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Tag Archives: first trimester

How Do You Grown Up

20 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

dishes, exhaustion, first trimester, house work, mess, shame, tiredness

Sometimes I wonder how people manage being grown ups.

Like, when I go to train dogs in people’s houses and the houses are spotless show homes despite two smiling, well behaved children in the house and I wonder how they manage to work well paying jobs and raise two kids and still don’t have soap rings in their bathroom sink.

PH and I both heavily value a clean home. We both grew up in clean homes.

We do not live in a clean home.

At the best of times, we manage a cluttered and messy home.

When we’re doing well, the only dishes in the sink are from the past 24 hours. The toilet has been cleaned within the last two weeks and the fur has been swept off of the floor when guests come over.

Then there are times like now.

The first trimester exhaustion kicked in for me around the 7 week mark. Until that day, PH and I had fallen into a rhythm for managing our family dishes. I washed them at night before bed, and he took them out of the dry rack and put them away the next morning. Each of us kept up our end of the deal because the other person kept up theirs.

Suddenly, I didn’t have it in me to wash those dishes. I looked at them, and I walked away.

And now our kitchen looks like this:

Continue reading →

F*** Cheery Ultrasound Techs

09 Thursday May 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

first trimester, missed miscarriage, pregnancy, ultrasounds

I went in for a dating ultrasound yesterday because, without boring you with tmi details, we weren’t entirely sure when I conceived.

The ultrasound technician was a chirpy young thing who addressed me as “mom”. As always, she made PH wait outside while she did the scan. As she ran the probe over my belly, she asked me why I was there.

“Hmm, I do think your dates are a little off, it seems pretty small,” she said. “Have you ever had a vaginal ultrasound?”

“No.”

“Well, you did a great job of filling your bladder but I’m going to ask you to go empty it, because I need it completely empty for the vaginal scan. Just let me take what measurements I can here, and then I’ll ask you to run to the bathroom,” she said cheerily.

She clicked away while she asked me questions – date of my last period, how sure I was about that, etc.

Then the questions began to get weird.

“And you had a positive pregnancy test?”

“…Yes…”

“And what was that? Urine?”

“Yes, a stick at home. I took it the same day my period didn’t arrive and it went positive right away…”

“And have you had any cramping?”

“…A tiny bit, a few weeks ago, but no spotting.”

“Okay, Mom, you can go empty your bladder, and then we’ll do the vaginal scan,” she said cheerfully.

So I went pee. But on my way back, I sought out Perfect Husband in the waiting room and told him that I was scared, because she was asking weird questions.

“Am I allowed in NOW?” he asked, squeezing my hand.

“Nope.”

So I went back in, and she had me take my pants off and stick a wand up my hoo-ha.

“Now, this won’t hurt you or the baby,” she assured me.

She spent  good ten minutes wiggling the wand around and clicking measurements on the screen, which was pointed away from me. I love how they hide the results of your own frigging scan from you. It’s my body isn’t it?

When she was done she told me that I could clean up and get dressed, and she would go and fetch “Dad”.

She ushered him into the room a moment later, and told us that she would be right back.

It’s at that point that you start trying to talk yourself out of paranoia.

After all, we had had a scare about the baby in our last pregnancy. Having read Marley and Me makes you more aware of what can go wrong in a seemingly healthy pregnancy.

But on the other hand, why did she ask if I had had a positive pregnancy test? She was clearly measuring SOMETHING on the screen, so there must be something in there. What a weird question.

“If there is something wrong, I would hope they wouldn’t just put us in here and leave us hanging with no warning,” PH said. “If she was that cheerful at me and there is something wrong…”

“She probably isn’t allowed to tell us anything. She probably has to hunt down some doctor to say “yep, that’s a dead baby,”” I said.

But we were still dealing in hypotheticals. I have anxiety. I live in these hypothetical scenarios where terrible things happen.

I’m not used to them actually happening.

So when she returned, still chirpy, with a radiologist in a white coat, my heart sank but I still didn’t really believe he was going to tell us terrible news.

He would tell us the baby might have Down Syndrome. He was going to say that the baby was due on Christmas Day instead of the 4th. He was going to tell us it was quadruplets. He wasn’t going to tell us that…

“So, I’ve reviewed the scans and unfortunately, the embryo is not living,” he said calmly and briskly.

“Oh.” I said in a small voice.

We proceeded to nod calmly while he told us that these things happen, that it probably happened a while ago, and it is usually due to a chromosomal abnormality. The embryo looked a little malformed, a bit unusual, so that was probably why…

“In what way?” I asked.

“Sorry?”

“What’s different about it? It’s okay, I understand the big words.”

He looked uncertain. “There’s not really much to tell you, it’s very small, only about the size of a peanut. There just seems to be some cystic processes going on. Anyway, I’ve called your midwife, but unfortunately I had to leave a message…”

His cell phone rang. “Ah, that’s probably here now. I’ll be back in a moment.”

And he left.

PH held out his arms to me, and I began to cry.

