Not Dead Yet

Tags

eight weeks, heart beat, miscarriage, pregnancy, ultrasound

We haven’t really been taking my pregnancy seriously yet. After last time, we are a bit more guarded in our hopes and expectations. By which I mean that we make constant dead baby jokes and PH’s repeated imitation of our embryo is basicly an elaborate death pose.

But, that being said, we went in for an eight week ultrasound and the ultrasound technician told me right away that he had found a heart beat.

At eight weeks, there’s not really much else to say about a little gray jelly bean on the screen. It measured eight weeks two days, which means that my estimated due date is spot on, which is pretty unusual, and its tiny heart is beating.

Or it was, as of that particular day.

In our minds, it could have stopped the next day, or the day after that. So we weren’t super excited, and we still haven’t talked much about our plans for April, when our still-considered-hypothetical baby should be born.

I have lost all trust in my body. When I was pregnant with Owl, and again in my second pregnancy, I assumed that if I was experiencing pregnancy symptoms and not having cramping or bleeding, that the baby was probably okay. When we had that brief no-heartbeat-on-doppler scare we acknowledged the possibility that the baby might NOT be okay, but a reassuring ultrasound was all we needed to get us expecting a baby again.

This ultrasound was reassuring, sure. We were definitely relieved to hear that our baby wasn’t dead…. yet. But we can’t get that “yet” our of our psyches.

Sure, my abdomen is already starting to expand, even though the scale reads the same as it did a month ago, so clearly my uterus is growing.

Sure, I am experiencing that terrible first trimester exhaustion that is not really describable to people who haven’t experienced it. My doctor even said to me, “you know, my patients always talked about that first trimester fatigue, but I didn’t really understand how deep it goes until I experienced it for myself.”

And while I’m not having much morning sickness, I do experience low grade nausea at several points in the day.

But you know what? My pants got tight last time, too. I had morning sickness last time. I went through all of the sucky aspects of the first trimester, and experienced them for weeks AFTER my baby had already died.

I don’t think I’ll really believe it until I can feel the baby move and KNOW it’s alive.

 

Beloved Dog, The Reprise – Or, In Which I Take Spoiling My Dog To A Whole New Level

Tags

diet, dogs, home cooked diet, home made dog food, IBD, pancreatitis, recipe, ultrasound

Some of you may remember that a year and a half ago, I threw myself into a panic over Beloved Dog. Some routine bloodwork based on my paranoid suspicions revealed that he tested positive for pancreatitis, despite having none of the symptoms of it.

I put him on a low fat diet, rechecked him a month later, and he STILL tested positive. So I sent the blood to the lab for a more detailed answer. I wanted to know HOW positive.

Well, apparently a normal Spec CPL number is between 0 and 200. Over 200 is borderline. Over 400 is definitive. Beloved Dog was at 600.

Cue panic and tests.

Well, ultrasound showed pretty much nothing. Ditto when, a month later, Beloved Dog began urinating tea brown liquid. A little thickening of the bladder, some funny nodules on the spleen that, when tested, turned out to be nothing significant.

So, on the advice of the ultrasound vet, I dismissed it as nothing. He said that the spec CPL test is wrong sometimes.

Just to be sure, I put Beloved Dog on an extremely low fat diet. But his weight melted off and he got skinny as hell. And I’ve always kept him pretty lean to begin with, so we’re talking prominent ribs, sticky-outy spine, etc.

I changed his food to a more moderate level of fat and simply kept him away from fatty treats.

And he seems to have been doing fine.

It’s just the little things:

The fact that he has taken to having bowel movements in the house. Even if he pooped outside earlier that day. Several times.

He isn’t cuddly.

I mean, he was never a CUDDLY dog. Not the way a Lab or a Pug might treat you like their personal cushion. But he liked to lean up against you, It seems like over the last few years that has faded away. Now he wants to curl up in a corner and for you to leave him the f*** alone.

Behold, my doggy fortress of solitude

Then there’s the abdomen thing.

Whenever a dog comes in for an exam, vets always palpate the abdomen. Sometimes if there’s a cancer or something in there they can feel it, and how well the dog tolerates it can tell them if his stomach hurts or not.

That test doesn’t work on Beloved Dog, because he always grunts and hunches if you touch his belly. I dismissed it as a mannerism, until the pancreatitis test last year. Now I’m not sure. Humans with pancreatitis report it as excruciatingly painful, even in chronic form.

Anyway, I just left the matter to rest. After all, he SEEMS fine. Likes to run, loves to eat. Gets into mischief occasionally. Hell, compared to a lot of the fat, greying, stiff-limbed 9 year old dogs I see at my clinic, he seems remarkably youthful.

