving the problem? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now it's still covering the cervix entirely, so I'm on the same restrictions for complete placenta previa that I've been on since April. However, I'm considerably more optimistic about it becoming a partial previa or even just a low-lying placenta than I was after April's gloom & doom diagnosis.

Everything else is going pretty much according to plan. My cervix is long and closed, though they didn't bother with an internal ultrasound to measure it precisely; they could see enough transabdominally that they weren't at all worried. With the exception of a few bad moments in May (I think I threw up three times?), my morning sickness has disappeared. I get round ligament pains just about every day, on both sides, but if I sit or lie down for a few minutes they ease up. My belly is growing and I'm keeping up with the cocoa butter in a vain effort to avoid stretch marks - none yet, but I'd be shocked if I avoid them entirely. And our unborn son would like to add to this list: he says, and I quote, "KICK! Kick kick kick! [pause] Kick kick KICK!" I'll leave you to interpret that however you want.

Pants, Puking, and Prayers

Pants
They aren't fitting too well anymore. I'm down to one pair of jeans (besides my PajamaJeans™ - no judging) and ~3 pairs of work pants. I have a few skirts that still fit, but I think I'm hiding the bump better in pants because everybody is distracted by my belt buckle and loose shirt and the sweater or jacket I'm wearing over it. That is, assuming I've eaten recently; first thing in the morning they zip up pretty well but then once I have a meal in my belly they are noticeably tighter. I suppose I could just not eat and hang onto my current wardrobe for a little while longer, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of this whole endeavor, right? I have told myself I won't buy any maternity clothes until we get a good report at my next appointment on April 25th, so we'll see how this goes.

Puking
I am pleased to report that the month of April has remained puke-free, knock on wood. However, I came about as close as I ever do on Saturday night driving back from Titanic 3D. (Again - stop it with the judging!) I was fine right up until we got in the car and then a wave of nausea hit me with about the same force as the iceberg that caused the actual ship to sink. I was going down by the head and fast, and I have no idea how I kept up the pretense that everything was fine until we said goodbye to our friends and got home. Eventually the feeling passed, but damn, this morning sickness thing is not over yet by a long shot. Overall I'm still feeling much better than I did earlier in the pregnancy, however, so I'm very grateful for that.

Prayers
Not for me (although positive vibes sent across the astral plane are always welcome and will be returned, I promise!) For several months now I've been following the story of Mare and Reid's quadruplets on her blog "Never A Dull Moment." And I have been devastated beyond words by her most recent updates - after a complicated early delivery, she has lost three daughters in recent days. I am sending prayers to every deity I can think of, and then some, for her and her family. I wish there were more I could do to help.

Today, it is April 1st

Yeah, yeah, April Fool's Day, I know. But April 1 is also the day I had circled on my mental calendar as THE day, the magical far-away day, that I wouldn't feel sick anymore. By April 1, I would be frolicking in a blooming early-spring garden and enjoying the warmth of the sun on my bare skin. And I would eat, and eat, and eat, like a normal person.

Well, the weather didn't cooperate (the high temperature topped out around 50 and it's been spitting rain on and off), but I was right about one thing: my morning sickness is going away. I didn't wake up one morning to find it had magically disappeared, like some people had told me it would, but it gradually lessened over the past week and then on Friday I woke up feeling strangely... normal. I was still nauseous because my stomach was empty, but it was nowhere as debilitating as it has been. I got up and got dressed and went downstairs and felt better as soon as I had eaten my bowl of cereal. I did not require a 30-minute psych-up break on the couch where I listened to my workout mix to convince myself that I could do this before choking down a piece of toast and heading off to work. Instead, my Friday morning was about as exciting as Rebecca Black's, except that I got to ride in the front seat because, dude, I have my own car!

I've continued to feel sick first thing in the morning or anytime my stomach is empty, but all I have to do is eat, and then it goes away. And oh, how I have eaten. I want you to read this next sentence very carefully, because it seems unbelievable at first glance: this morning I went to Indian buffet for brunch. Do you know what's served at an Indian buffet? Food that has been prepared with spices. Food that is creamy. Food that is not just avocadoes. I ate an entire plate, and then I went back for a second one. And totally finished that too. Harry looked at me and said, "Well, I guess I have my wife back." And in between mouthfuls of saag paneer and mango pickle, I mumbled back "Looks like it." (Oh! And I also tried some of the cilantro that was used as a garnish; sorry, everybody, it still tastes like bitter soap to me.)

So that's the good news. For those of you keeping track at home, I first experienced "true" morning sickness at 5w6d and felt it ease up enough to eat normally at 11w1d. Fingers crossed that this pregnancy continues, and I'll write again when it truly disappears.

