Crap Crap Double Crap [Edited - TWICE!]

At work right now.

I am crabby. I have a headache. My neck and shoulders are tight. I am exhausted. I am uncomfortable in my clothes. I am so over this work thing. I have most definitely chosen the wrong bra. I am teeming with pregnancy hormones.

I think I might feel better if I got to feel some baby movement. I didn't feel anything yesterday and nothing so far today. I know it's still so early and I shouldn't worry, but I can't help it. I even did the whole orange juice thing (and I NEVER drink juice) but it was to no avail.

All I want to do is go home right now and take a nap.

I am seriously in a bad mood. Watch out Vancouver. Don't even f*ck with me.

Blech.

[Edit 1:] To clarify, in NO WAY am I complaining about being pregnant. It is the best thing in the world and I'm so incredibly grateful for it. I'm just crabby in general. Momma said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this my momma said...

[Edit 2:] It's about 20 minutes later and I'm re-reading my post and giggling about how dramatic I can be. I am really so ridiculous sometimes.

Unscathed? Fiasco Update...

Well folks, I think the stars are aligned for me right now because I just may possibly have come out of Friday's "incident" unscathed. I can't believe it.

I just got a call from the nurse at Dr. R's office. The very same nurse I spoke with on Friday. She said, "I confirmed with Dr. R that indeed there is a locum coming in next week so I went ahead and moved your appointment up to [this] Wednesday [March 12th]." I thanked her and asked if Dr. R was upset with me for being such a "scheduling nazi" [insert awkward laughing ha ha] and she said no.

So no one seems to be upset with me and I got an earlier appointment WITH MY REGULAR DOCTOR to boot.

This seems all too good to be true. Is it possible I got out of this without any sh*t fallout or repercussions? In any case, I'll be making a point of profusely thanking both the nurse and Dr. R when I see them on Wednesday. I may even bring in a little gift for the office (box of chocolates?). Or perhaps that's overkill.

In other news, I haven't felt Scrappy moving that much over the last two days. I know it's still early (17w1d) and I did check the baby with the Doppler yesterday so I'm pretty sure everything is fine. But I can't help from feeling the teeny-tiniest bit concerned. Hopefully there will be more action later today.

Also, my breasts are KILLING me right now. Their mere existance equals pain. And they're even bigger than before! Last night while watching TV, I went to scratch an itch in my armpit and inadvertently squeezed my poor unsuspecting breast. I almost jumped off the couch in pain and D said I was howling as if I'd been stabbed. Ah, the surprising aches and pains in pregnancy....I'm loving ever minute of it.

17 Weeks Today

17 weeks pregnant today (yay!) ... Not too much to report at the moment, I'm enjoying a lazy Sunday.

My mum came over yesterday to help clean (read: totally take over the cleaning of) our second bedroom which is destined to become the baby's room. She did a great job, and after a couple of hours and a trip to the Salvation Army, I can finally say that room is nearly ready to start furnishing with baby stuff. Thank you, MUM!

As for Friday's "incident", thank you all for your input. I am hoping that I'll get really lucky and everything blows right over with nary a minute of sh*t fallout to rain down upon me and my worry-weary soul. We shall see. I'll definitely keep you all posted over the next week or so.

I feel out of it. The time change has really screwed with my brain!

Icky Situation - Need An Outsider's Opinion

Most of you probably aren’t aware of this, unless you’ve read my blog from the very beginning. My OB/GYN is also my boss’s wife. It’s a long story how I came to be her patient, but it was essentially due to my boss kindly “calling in a favour”. I’ve been my boss’s wife’s patient since my first pregnancy, so I guess for about a year now.

I am very careful to keep the relationships separate. I don’t talk to my boss about appointments with his wife and I don’t talk to my doctor about work stuff. For all intensive purposes – my boss and my doctor are not even related in my mind.

However, today, I think I may have crossed an inappropriate line and I need your opinion.

I am my boss’s executive assistant. Today, he forwarded me an email from his wife noting the days that she would be travelling out of town and he asked me to put these dates in his calendar. No problem, right? Well, I happen to notice that one of the dates she will be out of town just so happens to be the very same date that I have an appointment scheduled with her.

