Category: Postcards from my uterus

One more sleep! Wednesday morning at 9:00 is the big reveal, assuming baby is amenable to the exposure. (And you know I come from a long line of exhibitionists.) We finally get to find out whether baby has indoor or outdoor plumbing.

I swear, never in my whole life have I expended so much energy in not thinking about something. For weeks, I’ve been careful not to speculate, not to wonder, and certainly not to hope. But despite my best efforts, I’m now emotionally and intellectually engaged in this pregnancy. I can feel the baby moving almost every day, and a couple of people in my office have tentatively approached me and asked if maybe I had some good news I wanted to share while looking pointedly at my no-longer-subtle belly. (Seriously, people, unless a woman has another human being dangling from between her legs, “Are you pregnant?” is still one of the most dangerous questions on the planet!) So I’ve let go of the fear and given myself over to joy and anticipation.

And tomorrow, the last big question will be answered.

It’s no secret that I would like a girl. Here are the top five six reasons I hope this little passenger is of the female variety:

1. I want a girl because I think it would be an easier family dymanic to have two boys and a girl rather than strand Simon in the middle of three boys.
2. I want a girl because I was a girl, and I’ve always had such a wonderful relationship with my mother, and she with her mother before that, and I would love to carry that on to the next generation.
3. I want a girl because when boys grow up, they tend to move away and girls stay close.
4. I want a girl so she can be daddy’s little girl, just like I was… and, erm, continue to be.
5. I want a girl because I fear the grocery bills – and the infrastructure of the house! – if we have three towering teenage boys in the house at the same time.
6. I want a girl simply because I don’t have one.

And yet, I would be delighted by another boy. Here’s why:

1. I know from boys. I’ve got five and a half years of insight into mothering boys. I know their bits, I know their preferences, I know their foibles.
2. I’ve always preferred the company of boys over girls. The idea of spending the rest of my life surrounded by men has a certain appeal.
3. Mean girls and middle school. I’m not sure I could do it again, even (or especially?) by proxy.
4. I’ve got a pretty good stash of boy-stuff. Rugby shirts and toy trucks and baseball caps and Sponge Bob videos; I spent a lot of time weeding through the pink pieces at Gymboree and Old Navy to find some truly great boy clothes.
5. Simply bellowing “BOYS!” to get their attention is far more effective than “CHILDREN!” or – god forbid – actually trying to get out the right name first.
6. Last but not least, how could I not want another Tristan or Simon?

In the mood for a little prognostication? Throughout this pregnancy, I’ve had a hard time not visibly shuddering every time someone smiled and leaned in and whispered confidentially, “I think this one’s a girl!” (Funny how nobody thinks it’s a boy… at least not out loud.) But I’m ready now! Lay your bets on the table, folks.

Is it a boy?
Is it a girl?
… or…
Will it be too stubborn to divulge its secrets?

You remember how it is with your first pregnancy, when you actually buy the pregnancy magazines, and hang out on the message boards at iVillage comparing each twitch and twang with 600 other pregnant mothers due in the same month as you, and you spend months agonizing over the nursery decorating scheme and hours browsing baby gear at Babys R Us and have the baby’s whole wardrobe picked out and washed and folded and carefully placed in drawers when you’re still only six months along?

*snicker* Ah, I remember those days… barely!

Ahem, anyway, back when I was still all dewey-eyed with the idea of being pregnant with Tristan, I invested hours searching the Internet and local record stores for a copy of one of my all-time favourite soundtrack albums, She’s Having a Baby. Way before I had kids, I loved that album, and practically wore out my cassette copy in the early 1990s – and not entirely because I’ve always had a wicked crush on Kevin Bacon.

Alas, despite a stellar effort, I couldn’t find a replacement copy when I was pregnant with Tristan. Well, there was one copy on eBay for about $60 including currency conversion and delivery and duty, but that was a bit much even for me. But the other day, I was downloading some music from iTunes and out of the blue wondered if I could get some of my favourite songs from the album on iTunes. Turns out I couldn’t (maybe you’ll have more luck on the American version, but iTunes.ca is still occassionally disappointing in its limited selection.) I did, however, find out that the album was re-released in 2003, and I used one of my MotherTalk Amazon.com gift certificates to order one. It arrived on the weekend, and I love it all over again.