Which reminds me... with regard to the sub-chorionic hemorrhage thing, we had a bit of a setback on Friday night when I discovered I was having some pinkish-brown spotting. I have passed a bit of brown clotted blood since the initial bleed, but this was different. Naturally, I was entirely calm and didn't let it worry me. (Ha! That's a lie. Harry and I totally freaked out and I immediately lay down on the couch and tried to move around as little as possible and started Googling statistics and symptoms of miscarriage after SCH.) It stopped as quickly as it began, but I've noticed a big uptick in the amount of nasty, brown, clotted old blood that has been coming out ever since. I have to imagine that's good because it means the initial hemorrhage is getting smaller (right, body? can you do me a solid on this one and help me get rid of this thing?) but we won't know for sure until my next ultrasound on Thursday. Hopefully everything will stay quiet till then.

Oh, and to Allie, who started her IVF journey almost exactly when I did: a million congratulations and best wishes! Hooray!

Food: So Tasty! So Horrible!

Still the enemy? We'll have to find out.

Q: Hey Charlotte, have you been eating anything weird lately?

A: Yes! How did you know?

Q: Just a wild guess, based on every stereotypical media depiction of pregnancy ever. Care to give some examples? Maybe as a list?

A: No problem. In recent weeks I have developed a sudden culinary fascination with these items, among others:
- Avocadoes
- Lipton Onion Dip
- San Pellegrino Limonata Soda
- Tahini
- Sour Patch Kids (just the sour coating)
- Feta Cheese
- Thai Coconut-Lime Soup
- Strawberries

Q: Once you get your hands on these foods, what happens?

A: I eat them with gusto for about 20 minutes and then they make me feel horribly sick, so I have to abandon them for a period of days or even weeks.

Q: How does your husband feel about this?

A: He has been extraordinarily patient about finding himself the recipient of three ripe avocadoes for dinner and a wife who has suddenly decided she can't be in the same room as an avocado. Luckily, he likes guacamole.

Q: Have you ever craved pickles and/or ice cream?

A: Ice cream, no. Sweet things are staggeringly uninteresting to me right now, which is entirely out of character. But as far as pickles go, even though I don't much like them in my normal life, the other day I decided that I really, really wanted cornichons. You know, the little baby French pickles that they serve with pâté and fondue.

Q: Do you think that "I didn't have a craving for pickles, just cornichons" is the most bourgeois thing you've ever said?

A: Probably. But the time I complained about not being able to find orange blossom water in the grocery store was also pretty memorable.

Q: What's the craziest thing you've done to satisfy a craving?

A: That would probably be the time that I drove 40 miles (one-way) to a particular grocery store so that I could buy a bag of their cheese popcorn. It's not brand-name or anything, it's just cheese popcorn that they make in the store. I planned my entire weekend around this trip since I knew it was all I would have the energy to do, and oh, it was so glorious to eat that popcorn.

Q: How'd you feel once you finished half the bag?

A: I don't want to talk about it.

Q: What about things that you used to love and now hate?

A: That would be most foods, actually. My only real food aversion when I'm not pregnant is cilantro - like a certain subset of the population, it just tastes really bad to me. I've always prided myself on not being a picky eater, so that's really the only thing I truly refuse to eat. But now, easily 80-85% of items sold in our grocery store look terrible.

Q: Since every day has apparently turned into topsy-turvy day, have you thought about trying cilantro to see if you still hate it?

A: Huh. Interesting query. I may have to give that a try, just for funsies. I mean, it can't be worse than anything else, right?

Everything I Know About Morning Sickness I Learned on my Bathroom Floor

Everyone, I'd like you to meet Mat.

Mat hangs out on my bathroom floor with me. He is soft and blue and we picked him up at Target a few weeks ago to replace our really old IKEA bathmats. I adore Mat, he's been a great pal as I've been feeling so sick.

My other constant companion while I'm huddled on the bathroom floor (or the couch, or the bed, or - just once, it was a low point - the floor under my desk at work) is my iPhone. Never before have I been so grateful for a piece of technology. I can read gossip websites and play endless games of Solitaire and distract myself from the feeling of "ZOMG I want to throw up right now!" My iPhone is my link to the vast repository of human knowledge about the symptoms of early pregnancy. If you were to look back at my search history, every so often it would go from normal things like "jezebel - demian bichir - hela cells" to a string of "morning sickness causes - morning sickness cures - morning sickness home remedies by continent - ginger safe in early pregnancy." Here are the top five things my iPhone has taught me about morning sickness so far:

1. You don't have to throw up for it to be morning sickness. 
Somehow I had lingered under the misapprehension that morning sickness was defined by vomiting spectacularly like you see in the movies. To date, I have only actually puked once. There have been a couple of dry heaves here and there, but here's the thing: my stomach is actually happiest when there's something in it. It's counterintuitive, and it means that most of the time I'm forcing myself to eat when it's the absolute last thing I want to do, but it's a pretty typical presentation of morning sickness.  When I feel sick right after eating, which is often, I fight it: if I throw up now then I'll undo all of that good work choking down food! The statistics on this are fairly reassuring, and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence as well that fellow bloggers have suffered from nausea that goes on and on without ever actually upchucking. (However: now that I have written this down, ten bucks says I'll start really barfing within the hour.)