Then, on Sunday, I fed him a piece of lean steak leftover from Owl’s bowl. I was thinking “to hell with the pancreatitis thing. He’s been fine for a year. There’s no fat on this piece, anyway.”

My nose woke me up at 6 the next morning. We pulled back the closet door and nearly wept. Messy, stinky poop everywhere and judging from Beloved Dog’s hunched and guilty posture, he wasn’t done. I shoved him out in the yard for a good hour.

Then I brought him into work.

Physical exam was about the same – tense abdomen, grunts when palpated, otherwise nothing unusual noted. I did some repeat blood work, and his organ function looked the same as last year.

In fact, strangely similar. His cholesterol was up a bit last year, which often doesn’t mean much. Except a year later, despite having eaten nothing for 12 hours, his cholesterol was, if anything, higher than last year.

So I ran another Spec CPL, to see how his probably-false-positive for pancreatitis was coming along. Now it was 764, instead of 600. I asked the lab to add on a check of his amylase and lipase – two enzymes secreted by the pancreas as well as several other organs during gastronomic upset. They were elevated, too.

I’m quick on the draw, obviously

Tags

20 weeks, pregnancy, ultrasound

Sorry. Had house guests.

(…Who checked If By Yes during their stay to ensure they remained updated on my life. I love the electronic age.)

Here are pictures (minus boy parts, because PH is not comfortable with that – feel free to complain if you feel robbed of my son’s fetal penis).

That last picture is of his feets. Surrounded by a lot of my insides (and there are lots).

It’s a hotdog!

Tags

baby, gender, ultrasound

Perfect Husband would rather I not post a picture of his son’s sex organs on the world wide web, despite my proud-mother urge to do so instantly. But it’s definitely a boy!

Once again, the ultrasound people wouldn’t let Perfect Husband in at first, so he was left to stew while I was ushered in. The lady was very nice, though, and asked if I was interested in knowing the gender if she spotted it. Of course, I said yes, please! She spent a lot of time staring at the monitor, making clicks and beeps, while she did complicated measurement stuff. To my infinite relief, she told me that I had over-done the full bladder thing and sent me to relieve myself of part of the load, then did some more clicks and beeps. I tried to see what was happening on the monitor, but from my angle it was just miscellaneous grey patches. When she was done the important stuff, she said everything looked totally normal, and she went to call my husband.

Perfect Husband came in looking disgruntled, but seemed somewhat appeased when I told him that I had not gotten any sneak-previews. She showed us the face, which still looks alien, and the little hands, folded over his nose. He must have been sleeping, because he wasn’t moving at all. She showed us the spine, the flickering heart, the tiny empty stomach, and then she moved down to his legs.

“This is the umbilical cord,” she said, “and this is the scrotum, and that is definitely a penis. So it’s a boy.”

We made pleasant sounds while we digested it. I was surprised, because I had thought it was a girl, despite years and years of dreaming about nothing but boys. But mostly I felt worried about Perfect Husband being disappointed, because he loves little girls the way I love little boys. I don’t know why I should feel personal responsibility for the baby’s gender, since that ball is firmly in his court, but I did. He seems to be quite accepting of it though.

And this is why I wanted to kn0w – actually being able to think of the thing that moves in me as “my son” has made me feel closer to him already. But it has also really brought things home…

Holy shit, I’m going to have a kid.

It’s IN me, I have a right to know.

Tags

babies, gender, pregnancy, ultrasound

Ultrasound is tomorrow (Thursday)!!!

I really really REALLY hope they can tell me if it’s a hotdog or a hamburger.

And I’m worried they’ll yell at me for trying to video it.

It’s aliiiiiiive! ALIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Tags

pregnancy, ultrasound

Of course you were all right and the baby is fine. Looking like a little alien, heart flickering, lying still mostly but then occasionally giving a hiccup-like movement, reminiscent of a mexican jumping bean.

PH was ticked off because they wouldn’t let him in with me at first. So he waited and fidgeted anxiously, wondering whether his child was alive, while the ultrasound tech showed me my adorable little alien babby. Finally my repeated “..So, can my husband come in now?” was responded to and he was ushered in and hustled against a back wall, by my feet. I gave him a reassuring smile and told him it was fine while she found the babby again and it gave another little hop just for Daddy. Daddy looked too relieved to be overjoyed. He just squeezed my foot and stared.

One alien babby, 63 mm long, alive and twitching:

World's youngest BNL fan

We finished up the day with the Victory Ceremony and Barenaked Ladies, so that made it a pretty darn good day. Perfect Husband’s facebook status yesterday was “tomorrow will either be the worst day ever, or the best day ever…”

We are so grateful that it was the latter, and not the former. Crisis averted. THIS time!