See the peanut!

We finally, finally got an ultrasound! I went in kind of nervous because by my calculations I was nearly fourteen weeks and the nuchal translucency test isn't as accurate by then (where they're measuring liquid at the back of the baby's neck, and it can absorb into the body by that point making for a misdiagnosis.) It's to check for things like Down's Syndrome and Trisomy 18, so that's the kind of thing you want to be accurate.

Anyhow, we got in to the ultrasound room and the tech started doing her thing. She didn't turn the screen for me to see anything at any point and kind of looked a bit confused. Finally she informed me that I'm not almost fourteen weeks, I'm nine weeks! Nine and a half, really, but still! I guess I skipped a period and that threw off the whole thing. Wow. So, we ended up announcing it pretty early but what can you do?

Nine weeks is way too early for the kind of tests they were going to do, so I have to go back next month. The tech wasn't even going to print us off a picture but I finally just asked her to and she did, so here you go:



The head is the upper right blob, in case you can't quite get what you're seeing there. I'm disappointed that the tech didn't let me see the screen during the scans or point out anything to us, but you get who you get and I'm hoping that next time we'll have a more friendly tech.

The bird bag man.

Being in the hospital is really, really boring. Thankfully Andrew brought me my laptop and I can 'borrow' a weak wireless signal from somewhere nearby or I'd be going entirely insane.

Before I had my laptop, though, I was extremely bored and mostly confined to bed because the morning sickness has been so very, very, crappily bad. That meant a lot of flipping through magazines and staring out the window beside my bed. There's a building next door and I can look out onto its rooftop. So yesterday morning when I saw a man walk out onto the roof with two very large white cloth sacks I figured something worth watching was going to happen, if only because I hadn't seen anything happen on that roof up until then.

He had a black toolbox of some sort, and the bags already had something in them that had the bottoms weighted enough that he was walking while holding them up in the air. He made his way across the roof to a crate-looking thing that I hadn't really taken much notice of before. The crate seemed to be made of wire and when he reached it I realized that there were a number of pigeons inside it, as they started flapping wildly.

He set down his bags, lifted the top of the crate slightly, reached in, grabbed a bird and SHOVED IT IN ONE OF THE BAGS. He continued grabbing birds and shoving them in the bag, being really rough and brisk.

As you might imagine I was horrified. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. At that moment the day nurse came in and told me to come with her for a bit and all I could do was point to the rooftop and blurt, "There's a man putting birds in a bag!"

She was all, whah? She looked, though, and was just as weirded out as I was. We agreed that whatever was going on was highly disturbing, but she'd come to get me for a reason and we had to go. By the time I got back to my room the bird bag man had moved to another wire crate, having emptied the first, and was just finishing up shoving birds into the second bag. He heaved up the bags, which were eerily still at this point, and left the way he'd come.

I was still horrified. Why was he putting birds in bags? The crates were traps, from what I could tell. I saw that after he'd left more pigeons were pecking around the crates, so I assume he'd put out some kind of feed or something to entice them.

A few minutes later the day nurse came back with someone else (the floor nurse, maybe?) and got me to tell her about the creepy bird bag man. They went off and called security in the building next door, then came back and told me that they'd asked them to check it out since the sight of guys shoving birds in bags like that was disturbing to patients and staff.

Uh, yeah. They also asked me to keep an eye out for the return of the bird bag man, but I haven't seen him again yet.

Horse pistol.

Hi. Just a quick update to let you know that I haven't been writing because I'm in the hospital. Yeah, so that's fun. Seriously, though, the baby is OK (so far as we know; I STILL haven't had an ultrasound done yet) and I'm OK. I'm getting treated for the extremes of morning sickness, thank goodness!

My internet connection is really sketchy so I don't know that I can update much from here, but I'll do my best!

Ultrasilent

Man, am I pissed off. Today was supposed to be the day I had my first ultrasound. Since I didn't find out I was pregnant until eight weeks in things have been a bit delayed with getting to see my OBGYN and the initial ultrasound and whatnot. My regular medical clinic referred me no problem to an obstetrician and gave me the number for the the ultrasound clinic. I was instructed (in a voicemail message) to contact the ultrasound clinic and set up an appointment.

I did that. I called them and they told me when to come in and where. I was supposed to go there at eleven this morning, which I did, along with Andrew. When we got there (after going to the eighth floor, then the tenth floor, then finally the eighteenth floor which was ultimately the right one) the receptionist asked me for my requisition forms. I had none, had not been told to bring any, had not been given any or advised of their necessity. The term 'requisition form' had been spoken to me by NO ONE.

