A different kind of leeping.

I haven't been very writely lately, I know. Things are OK, but I've been stressing out about a certain something and trying to write about anything else just wasn't working for me. I'd start stuff and never finish it.

Anyone who's been reading this blog from the beginning might remember that when I had my first OBGYN visit after finding out I was pregnant he did a pap smear (of course) and that there were abnormal cells present. He saw the results as serious enough to send me to Princess Margaret hospital to have a colposcopy done by a doctor who specializes in treating cancer during pregnancy.

So she did the colposcopy back in December and scheduled me to have another one in mid-March to see if the bad patches had spread. The big wrench in that plan happened when Essie was born on March 3rd almost three months early and I missed the appointment. As soon as I realized what had happened I tried to contact the clinic, but it proved very difficult, for some reason. Calling the hospital and trying to get transferred to the correct office was a bunch of fail because every time they'd transfer me I'd end up on a line that rang and rang but never went to an answering machine or was picked up by a human.

When I went to see my OBGYN for my post-partum checkup I told him about my difficulties and he gave me a different number to call. Awesome. So I started calling that number and it went to an answering machine for a few different doctors, at which I left pleading messages to call me back so I could make a new followup appointment. These messages went unanswered for quite a long time, then finally I called the general hospital number again and wouldn't let the woman transfer me until she could assure me that she was doing so to a number with real people on the other end.

Someone answered! And told me to call a different number, but this woman did go to the trouble of pulling up my patient number and giving it to me, instructing me to leave that information next time I left a message. So that's what I did, and I waited some more. I left maybe one or two more messages, but finally someone called me back and told me I could make an appointment! O, happy day.

I did so, and they scheduled me for September 8th. I ended up also getting my tattoo done on that day and was quite honestly more nervous about the tattoo since I knew that a colposcopy doesn't hurt in the slightest. So they did their thing and checked it all out and said that things weren't looking bad at all, but decided to do a biopsy for the sake of being thorough. That made me nervous but it ended up not hurting at all, either. The tattoo was much more painful!

I wasn't too terribly worried. The doctor had been quite casual about what she was seeing with her naked eye, saying it didn't look worrisome at all. So I was actually a bit shocked when I got the results and they told me I have severe cervical dysplasia, otherwise known as high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions or carcinoma in situ. All very scary-sounding. When they did the biopsy they'd scheduled me for a treatment in case things did end up worse than they appeared, and I'm thankful for that now. I'm going in for a loop electrical excision procedure (LEEP). That, my friends, is a loop of electrified wire used as a knife to cut away the offending pre-cancerous hot spots on my cervix. Also very scary-sounding, although they use local anaesthetic to make sure I don't feel anything during.

Dudes, I am so freaking nervous about this procedure. In the last year I have pretty much lost all fear of needles WRT them taking my blood, putting in an IV or giving me some kind of shot in my muscle. The thing I'm most nervous about for this procedure is the locality of the anaesthetic. OW. I'm not looking forward to the needles they're going to give me to freeze the area. Not at all. Not one little bit. I am what you call somewhat terrified. Electrified cauterizing wire used as a blade? I'm not going to feel that one! I'll feel the impalement of my inner bits and I'm sad.

I know. Suck it up, be grateful this was caught before it was full-blown cancer, be thankful there's treatment and I should be fine. I'm thankful, but still scared.

Ow, my everything!

WELL! I certainly had a day of man-handling. Or ... person-handling, anyhow.

It started off with a visit to the OBGYN for the six-week followup visit. I had a wait of at least an hour and a half, an hour of which was spent half-naked and trying not to fall asleep on the examining table. No kidding; an hour. Maaaan. But when my doctor got in there he was his usual charming self. He looked at my incision and admired it, which is what every medical professional does when they look at it. All, "Oooooh, very nice. It's hardly going to be noticeable!" This is wasted on my non-bikini-wearing self, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

After he got done looking at it he proceeded to PROD MY INNARDS INTO A PULP while checking my uterus and ovaries. Seriously, I was ready to crawl off the table it was so uncomfortable. I'm not talking about the hand in my privates, I'm talking about the one feeling around on the outside. Ow! My incision is pretty (so they say) but it's still a healing wound, people!

Then it was all, "Put on your pants and scram," so I did. I went to the hospital that houses my daughter and spent the afternoon with her. I was intent on this visit because I was supposed to spend some time with the lactation consultant trying to figure out a comfortable position to nurse Shaughnessy in since what I'd been doing hadn't been working for me.