The radiologist came in a few minutes later and we sat up and wiped our eyes and nodded some more as he told us that the midwife was making up a referral to BC Women’s hospital where we could go to discuss our options, which would likely involve either taking drugs to miscarry at home or having a D&C. He said she was going to call me. He told us to take our time and to leave when we were ready. He said he was sorry for our loss.

We dried our eyes and left immediately. The midwife called and told me that it was called a missed miscarriage, that the people at the Women’s hospital would go over the options in detail, that she had sent a referral and we would probably hear back from them the next day. She told me that it wasn’t my fault. PH squeezed my hand as if to say “LISTEN TO HER”.

We had to pick up Owl from daycare right away. We took him right to our friends and neighbours’ house and asked them to take him for an hour. Then we went inside, and cried, and made phone calls.

My Christmas Baby is gone, but my body still thinks it’s pregnant. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been going through nausea and exhaustion to build a placenta for a lump of tissue that isn’t going to use it.

It’s hard to accept that no one will ever wear the little newborn sized Baby’s First Christmas outfit that I picked up at a swap meet a few weeks ago.

It’s worse to think that I can’t even get pregnant again until I get the remains removed, because my body doesn’t want to let go.

I can’t blame it though.

We’re having some trouble letting go as it is.

Completely Unexciting Pregnancy Update

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

babies, first trimester, morning sickness, pregnancy

This is the worst part of pregnancy.

Worse than the third trimester, sweating, swollen, 8 pound bag of snakes under your ribs part of pregnancy.

This.

It is the worst.

Reasons:

1. Boring.

You don’t look pregnant, and you aren’t supposed to yammer about it to everyone you meet, but you walk around thinking “ARGHSDFHDUSI I’M PREGNANT.”

Meanwhile, your baby isn’t doing cute and interesting things like developing ears, sucking its thumb and peeing inside you.

Instead, it’s a tiny little non-cute seamonkey the size of a blueberry who doesn’t even have EYES yet. An EYELESS, non-cute seamonkey that is lucky if it even has a heartbeat yet.

embryo

And every time a pregnancy book compares my baby to a fruit I get an uncomfortable mental image of popping it in my mouth.

Anyway, it’s certainly far too early to get excited and start buying tiny pieces of clothing. It doesn’t even feel real yet.

2. Morning sickness.

I thought I might escape it this time, because for the first couple weeks I felt fine and I was like “HA, THEY WERE RIGHT, EVERY PREGNANCY IS DIFFERENT!” but now it’s starting, and that means the weight gain has started.

That’s right. Weight gain. Because when I have morning sickness, the only thing that staves it off is snacking on easy-to-digest, salty, starchy things like… pretzels. Which means I end up eating half a bag of pretzels and subsequently gain weight. I was totally NOT gaining weight until the nausea started and now I’ve already gained 2 pounds.

And then there’s the world of regret that I live in when I decide, to, say, eat fish and chips for lunch and then spend the next 12 hours feeling like I have the flu, having that restless sleep where you keep dozing off then waking up nauseous.

And then, you can’t call in sick because there’s no point because this “flu” is going to last for MONTHS AND MONTHS.

3. Gratitude.

And as boring and nauseating as the whole thing is, you feel like a jerk if you complain, because you’re in the could-end-in-a-miscarriage-any-second part of pregnancy, the part of pregnancy that is so iffy that people don’t even like to tell other people that they are pregnant in case they have to have the awkward “yeah, I’m not, any more, actually…” conversation with people.

I had a night of severe cramping and it scared the crap out of me. I kept checking my underwear for spotting. I wrapped a magic bag around my middle and hoped for the best, and it passed, and the morning sickness arrived.

And I was grateful. To be nauseous.

Seriously, the worst part of pregnancy.

I’ll be a great Mom

19 Tuesday Jan 2010

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

first trimester, pregnancy

Is it wrong that I keep forgetting that my baby exists?

Or more specifically, that I can go quite a while, half an hour or more, without remembering that I am pregnant?

At least it doesn’t look like a seamonkey any more. Hopefully we can start bonding.

I could give you some vomit, too. Would you like that?

18 Monday Jan 2010

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

blood tests, first trimester, morning sickness

I went in this morning for bloodwork – you know, the usual – Hcg, rubella titre, HIV (so they know whether or not I can bleed on them in the hospital when I give birth)… and glucose.

Is it just me or is it cruel to make someone in the first trimester fast for 10 whole hours and then suck 33 mL of blood out of them?

That’s right. 33 mL. Now, I realize that this is just a drop in the bucket bloodwise, and that I would have much more taken out of me at, say, a blood donor clinic. But still, when you’re sitting there, feeling all gross and nauseous and low blood sugar, looking at seven massive vacutainers waiting to be filled, it’s daunting.

I felt gross for the rest of the day. It has become very clear to me that my “no morning sickness” luck goes entirely out the window if I go more than a few hours without eating. A snack at night, and breakfast in the morning, and I feel fine. But on weekends, when I sleep in, or days like today when I can’t eat because that’s how the vampires like it… I  do NOT feel good.

Uggh.

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