Passed a TON of tests!

Unlike last month's appointment which took over an hour to be seen and get out of there, tonight's appointment was only 10 minutes. I want a doctor that will stay and talk if I deem it necessary or if there's something to be said, but I don't need small talk if it's not necessary. Bing bang boom! It was basically all good news. Happens rarely, but it's my favorite type of appointment!

I don't have gestational diabetes. Yay! Even more importantly, I did NOT create antibodies based on our positive/negative blood types so my previous Rhogam shots did their jobs. (I didn't get to get my shot tonight because they're out of Rhogam, so I have to go back tomorrow, but that is ok.) I don't have syphilis either. (surprise. Not.) And I'm not anemic. (They told us at baby class that half the people who come in to the hospital in labor are either anemic or approaching it because the baby sucks iron. My cholesterol probably stinks these days, but I love red meat and it's good for not getting anemic so yay for that. Plus he said he'd extend my prescription for PT as long as I felt it was helping me. Quadruple yay!

AND, we were in the car at 6:10 for our 6pm appointment. I dig it.

Monthly Visit

I forgot to update after our monthly visit on Monday night. We met the 4th doctor in the practice at this visit. He's a nice guy, and was absolutely fascinated by my medical history. While I appreciate the care and interest, it turned what is usually a 10 or 15 minute appointment into an 82 minute appointment and dinner at almost 9pm. Most of it he wasn't even really talking, he was reading my history and making exclamations like "Wow!" or "That worked? That never works!" Yup. I know. My body is committed to helping doctors of all flavors "Practice" medicine.

To determine a trimester, when you divide the 40 weeks by 3, you get 13 1/3 weeks. So I figured somewhere in the 26-27 week range is the beginning of the 3rd trimester. Instead, this doctor said he considers the 3rd trimester after the viability date of 24ish weeks so that I'm already there. Viability, can you believe it? Of course nobody would WANT their baby to be born this early, but it's technically possible that it'd live if it was. It's much more preferable to keep the baby inside and healthy for lots of more weeks.

I also got a flu shot. I have never ever gotten one before because of my weird reactions to all types of medicines, but it was highly recommended that I do so. It's apparently better for the baby to get the medicine if I have an issue than for the baby to deal with me getting the flu if I get that. I usually get sick over the winter, but I have never been officially diagnosed with an official strand of influenza. I guess this would be a lousy year to start that trend.

In the coming weeks, I have to have a bunch of important tests done. Luckily they can run them all from one set of blood work.

The standard one is the test for gestational diabetes. I would hope not to get that, of course. But having to conform to a diet or medicine for 12 or 13 weeks would be do-able because there would be an end date in sight. (The GD goes away the second they cut the cord if you develop it.)

The other one is related to our A-/A+ blood type issues. They have to test me to see if I was sensitized to the Rh factor. That would be dangerous because it would hurt any future babies. I got the Rhogham shot after my first m/c and again during a bleeding spell early in this pregnancy. (It wasn't necessary with the second m/c because I wasn't pregnant long enough.) Those shots were supposed to protect me. Hopefully they did their job! Unfortunately, there's a chance for a false positive (positive is the bad result) because of that shot I got in the ER this time. If my body hasn't completely processed it, it would make the test come back positive even if I wasn't sensitized. That's a little frustrating.

So hopefully it all goes well!

Fetal Echo

We had a fetal echo done on the baby's heart today. It was recommended after our last scan and the OB said it'd be a good idea since we had to do the rescue ICSI. Since I'm almost at 24 weeks now, if something didn't look right they could start trying to figure out how to fix it. Luckily everything looked ok. I was more stressed about it than I wanted to be. Mostly because if something showed up on this particular scan, it was making me feel as though it was our fault. We knew going in that ICSI had a higher incidence of birth defects, so if one showed up I'd feel selfish for causing it in our desire to have a baby. So now that we've passed the a/s and the f/e without any red flags popping up, I'm feeling a little better.