But it got me thinking – aside from the ubiquitous country and western songs, there aren’t really a whole lot of pregnancy songs out there, are there? My favourite of all time, which I listened to about a million times when I was pregnant with Tristan, is Danny’s Song (the Kenny Loggins version, thanks), and of course there is Creed’s Arms Wide Open, which came out the year I had my first miscarriage and made me cry gallons of tears over the hormonal years, and Nancy White’s hilarious folk song, It’s Chic to be Pregnant at Christmas.

Danny’s Song by Kenny Loggins
People smile and tell me I’m the lucky one, and we’ve just begun,
Think I’m gonna have a son.
He will be like she and me, as free as a dove, conceived in love,
Sun is gonna shine above.

(This song also has the line “Pisces, virgo rising is a pretty good sign, strong and kind, and a little boy is mine” which I can barely type, let alone sing along, without choking up. Tristan is my little Pisces.)

Apron Strings by Everything But the Girl
And I’ll be perfect in my own way
When you cry I will be there
I’ll sing to you and comb your hair
All your troubles I will share

This Woman’s Work by Kate Bush
Pray God you can cope.
I stand outside this woman’s work,
This woman’s world.
Ooh, it’s hard on the man,
Now his part is over.
Now starts the craft of the father.

Arms Wide Open by Creed
Well I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change
I closed my eyes, begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream down my face

She’s Having a Baby by Dave Wakeling
Mixed drinks and mixed emotions
Head in the clouds, put your feet on the ground
All change,
She’s having a baby
You’re growing up now,
You’re settling down, down, down
Will it be a boy or a girl?
And what will it think of the world?

It’s So Chic to be Pregnant at Christmas by Nancy White
It’s so biblical to be pregnant at Christmas
No matter what stories you believe.
And only suffer from gravid senilis
And heartburn and nausea and charley-horses and overwhelming fatigue and frequent micturation and varicose veins and swollen ankles and shortness of breath and that .. tired achy feeling in the groin.

That was about all I could come up with. Can you think of any more?

The Integrated Prenatal Screening test results are in: chance of Down Syndrome is less than 1 in 42,000. Chance of neural tube defect is less than 1 in 11,000.

Plus, baby’s heartbeat is a strong and vibrant 150 bpm today.

This is me dancing around my cubicle. Happy happy joy joy!!

Just been for my 16 week OB appointment. Let me tell you, it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than the last time I had a 16 week appointment, and did not live up in any way, shape or form to the “oh no, not again” anxiety dreams that haunted me all last night.

The whole thing lasted – I kid you not – maybe seven minutes. She checked my blood pressure (110 / 60) and asked how I was doing, and pulled out her doppler. Just because my life is not complete without some moments of heart-stopping drama, we didn’t hear the heartbeat on the first side she tried – and my heart shrunk down to the size of a pea. And then, when she pressed her doppler to the left side of my abdomen, there it was: whoosha whoosha whoosha, that beautiful baby music. And my heart grew to the size of an elephant.

And that was it, the appointment in its entirety. The IPS results aren’t in yet, so I’ll have to check back early next week. But I’ll happily celebrate good news when I can. 16 weeks and all is well!

See, bloggy peeps? I take your advice! I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the midwife, just so I could keep my options open for a little while longer.

First, I have to tell you that I heard the baby’s heartbeat, and all seems fine. What, you haven’t been obsessing over it, thinking of it every two hours half hour six minutes like I’ve been? Heck, it took me until I was on the bus on the way to the appointment to figure out that I wasn’t having heart palpitations and trouble breathing because of any larger fear of the midwife herself, but over knowing she would have a doppler and I was afraid to face the possible silence like last time.

The bad news is, I really liked the midwife and the whole philosophy of midwifery care. I mean, that’s bad news because if I had hated her on sight, it would have been a lot easier to simply go back to my OB and carry on.