She recommended the football hold, which is where you tuck your baby under your arm like you're a quarterback and nurse her that way instead of having her lay across your lap in front. It was actually really good and comfy right from the start and I was very happy, but then we moved on to trying to get Shaughnessy to latch, which is something she hasn't done yet. The LC watched me for a minute and then said, "May I?" I said yes, of course.

So she grabbed my boob and the back of my daughter's head, squishing my boob into what she referred to as a 'sandwich', and anytime Shaughnessy opened her mouth she jammed the two together. All I could do was laugh because it kind of showed that there isn't a lot of science involved in the nursing concept. Shaughnessy didn't mind at all, although she still wasn't getting the latching concept very well. Baby+boob=eventual nursing if you're persistent, it seems, so I do think it was a valuable lesson. I don't think I was really doing enough to introduce S-Girl to the concept of nipple going in mouth.

We also tried a nipple shield, which is a thin silicone thingie that goes over your nipple. It's closer to the shape of the soother she's been using, so she actually did latch onto it and do the right thing for a while, but she was super-tired and kept falling asleep. All in all, however, it was a success and things are looking good for future breastfeeding, woot woot! I also have a newfound respect and admiration for the lactation consultant, so won't have heart palpitations from now on when I see her. ;)

I had a bad headache by evening so came home to recuperate from that and all the bodily indignities I'd suffered for the day. Becoming a mother really has stripped away a lot of my extraneous dignity, I must say.

Hey, baby-mama, do you come here often?

So yesterday I had to get up and go to the obgyn for a blood glucose test. I'd been given instructions the week before and so didn't eat or drink anything sugary beforehand. Now, the office that I go to is in the obstetrics department at Mt. Sinai so there's a central area for outpatient stuff where I had to go to drink my glucose drink. You take a number from a machine and wait around for a long time until your number comes up.

I sat down beside a nice Chinese woman and we ended up chatting for a bit, discovering we were there for the same reason and that we share the same obgyn. We were about the same number of weeks along and compared notes and bellies and whatnot until a tech came out and asked who was there for glucose testing. About eight of us swarmed him so he waved us back and said he'd take three at a time, and that he'd call for us every fifteen minutes. We showed our tickets and the three lowest numbers got to go with him. My friend and I weren't in the lucky group, so we headed off to the obgyn to pee on our sticks since during the one-hour waiting period after the glucose drinks we were supposed to go see our doctor.

When I got back to the outpatient area I ended up sitting beside a woman who looked much further along than me. She was also there for glucose testing and since it was very boring just sitting there we started yakking. It turned out that she's only twenty weeks along as opposed to my 27, but is having triplets! Wow. I was VERY interested in talking to her about what it's like and she was more than happy to share it. The triplets were a total surprise and since she has to have ultrasounds all the time to check on them they know the sexes and everything. Also they seem to be very healthy little babies and are pretty big, so a cesarean is pretty much guaranteed. She was all, "Yeah, I'm not pushing out one of them and then finding out I have to have a c-section for the other two anyhow." I'd feel the same way!

I finally got to drink my glucose drink (which is exactly like super-sweet orange carb drink) and the tech was impressed that I was able to chug it down fast. They give it to you in two cups and I just knocked them back quick since they weren't exactly delicious and the woman before me was having a hard time with hers, taking little sips and grimacing. The woman before her was all, "Mmmmm, this is delicious."

The doctor's waiting area was insanely busy so it was hard to get a seat, but when I finally did I ended up sitting beside a grandma who was there with her daughter and two grandkids. The one had been born just a month before and was a hilariously cross-eyed, foggy, squinchy newborn who made the ugliest faces at the waiting room over her mother's arm. I am always highly amused by that stage of babyhood, when being in the world is still the most alien thing to them since they're so used to the womb and haven't acclimatized at all to being out. This is not to say I think they're hideous; they're just so NEW.

Anyhow, the grandma was very proud of her grandkids and couldn't stop talking about them and ended up in a bit of a one-up war with a grandma sitting two seats down from me on the other side. Her daughter was there, wearing a 'pregnant is the new sexy' t-shirt over her big old baby belly and standing there while her mom took a load off. The daughter had apparently been colicky and so there was lots of talk about how this baby might restore the balance in the world by also being colicky. I was sympathetic to her, having also been colicky but having no recollection of doing it out of spite or innate meanness.

