18-6-2008 - Maybe a baby after all!

My mood while writing this blog: Hopeful!

It's been four weeks tomorrow since our CVS, which was cause for much rejoicing as it means our odds of miscarrying from our nightmare procedure is now much more remote. In fact, the midwife was bubbly and optimistic and seems to think that after all this, we might just have a live baby at the end of it all!

At the sonogram, still no more fluid than before, but no less, either, which is a good thing. It means that maybe the tear has mended and that if this baby ever starts producing fluid, we might just get a better level in there. Today they felt they could put a number on the fluid for the first time, and it looks like we're between a 4 and a 5. OK, we can deal with that so long as it doesn't go any lower! If the baby starts peeing (listen up, child, and pee. If I'm peeing a hundred times a day it's the least you can do to produce a sympathy pee from time to time for the Cause, for godsakes...) then perhaps the fluid level can be resurrected and we can cross over into The Land of (dare I say it?) NORMAL Pregnancy! (OoooooOoOoOoOoOooOOO!)

So now I'm starting to feel very strange indeed. For a month they have had us preparing for the baby's death. "Don't get attached... it makes it harder when you lose her..." etc.etc. But now... well, now we're apparently going to have a baby and it's a little hard to grasp at this late stage in the process. I mean, we're in our second trimester and we're only just now being told we can consider ourselves pregnant. It's a little disconcerting. I feel like I've missed out on a big chunk of being pregnant, and admittedly much of the joy of the pregnancy is gone because of the scare we've had. Rather sad that, as my last pregnancy, it will be less joyful than it should have been.

I went through a lot of stress with my first baby as well. The doc (who the Medical Board politely encouraged to retire after his long series of screw-ups) ran my AFP and a few other tests at the wrong time, then called me and my husband into emergency grief counseling to tell us that our baby had every defect known to man and that we should terminate immediately. (Idiot.) I insisted on having an amnio to confirm his theory. The lab then lost our amnio results and closed for the Christmas holiday, so we had to have a second amnio at the beginning of January. Thanks to the delay, our options for termination should the baby be hideously messed up were nonexistent. They had already told us our baby probably wouldn't survive birth, and if he did, he wouldn't live long with such terrible deformities. They predicted massive problems. So we spent the Christmas holiday keeping the bad news to ourselves so as not to ruin anyone's holiday, trying not to cry as we opened baby clothes under the Christmas tree and waiting till we could have the second amnio. As it turns out, the amnio (six weeks of waiting between the two tests) proved the baby was FINE. Today my son is a six foot tall high-honor student in high school shooting for a NASA engineering career. Had I listened to my doctor, he would have had us terminate without even an amnio! So never trust that AFP. And definitely go for a second opinion no matter what.

His delivery was whacky, though, too. After he was almost 3 weeks overdue, they decided to go get him via c-section. The anesthesiologist seemed to have some issues getting me numb; he got my abdomen numb but not my legs, and even then it didn't seem terribly convincing. Five minutes into the surgery, with my guts wide open, the numbness wore off completely and I got full feeling back on the operating table. I screamed my head off and tried to get off the table mid-procedure! I know completely what's it's like to be disemboweled a-la-Braveheart. Let me tell you, they keep syringes on hand that work DARN fast to knock you back on your butt when that happens... the rest of the day was a blur and I think I missed most of the birth. So my first pregnancy was a real exercise in stress from start to finish. (To cap it all off, one of the surgical residents came up to me the day afterwards and said, "You should really consider changing doctors. Did you smell the booze on that guy's breath during your surgery?" Oh joy. Do I have a magnet on my head for medical whack jobs?)

My second pregnancy I was a nervous wreck just from the first one. But it all went smoothly and the second c-section went well, if you can overlook that somehow they broke my tailbone when they dropped me on the table while moving me between gurneys post-surgery.

So I was really looking forward to this one as my Last and Final Chance to have a cheery and relaxed pregnancy. So far it's been the rockiest one yet, so clearly I have some sort of whacky jinx hanging over me. But hey, as long as I have a baby at the end, I'll be happy. We have to accept our victories where we find them. This trip may not be what we thought it would be, but neither is life, so it is what it is and we'll make it work.

Hm. I'm apparently going to have a baby... any tips on how to make it seem real? I was all ready NOT to have one. How do I switch gears and make up for lost time?