There are a handful of concerns that I can’t quite shake, mostly having to do with scenarios when something goes wrong. To her credit, even though my OB has no bedside manner whatsoever, when she couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat with the doppler at my 16 wk appointment last year, all she had to do was walk me over to the ultrasound clinic on the other side of her office, and she did the scan herself to try to find the baby. I know it would never be that easy with the midwife, even though I understand that they do have full referral access for all that stuff.

I think the one thing that most surprised me and most concerned me is that even with a hospital birth, the midwives don’t use the fetal monitoring tools like the heart rate monitor. With Simon, I can still clearly remember after many hours of stalling labour when I finally began to have serious contractions there was one terrifying moment when the baby’s heart decelerated significantly enough (140s to low 60s) for the nurse to demand of Beloved that he push the call button for assistance. There was no real emergency, and in hindsight it was probably just the stress of passing a baby the size of a Toyota through an opening the size of an orange, but the idea of not hearing that reassuring whoosh-whoosh-whoosh throughout the labour seriously freaks me out.

Here are the other niggling concerns I have:

With Simon, I was 10 days late when they finally started induction, and even then he took more than 24 hours to come out. I asked the midwife about induction, and she said they consult with an OB when you are 42 weeks. Ugh. Did I mention Simon was 10 lbs? I know, nothing says the next baby will be that large or that late, but still…

I have every intention of delivering at the hospital and staying at the hospital for as long as they’ll let me. With Tristan, I was terrified to go home because I didn’t want to be solely responsible for the mewling little mass of perfection, and with Simon I left after 24 hours (against the doctor’s and nurses’ objections) because it was the first time I had ever been separated from Tristan. When the midwife said that it’s standard practice after midwife deliveries for the mother and baby to go home after three hours, assuming all is well, I told her that I wanted to take full advantage of the hospital stay and she laughed and said it’s funny how mothers with more than one at home tend to say that.

Of course, there’s the fact that midwives no longer have priviledges at the Ottawa Hospital, so I’ll have to deliver at the Montfort, but the more I talk to people in the community about this, the less this concerns me. But still.

There are many things I like about midwifery care:

* the post-natal care. The first couple of weeks with baby at home have been rough on me both times. The midwife comes to visit you at home at least five times in the first two weeks after baby is born, and I find that incredibly reassuring.

* longer appointments with more holistic care.

* will know the people who are with me when I’m actually delivering the baby, and they’ll know me (as opposed to taking a gamble on the nursing staff, and the 1 in 10 chance that my own OB is on call that day.)

* when I told the midwife about how at Simon’s birth the anesthesiologist said I was his most difficult case in more than 500 epidurals (!) she suggested we could make an appointment for a consulation with an anesthesiologist before the birth to discuss options. (Seriously! Why did my OB not do something like this after I told her how much trouble the anesthesiologist had at Tristan’s birth?)

* office is very conveniently close to where I work for appointments, as opposed to the OB who is two long buses away.

* no traumatic memories attached to the midwife’s office.

* when I couldn’t help myself and cried a few tears of relief when I heard the baby’s heartbeat yesterday, she smiled and rubbed my arm and said, “Everything’s fine!” in a very comforting voice. As opposed to my OB, who didn’t touch me or express any overt sympathy through the entire miscarriage experience last year. In fact, it was the ultrasound tech, following up on what the OB started and confirming that the baby had died, who took a moment to physically touch me and tell me how sorry she was. It’s just a more humanized level of care.

So, I don’t know. Through the course of the afternoon yesterday, I changed my mind five times. If it weren’t for the fetal monitoring part, I’d be comfortable making the switch. Then again, it’s not like I’m lacking anything with the OB’s care, and I know she’s world-class in her field.

Sigh.

I do know that through this most difficult month, as 16 weeks come and go, through a complete fluke of timing in the overlap of care I’ve got an appointment every week this month. Yesterday I saw the midwife, and tomorrow I go for my final IPS blood test. Next week, I go for my scheduled 16 wk appointment with the OB, to hopefully discuss the IPS test results. The week after that is my first clinical appointment with the midwife, should I choose to go that route. And the week after that is the ultrasound. I couldn’t have planned that better if I’d tried!

