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.