So, with that in mind, I called my doctor’s office and asked if my doctor (boss’s wife) would be available for my appointment or if I would be seeing a locum. Her nurse assured me she would be available and didn’t know why I was asking. I informed her that I work for her husband and I have become privy to some dates that she plans to be out of town and I wanted to reschedule my upcoming appointment if that was the case. The nurse said she had not heard this and would have to check with my doctor and get back to me, adding, “Well if that’s the case, then I’ve got a huge scheduling mess to clean up because no one told me she’d be gone!” Yikes.

My heart fell into my shoes. I suddenly came to the very yucky realization that I may have crossed that boss’s wife/Hilary’s doctor line that I try so hard not to tread on. In other words, if I didn’t work for my boss, I’d have no idea that my doctor was planning to be away. I feel weird and icky and stalker-ish for calling the nurse about it. It’s just that I am comfortable with MY doctor and I don’t want to see anyone else. She is very good, knows my history and is kind to my insanity. If she’s going to be away then I would like to reschedule my appointment.

Typing this out, it sounds less bad than it seems in my head.

Anyway, then I started wondering if inadvertently cancelled my next appointment (Wednesday March 19th) by suggesting with the nurse that I reschedule. As far as I know I don’t have a new appointment time and my doctor is very hard to get in to see. Did the nurse actually delete my original appointment when I called asking to reschedule? Do I still have an appointment? Is anyone going to see me? Did I just f*ck things up royally?

Not wanting to be a further pest, I decided to wait for the nurse to call me back as she promised. I waited and waited all day. Knowing that the office closed at 4pm, I called around 3:45 just to “check in” to see about my appointment. No answer. The office had closed early for the weekend. I guess I have to wait until Monday to sort out this fiasco.

So my friends, tell me:
In your opinion, did I cross the fine and sensitive line between being my doctor’s patient and my boss’s assistant? Do you think I might have just gotten myself into some trouble with one or both of the parties? Were my actions inappropriate or I am freakin’ over nuthin’? Why do I feel so icky about this?
Please be honest, you won’t hurt my feelings, I really want to know from an outsider’s perspective what this looks like.

Thoughtlings

The little flutters I was feeling have continued, albeit very sporadically. There are very long periods between those quick seconds of movement, and sometimes I go a whole day without feeling a thing. I am very much looking forward to when Scrappy’s movements are strong and consistent. D is especially excited to feel the kicks from the outside. At this point, while I’m pretty sure what I’m feeling is indeed the baby moving, I can’t be 100% sure because it’s so brief and random and usually feels akin to a quick inner-tickle.

I’m finding work to be a real challenge for me these days and not because it’s difficult or stressful or anything. Well okay, yeah, it is a bit stressful but nothing I can’t handle. It’s just so hard to focus on work stuff when my mind is so completely focused on the baby. I am literally counting the days until I go on maternity leave (12 weeks and 1 day!). It’s a thrilling feeling to know that after that, I will be done with work for the foreseeable future. Good stuff. I feel bad for D though, having to continue slaving away to support his family. His work is really stressful but at least he gets paid through the nose to do it.

Our big anatomy scan is in about 2 and half weeks and of course, I’m going through my usual routine of getting more and more anxious every day as it looms closer. I am really excited about it at the same time, though. It’s a weird combination. I just hope everything goes well and the baby is developing normally. Secondarily I hope that we get to find out the gender, but that is far less important to me at this time.

Speaking of gender, I still have absolutely no inkling about what we’re having. I don’t know if this means anything, but when I dream of the baby I always dream of a girl. However, I just read a study that said that 56% of IVF babies are male. This is due to the fact that male embryos’ cells divide more quickly than girls and these fast-dividing embryos are the ones that are usually chosen for transfer. Who knew? But I really think it could go either way.

I used to think it was such a cliché when pregnant women would tout the old standby “I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, just as long as the baby is healthy”. I’d think to myself, “Ah c’mon you KNOW you have a preference!” But now, I understand how they feel because it’s exactly how I feel. Turns out it’s not a cliché, it’s a matter of priorities. Strangely, gender actually doesn’t matter at all.