So, what say ye, bloggy peeps? You’re the board of directors at DaniGirl Inc, and we need to make a decision today on the direction of the company. What do you recommend?

During my ultrasound yesterday, baby lifted its arm in a little wave, which I immediately interpreted to mean, “Say hey to all the bloggy peeps for me.”

Everything looks great. Baby has two arms and two legs, and just one head, which is about all you can tell from the 12 week ultrasound but which is more than enough to reassure me at this point. I was 12w3d and baby measured 13w1d, but when a millimeter makes a day of difference, I’m not yet too worried about percolating the Baby That Ate New York.

Heartbeat was a nice, normal 156 bpm, and the nuchal fold isn’t anywhere near thick at 1.5 mm. (A thickened nuchal fold, larger than 3 mm or so, is considered an early risk marker for Down Syndrome.) I had the first of the two blood tests that comprise the Integrated Prenatal Screening test, and the second one will be August 10. It will be reassuring to get those out of the way. Next on the schedule, I have a regular OB appt on August 16, which will be another nice place to be past as that will be the 16 wk appt, and if you’ll recall, that’s where I had bad news last time. Fingers crossed and touching wood, I’ll then have another ultrasound on August 29 to find out whether baby’s plumbing is of the indoor or outdoor variety… but I’m not quite able to look that far ahead. Sounds soon, though, doesn’t it? Just a little over a month away.

I told my OB how unimpressed I was with my interaction with her employee who told me to “keep on truckin'” and she simply made a noncommittal noise in her throat and kept reading the paperwork in my file. When I kept talking about how debilitating I found the fatigue, she said given my iron is fine they can’t do much about the fatigue, but she did circle back to my mention of depression (I told her at the time I wasn’t sure if I was battling anaemia or depression, but that it was more debilitating than anything I had dealt with previously) and she said that they do have treatment available for depression. She also offered me medication for nausea when I mentioned the stomach upset that had been discouraging me from the prenatals, and medication for heartburn. While I appreciated her offer to treat the symptoms that may have been bothering me, none of them bother me even close to badly enough to medicate and in the end I was more irritated than anything. What I wanted was reassurance, and what she was offering came from her prescription pad.

I got a call yesterday that I have yet to return from the midwife to tell me they have a space for me. I’m frozen with indecision by which path to follow, the OB or the midwife. Despite my dissatisfaction as expressed in the previous paragraph, I’m not convinced that I’m unhappy enough to deal with the logistics of switching to the midwife. I think I’ll return the call and be honest with the midwife and lay my concerns on the table, and schedule myself a tour of the Montfort hospital. Just to leave my options open for a little bit longer, ya know?

(Edited to add: Spoke to a hospital administrator about arranging a tour of the Montfort. There are no actual tours permitted in this post-SARS era, but there is a power-point orientation presentation. Can’t even register for the orientation session until I confirm that I plan to give birth there… but I can’t decide I want to give birth there until I have actually seen it. Sigh.)

Samuel Johnson said “A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” That’s always been one of my favourite quotes, and the more I think about it the more I realize that you could say the same thing about pregnancy after miscarriage, and maybe especially after a mid-term miscarriage.

It’s taken a while, but I think I’m finally allowing the hope to win out, or at least to garner a foothold. I’m 12 weeks today, and popular opinion seems to be that the risk of miscarriage falls to less than 5% once the first trimester is complete. It’s a bit of a cold comfort for someone who has defied the odds not once but twice with miscarriages at 13.5 and 16 weeks, but I’ll take whatever comfort I can.

I haven’t been posting much about the pregnancy, partly because I would have been doing a lot of whining. I haven’t been feeling great, which some might say is a good sign but I take more as a sign that I’m getting too old for this shit. But mostly, I’ve been taking the famous and favoured “la la la, I don’t hear you” approach to this pregnancy – that is, I’m ignoring it until I’m forced to do otherwise. I mean, I’m taking good care of myself and everything, but I spent the first ten weeks or so numbed by vacillating ambivalence, exhaustion, and abject terror. It was simply easier and less stressful to not think about it.