2. It does vary from day to day.
Wednesday might be horrible. I might wake up on Wednesday morning and spend all my energy on just putting one foot in front of the other and think to myself that if this is the way the rest of the pregnancy is going to be, then I should consider checking myself into a psych hospital for the duration so at least there's a paid professional to listen to my crazed ranting. And then I wake up on Thursday morning and... I'm okay. I eat a bowl of cereal and walk the dog like it ain't no thang. I start to convince myself that my symptoms are disappearing from a missed miscarriage and everything is doooooooomed, when I feel... what is that? Is that a twinge of nausea? It sure is. Huh. But it stays at a manageable level the entire rest of the day, and I wonder if it's leaving for good. That is, until I wake up on Friday and before I even get my eyes open my brain is receiving an urgent signal that reads "NAUSEA! ALERT! NAUSEA! ALERT!" That's when the wonderful ladies of Yahoo!Answers reassure me that morning sickness totally varies and I am not alone in this experience.

3. You read one list of suggested remedies, you've read them all. 
Nobody has anything new to say. Cut lemons, ginger root, eating every 2 hours, blah blah blah. Occasionally someone will say something like "meat has been associated with nausea in pregnancy" and I'll think, "that's it! I will stop eating meat! I will never eat meat again!" Then I eat a meal of plain pasta and veggies, and I feel just as sick as I did before, and I start searching for things like "vegetables associated early pregnancy nausea." Bottom line, I'm not sure there's any way of predicting what will help or hurt from one day to the next - heck, it changes from one hour to the next. Sometimes a mug of lemon-ginger tea makes me feel much better, sometimes I have to psych myself up to take a sip. There's no rhyme or reason to it. You might as well stick to this site, it's as good as any other.

4. OHSS is different from morning sickness.
Despite my RE never giving me a firm diagnosis, I do think I ended up with a mild case of OHSS as the hCG in my system started to rise. I had a few risk factors - 22 follicles at retrieval, I was pretty young (28), I had a fairly slim build, and as my beta hCG values rose, my entire abdominal cavity swelled up in the most bizarre fashion. I wasn't even 4 weeks pregnant when I started feeling some serious GI awfulness, including but not limited to nausea and vomiting. It came on fast and was pretty debilitating, but after about a week, I looked down one morning and realized that I could actually see my waist a little bit. As the OHSS subsided, I had about 3-4 days where I ate like a normal-ish person (and convinced myself yet again that I had had a missed miscarriage, but that's a separate story). We even went out to a French restaurant where I consumed escargot and blue cheese and cassoulet, and it was delicious! (Note that it took some significant effort to even type that sentence now. Blech.) Then, at 5w6d, one day shy of the Internet's wise estimation that most women will begin to feel morning sickness around 6 weeks, I began to feel a bit of nausea. Real nausea. Not accompanied by diarrhea, headache, gas cramps, back pain, nothing like that. Just nausea. That was the morning sickness saying hello.

5. No, I don't know how I'm getting through it.
Prior to getting knocked up, I would hear about all the unsavory aspects of pregnancy - weeks of unrelenting nausea, a huge distended uterus constantly pressing on your bladder, and of course the horror of labor and delivery - and I would assume that there must be some sort of magical pregnant-woman force field that descends to make all these things seem bearable. There is not. It is awful. I am getting through this for only one reason: I don't have any other choice. And, it is true that you don't know what you're capable of doing until you have to try. In my old pre-pregnancy life, I would have called in sick to work every day this week; now, I am writing polite emails and participating in meetings when all I really want to do is curl up on the floor and rock back and forth and groan. If you find yourself in the same spot, I recommend bringing some sort of device or book or magazine or something as a distraction. Or, you know, you could start a blog and then complain there!

Heartbeat

The blastocyst that was transferred to my uterus a month ago is now 10mm long. He or she has a heartbeat of 152 beats per minute that was strong enough to be heard by the Doppler ultrasound. I was given a grainy picture depicting an alien floating in a black bubble that looks, I am told, exactly as it should at this stage. It's pretty crazy.

I know that other people have described bursting into tears or otherwise feeling overcome when they heard their baby's heartbeat for the first time, but for me, the big moment was when the first image came on the screen and it looked like the other eleventy billion 7-week ultrasounds I googled in preparation for this visit. I gasped and put my hands over my mouth and my RE said "are you okay?" and I sort of squeaked back "yes" and he continued his measurements. He was totally unfazed and only took about 90 seconds to look around and say "yup, as expected, everything looks normal." The longest part of the appointment was after the scan when I complained about morning sickness and everything he suggested, I had already tried - finally the nurse broke in to say that she has two children, remembers how awful the first trimester was, and to just hang in there. They did say that I can have a prescription for Zofran if it gets really bad, and I'll keep that in mind... I don't want to resort to any kind of drug, even a really safe one, if there's any way to avoid it. Until then, blech.

I won't have another scan for (knock on wood) about 3 weeks. So much suspense! At least it's Friday so I have the next two days to lie on the couch and stare at the ultrasound picture. Wow, a heartbeat, wow wow wow!