Anyway, sorry if you’ve fallen asleep while reading these boring random thoughtlings plucked from the brain of this hormone-addled Canadian gal…

PS- By the way, I’m totally breaking out. 16 weeks pregnant and my face looks like a pizza right now. I thought this was supposed to be the “glowing” trimester!

Ask & You Shall Receive

I want to document this. Today, at 16w2d, I believe I have felt Scrappy moving. Actually, I felt it yesterday too but I couldn’t be sure of what it was until I felt it a little more.

I’m pretty sure what I’m feeling is indeed fetal movement; I can’t think of how to describe it except to say that it feels a bit like a gas bubble, but in the wrong place - more towards the surface of my lower abdomen rather than in my intestines, where gas is usually felt. Another way to describe the feeling is like major butterflies or a weird muscle spasm – it's a sensation that would be impossible to go unnoticed.

I love this. My baby is moving. It’s nothing short of magic. Whoop! There it goes again!!

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In other news (thought not nearly as exciting), I just have to share this. I’ve taken a huge step in my constant effort to try to stave off my crazy levels of anxiety.

Flipping through the pages of Pregnancy magazine after work (love the pregnancy mags), I ran across an article about the horrors of preterm birth. Skimming down the list of “risk factors”, I found that one of the primary indications for preterm birth is a SINGLETON pregnancy by IVF. Of course, I flew into a panic and immediately made an appointment with Dr. Google, who had no reassuring words for me and in fact, managed to exacerbate my fears and concerns.

By the time poor D got home from work (late, after a long excruciating meeting), I had worked myself into a lather. I told myself I wouldn’t bring it up with him, I didn’t want to spread the worry...but before he could even take his coat off, I was regaling him with quotes from what I’d read and pushing the Pregnancy magazine article in his face for him to read.

I calmed myself down enough to get through the remainder of the evening by assuring myself that I would ask my doctor about it in two weeks when I go for my regular appointment, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it right then and there. We ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed early. But unfortunately, I dreamed all night of preterm labour and bad news.

This morning I woke up crabby. I re-read some of the articles that I had poured over last night, in hopes that I would find some reassurance that I was too worked up to see the night before. The reassurance came, but not from the articles. It came from me and my own logical brain. As if a bright light bulb was turned on. Duh. Once I thought about things with my head and not my emotions, making sense of this newfound “scary” discovery was easy.

Q- Who are, most commonly, the recipients of IVF?
A- People with fertility problems or “older” women who have passed their most fertile time.

And of course, people with these issues are, in general, more predisposed to preterm delivery anyway. It all made sense.

Now that’s not to say that I am not at any risk for pregnancy and delivery problems, just because I’m 31 and my main fertility issue is PCOS. Anyone can have problems at any stage, predisposed to issues or not. Nothing is risk free in the world of baby making; not for IVF pregnancies, or ART pregnancies, and not even for natural pregnancies. My point in all these meandering ramblings is that for once, I have let my brain take over where my crazy emotions left off. Logic won out, for the first time in my pregnancy.

And guess what? I feel better.

16 Weeks Today

16 weeks = 4 MONTHS!!! Cool, huh?

I feel like I can officially start referring to my pregnancy progression in months now, instead of weeks. That's a cool milestone in and of itself, I think.

The baby shower today went off without a hitch. It was a small group of girls, but all very nice and it seemed like everyone had a good time. Most importantly, I think L really appreciated it.

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...Drumroll please...

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for: Behold the belly pics, as promised. The progression is slow, and still not much to speak of, but I think I'm finally starting to show a little tiny bit. Here goes...

8 Weeks Pregnant


9 Weeks Pregnant


10 Weeks Pregnant


11 Weeks Pregnant


12 Weeks Pregnant


13 Weeks Pregnant


14 Weeks Pregnant


15 Weeks Pregnant


16 Weeks Pregnant


...And there you have it! More photos to come as the baby and the belly continue to grow...