I finally got to see my doctor and he was as efficient as the time before, measuring my belly, listening to the heartbeat and advising me to switch from Tums to Maalox or Zantac since the heartburn is getting so bad. Then I dashed back to the outpatient lab with minutes to spare before getting my blood drawn.

This was the best part. The tech was the same guy who'd drawn my blood wayyyy back in the day when I had my first bloodwork done at the hospital. Back then I'd been nervous since I always am about needles and he had chatted me up really charmingly and casually, starting off by admiring my Claddagh ring and saying that I must be Irish and that Irish girls are his weakness. He inquired about my names and their meanings and I told him all about my mom and grandmothers and family history across the pond.

Well, this time I went in and sat down and pointedly looked away from the prep as he got out the tubes and needle. He started to chat me up and suddenly said, "You must be Irish. I can tell because you're wearing a Claddagh ring. Irish girls are my weakness."

I tried not to laugh and just went along with the conversation, but it took everything in me. The first time it was totally charming and put me at my ease: This time it was HIGH-LARIOUS and also put me at my ease because I wanted to laugh so hard. Dude obviously has a method for dealing with the needle-shy and it's very effective!

People do make me laugh.

So yesterday I went first to an OBGYN appointment, then went shopping to see if I could find a pretty maternity dress to wear to Jen and Colin's wedding this coming weekend.

The appointment was brief. My lovely doctor came flying into the room, ordered me to lie down, whipped out a tape measure, measured my belly, whipped out a heartbeat thingamajig, listened to the heartbeat, asked if I had any questions then told me to go to the outpatient lab and pee in a cup since my pee stick had some protein in it. The entire thing, including me waiting in the waiting room, took about 15 minutes total, a new record for obstetrical efficiency in my experience! Everyone at the office seemed a bit frazzled, actually. Busy day in babymaking, I guess. Except for the old man who was seated next to me in the waiting room and was eventually tipped off that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. He looked around and said, "Yes, there are an awful lot of pregnant women here."

Shopping for the maternity dress was as difficult as I'd expected, but only because there weren't any dresses. Like, none. I went to the Dufferin Mall because there's a Pennington's there and I was hoping to find an a-line dress that wouldn't necessarily have to be a maternity dress. There were no dresses at all. I'm not even kidding. Skirts and blouses, yes, but no dresses. I then went to Rietmans which most always has an awesome and plentiful plus-size section with great selection, but this time they also had no dresses. The clerk immediately got my drift as soon as I turned to face her and mentioned a-line dresses and had some suggestions about perhaps such-and-such a store would have something, but seemed dubious. She said this is a hard time of year to buy a dress anyhow, it being that wasteland between new seasonal lines when everything has been picked over.

I ended up getting a dressy pair of maternity pants and a fancy shirt which looked good to me when I tried them on in the store. Here's hoping I wasn't just desperately telling myself so in order to end the shopping process. I'll try them on again here at home and see. I still have a few days of grace and can shop in Ottawa, too!

My day was spiced right up by the craziness of my fellow shoppers and travelers, though. The first incident was in Pennington's. I entered the store at the same time as a woman using a walker and a much younger woman accompanying her. The elderly woman looked old enough to be the younger woman's grandma but referred to her as her daughter throughout. The daughter was shopping for a jacket and the two attracted the attention of one of the clerks as they discussed. The older woman had a VERY loud voice, and to my horror shouted to the clerk as she approached them, "We're looking for a jacket for a really FAT person, here. Really, really FAT."

I was mortified and wanted to hide behind a rack of clothes. Astonishingly (to me) the daughter didn't seem fazed by this at all, just calmly talked about the coats they were looking at with the clerk like this was absolutely normal behaviour. Yes, the daughter was obese, but HELLO OLD LADY, you are in Pennington's. Your daughter knows where she is, the clerks know where they work, your specificity is overkill in this situation.

I was left to wonder if the daughter just has to deal with this so much that not acknowledging it is her best defense. Whatever their personal relationship, I left and went off to shop elsewhere for my non-existent dress happy in the knowledge that my own mom is not a crazy, loud-talking, insensitive crone.

The second incident was much more palatable to me. I was on the Bathurst bus and an older couple sat down behind me. They looked to be in their sixties or so and quite cheerful and pleasant. The husband suddenly broke out into song. That didn't seem so weird to me because I live with Andrew, a man who has a song to fit every occasion and who will always sing that song.

I immediately realized, however, that I was in some kind of time warp and it was actually me and Andrew from the distant future sitting behind me because as the man sang his song his wife began to say, "Shhh. Stop singing. Stop it. Hush. Shush. Stop. Be quiet. Stop singing. Shhhhh."