Physical Therapy

More than a month ago, my old sciatica issues began creeping up in my left hip, but muscle, & leg. Back in college, I bent down to get laundry one day and threw out my back. (See? Laundry is dangerous, people!) It was random and out of the blue, but they checked me and said it was not doing to permanently injure me. After working on some stretches for a couple months, I got it to subside. I always figured it'd show back up in pregnancy, especially since it's a common pregnancy symptom for people who even haven't had it previously.

At my last appointment, I asked about what kinds of stretches/exercises I could do safely with being on pelvic rest. Answer? Not much. As the baby has growth spurts, so does my spotting, so I'm being more careful these days than I have been in the last month or so. (I never got all the way to NOT careful, but I stopped walking on eggshells!) So today started my "supervised" stretching and hopefully we'll find a solution.

I'm going to PT a couple times a week for a few weeks to see what kind of progress we can make. Tonight's session was mostly diagnostic. We checked my hips and leg length first. At least since my fibro diagnosis, and possibly since before then, my left leg has been shorter than my right leg due to my hips being crooked. We were thinking that maybe since connective tissue relaxes in pregnancy, my hips could be normal and my orthotic & lift would be over-correcting. For better or worse, I'm still crooked so my orthotics are still A-OK. My front tendons are super out of wack. One is right under the surface and one is more than an inch further in. That's certainly not helping! We did a few isometric stretches where I only moved a leg a centimeter or two with the therapist providing the tension. Then she did massaging in a certain direction to release some pressure.

While I was sore when I got home, it's a good sore instead of a bad sore. Hopefully this works!!

Monthly Appointment

I'm at about 21 and a half weeks now. We had our regular monthly appointment today and had the doctor I like the best. She shared the official results of our anatomy scan from a couple weeks ago. Everything is officially ok. However they are recommending that we do a fetal echo (heart test) because we had to do ICSI. Nothing is appearing wrong based on this test, but they recommend double checking. Medicine has come so far that if they find a problem now, they can solve them sooner. Hopefully they won't find anything to solve.

Anatomy Scan

Today was our big 20 week ultrasound. Thankfully, the baby has all the body parts it needs and they all appear to be working properly. We were a little concerned that there was a problem with the heart because the ultrasound tech spent a lot of time there and was making faces at the computer screen, however, it turned out that the baby just wouldn't get in the right position to get the necessary pictures.

For the last couple weeks, people at work have been asking constantly when we were going to find out the gender. It fascinates me that people care so much. I have noticed that the few people I know that are part of the "IF Club" don't ask. They know that it doesn't matter. They know that even the "oh as long as it's healthy!" line is annoying too. Because I wouldn't love the kid any less if it wasn't healthy. We did all the genetic testing and screening not because we would have chosen to end the pregnancy, but to be prepared. When you're used to doctors giving you bad news all the time, you like to go in to things with your eyes open. So honestly, we're just hoping for human. And today's scan told us that's what we are getting!

Today was also the first time I "outed" us on Facebook and Twitter. Yesterday I was able to tell my former boss in person (and she totally wins for best reaction, by the way!) and the last couple friends of my husband were emailed, and that covered our bases for people who would kill us if they found out on FB. I also felt secure enough to share the news after a positive scan. It was scary to do, but I did it anyway. Then 5 minutes later the bleeding was back and I was second guessing my decision!!!! But deep breaths .... we're half way there.

October visit

We had the same doctor this month as last time and our appointment was pretty quick again. I thought I was going to get a flu shot, but their paperwork wasn't set up yet so I escaped that fate for awhile. (You'd think I'd be over the needle thing by now!!!!) I'm pretty concerned about the flu shot thing because of my weird reactions to all medicines. I've been advised in the past to avoid the flu shot, but this is a different situation so I have to defer to the OB. All I can do is hope for the best! Now, to keep my fingers crossed that we make it to our next month appointment without an emergency visit in between!!