So she called my clinic and I guess now in hindsight she thought maybe she was calling my OBGYN, and as it turns out the ultrasound appointment was supposed to come after the OBGYN appointment, which isn't until next week. This is also something that had not been mentioned to me and hadn't been asked of me when I called the ultrasound clinic to set up the appointment. It feels like the ultrasound appointment is something that maybe I shouldn't have been setting up if it depended on seeing the OBGYN first and getting forms from them, so I'm not sure why I was instructed to do it.

I don't know. I'm frustrated that we went to the trouble of going there and fudging around and now I have to go have both appointments on the same day in the same part of town, but six hours between them. I'm an irrationally angry pregnant woman!

I talk about barfing, OK?

So far the pregnancy experience hasn't been much beyond feeling varying degrees of crappy. The initial sickness, the one that tipped us off that hmmm, maybe there's something going on here, THAT sickness lasted over the next few days until we got back home to Toronto. It eased off pretty considerably and I was feeling quite all right for the next week or so. For the last two weeks, though, I've been feeling awful. And when I say awful, I mean siiiiiiiick. Constant strong nausea, the kind that makes your blood run all hot and cold. I've never been a 'good' barfer, if there's any such thing, and fight having to throw up with everything in me.

So, I attempt to cope by staying very still when it's really bad, trying not to let my stomach get empty and eating the most inoffensive things I can manage. One of the weird things about morning sickness (which I always point out is a total misnomer as for me so far it's constant, all-day, try-to-get-through-the-next-second sickness) is that eating helps. All the advice articles, books and websites tell the sick preggo in her first trimester to eat soda crackers to help with nausea. Keeping them by your bed and eating a few before you even sit up is supposed to be beneficial. I guess it is, although so far I haven't been very consistent with what I can and can't bring myself to eat. What goes down easy one day seems like poison the next.

As far as having actually barfed? I have a few times (as of this writing), but like I said; I fight it. I'm very practiced at trying to zen myself through the most severe nausea. I often suspect that just letting go and ... letting go might actually help me feel better, but the prospect of what has to happen to get there is too much for me and I can't just go and do it. So when I do, it's because my body has given me NO OTHER CHOICE.

Awesomely I actually, no word of a lie, found a page that advises eating salty potato chips (SALTY POTATO CHIPS) as a way to cope with nausea, especially before a meal. I can guarantee you that the writers of the horrific book What To Expect When You're Expecting had zero to do with this article or website and their heads would pop completely off if they read those words.

And no, I'm not eating a bag of Ruffles before each meal. Just one a day.

(You're unsure whether or not to believe that, aren't you?)

Inaugural post: How we found out.

Welcome to my pregnancy weblog, I guess. I intend to keep it longer than that, but until I'm no longer pregnant it is what it is!

So ... I'm pregnant. Twelve weeks. Anyone who knows me well knows it's not a state I was sure I'd ever be in, but I am! Holy crap. We found out when I was about eight weeks along (although my first ultrasound which is coming up in a couple of days will verify the timing for sure.) We were spending the weekend in Ottawa and I'd been feeling all kinds of terrible; headachey, constantly exhausted and then suddenly fiercely nauseated on top of it all. I'd been planning to go visit La that afternoon but after having slept most of the day before, all night and then all morning I was convinced I was still dying.

Andrew offered to go buy me some medicines like Advil and Gravol. We kind of looked at each other skeptically and wondered if we should get a pregnancy test too, and I figured with the first two items it might be a good idea, just in case, just to be safe and basically tick THAT off the list as a possible cause of my malaise. I quite honestly was not expecting a positive result.

So, Andrew brought me those things and then he and Colin and Jen went out to New Mee Fung for a delicious dinner. You know I must have been feeling like CRAP to not go to my favourite Ottawa restaurant if offered a chance. Off they went and I got up to pee on the stick before popping an Advil and Gravol.

I've taken pregnancy tests lots of times before (but mostly out of paranoia rather than efforts to conceive.) I've peed on those sticks and believed the instructions when they said not to read the results before a certain amount of time (usually two minutes) has passed as a positive result might not show up immediately. And then to possibly wait as long as ten minutes just in case it takes a while to register a weak positive. So I kind of half-assedly watched the pee creep along the result windows just to make sure I'd peed on it enough and nearly fell on the floor at the IMMEDIATE, DARK, NO-KIDDING-AROUND plus sign that signaled a positive result. Like, as soon as my pee touched that result window the vertical line began screaming at the top of its lungs.

Mah gah. I was shocked. I was stunned. I was pregnant.

When Andrew came back from New Mee Fung and came upstairs and into the bedroom I hadn't really thought of what to say. I certainly hadn't come up with any cutesy way to let him know, hadn't run out to buy a card or pair of baby booties or anything like that. I just grabbed him and said, "We're having a baby."

He looked back at me and, knowing me and my fears and all the reasons behind my ambivalence toward being a parent, said the best thing he could have possibly said in that moment: "It's going to be OK."