He carried on singing for a bit, she very quietly carried on shushing him and eventually he stopped and they started talking about something else very happily and lovingly. So, I'm assuming that even when we're in our sixties, Andrew will still be breaking out into song and I'll still be shushing him. Some things will probably not change.

Yay, baby! Circulate that blood!

I had another obstetrician visit yesterday. I wasn't so jazzed about the visit itself, but kind of looked forward to eating some very cheap Chinese food in the hospital food court after so met Andrew at the Queen's Park station and we headed over to Mt. Sinai.

The doctor seemed a bit confused about why we were there, oddly, asking if I was there early for the scheduled colposcopy. I had no real answer other than that we'd been scheduled to come in that day, so he went with it and checked out where my uterus was at and let us listen to the heartbeat. That was pretty awesome as we hadn't heard it before. Any proof that the baby is in there doing its baby thing with apparent health is always happy-making.

Unfortunately the doctor wasn't so positive about the abnormal cells result from my pap smear and said that on a scale of one to five (one being a slight risk of cancer and five being probable cancer) that I'm a level three. Normally this would mean a colposcopy as soon as possible and a biopsy being done, but since I'm pregnant that complicates things and messing around with the cervix isn't a good idea. He said that in order to save time he'd rather send me to a specialist at Princess Margaret since that's what he'd do after doing a colposcopy anyhow, so why not just send me there initially. So they're setting me up with a specialist and we'll find out more. Eventually.

Of course this is anxiety-producing, but until we actually know something there's no real point in freaking out or assuming the worst. So after going and having seven (SEVEN) vials of blood drawn from my poor body for other baby-related testing Andrew and I parted ways and I went to eat my Chinese food. It tasted good, but ended up not sitting so well and I felt like craaaaaaap by the evening. Boo. I've still got the sickness and I'm about as thrilled as you can imagine.

Oh! We got an official due date, finally. Our kidlet is due May 24th, 2009. Paaarty! There will be no iterations of the name Victoria/Victor appended to the baby if it's actually born on its due date, though. None. Those names were RUINED for me by The Young And The Restless back when I was a teen, and will never be the same again.

Brain pain, abnormalities and baby names, oh my!

So, I seem to have lost my blogging mojo in the last year or so, but I do intend to actually update this weblog whenever there's something worthy of writing about. Just lately there hasn't been a whole heck of a lot to write about! I've been sick, still, which is nothing new and nothing anyone wants to hear whole bunches about.

Excitingly (said sarcastically, of course), almost daily headaches have appeared. I'm someone who tends to get lots of headaches anyhow and have since my mid-teens, so it's unsurprising that another common pregnancy complaint will apparently be mine. I can deal with headaches, though! I'm SO used to getting them and since Tylenol is safe to take during pregnancy I actually have something to combat them with. The nausea kicked my butt because it's just not the same. It causes me huge amounts of anxiety in a way that headaches do not.

My obstetrician is nice so far and the office is pleasant as well. They have a system where you get results from things like paps and ultrasounds using an automated phone or web system rather than talking to anyone at the office, which is fine by me except the system hasn't worked for me yet because they incorrectly entered my birthdate and I need it for retrieving my results. So, I had to get my results over the phone from the receptionist anyhow and she seemed happy to give me the good news, which is that the nuchal translucency results were all fine and our wee one will likely not have Down's Syndrome or any Trisomy disorders. The bad news is that the pap results indicate that I have some abnormal cells, which is common but still worrisome! So I have to go back for a more in-depth testing of my innards in January. I have an appointment tomorrow with the obstetrician so he'll explain it better to me, but the receptionist really didn't seem to like giving news like that over the phone. Guess I can't blame her!

I KNOW I still don't have the most recent ultrasound photos to share yet. I have the photos in my purse and keep forgetting to give them to Andrew to scan at work. I'll do my best to remember to give them to him tomorrow since he'll be coming to the obstetrician's office with me.

I'm 14 weeks now, which is exciting because I'm officially out of the first trimester! Hooray! Baby is doing OK as far as I can tell, which isn't that much really since there's no kicking going on that I can feel as of yet. Andrew and I have finally settled on a boy's name, too, which is a relief to me. I was very anxious to get it decided on, for some reason. We plan to find out the sex at the anatomical screening, which should be in December sometime, so I suppose I just really wanted to know at that point what we'll be calling him/her. I think we'll wait until then to announce it officially, although we've told a few people already.

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!