What I really appreciate is how the people around me have taken their cues from me. I haven’t really wanted to talk about the pregnancy, let alone the possibility that it could very well end in the birth of an actual baby, very much at all. Every time I spoke about it, I cringed internally, maybe feeling like I was tempting fate or maybe just not yet ready to believe with my whole heart. (And you think I’ve been hedging – I’m a rampant optimist compared to Beloved, who has been patient and indulgent to my complete lack of energy and ongoing miserableness without actually letting himself buy into the pregnancy… yet.)

It’s getting easier – and, frankly, a bit of a relief – to be able give myself over to my natual optimism again, even if it’s incrementally. At 12 weeks I am starting to feel less simply wretched and more pregnant. I can feel the bulge of my uterus when I lean against the counter or lie on my stomach, and I can see it even through my clothes. Not long now and other people will be able to see it, too, and that makes me happy. I always liked the public part of being pregnant, how it confers a special status on you and sets you apart from the crowd. (It’s shameless how Leo I am sometimes.)

Baby’s about the size of my thumb now, according to Baby Centre (which I read through splayed fingers, still caught between detachment and delight) and finally looks human instead of like something you’d dip in cocktail sauce or sauté in garlic butter. Baby has fingers and toes and eyelids, and waves its little arms and legs doing intrauterine gymnastics just like its big brothers.

And it will remain firmly an “it” in my head with no gender speculation whatsoever on my part until six weeks from now when I can find out definitively whether it has indoor or outdoor plumbing. Even though I’m slowly capitulating to optimism, that’s too big of a leap of faith for me at this point. I simply can’t think about it. Once it has a gender and appears safe and healthy after the Integrated Prenatal Screening test results are in and the 18 week ultrasound shows everything is fine – that’s when I’ll let out this breath I’ve been holding since the end of May. Kind of like not letting your kids name the stray kitten they’ve found when you have no intention of letting them keep it, I think. Once it has a gender, once other people can see it, and once I can feel it moving – that’s when it will become real to me. Until then, I’ll keep joy at arm’s length where I can feel its warmth but where I can drop it in a hurry if I have to.

Ugh, this is coming out so much more morbidly depressing than I intended. Must be the dreariness of the pouring rain outside that’s dampening what was supposed to be a fairly upbeat and enthusiastic post. My point is that even though I’ve been mired in doubt and anxiety, I feel better now. Really, I do! I have another ultrasound on Monday, which will definitely help me feel more secure. And with every week that passes (how lovely to be pregnant in the summertime, when time flits past like a warm breeze on the beach) lets me turn my face more fully toward the sun, and to bask in the glow of what I find increasingly difficult to deny.

You can’t keep an infernal optimist down for long.

The week we came back from Bar Harbor, I had been feeling awful. I was so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other and I just wanted to sleep all day. At the nadir, I found myself standing in the kitchen, half way through throwing together tacos for dinner, wondering if I had the energy to finish chopping the onion on the cutting board in front of me. It wasn’t pretty.

So I called the OB, and was told to come in for blood work. (My next scheduled appointment was still two weeks away.) So I went in and had seven vials of blood drawn – I must again comment on the irony of having them leech out seven vials of blood when I suspect I am anaemic – and went home again. I decided to start taking the prenatal vitamins more regularly, as I had been avoiding them because my stomach was already in some constant state of upset anyway and the only time I’ve ever actually been sick through any pregnancy was directly following a prenatal vitamin chased down with a glass of orange juice one unpleasant morning.

When three days went by and I hadn’t heard from the OB’s office, I called for the results. The receptionist left me on hold, where I hope but cannot confirm that she checked not only the results but with the OB as well, and came back on the line and said, “Everything’s fine. Just keep on truckin’.”

I paused, then sputtered. “But… but I feel like crap on a cracker. I can barely function I’m so cataclysmically tired.”

“Well, she said, you ARE pregnant.” I hung up, thinking but not saying ‘Yes, well, I’m not exactly new at this, and I’ve never felt this bad before.’ In truth, by that time I was feeling considerably better, and by the end of last week I was feeling pretty darn close to myself again.

But the whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth, so I hung up with the OB and promptly googled until I found information about midwives in Ottawa.

The good news is, I’m on a waiting list and am to call them back later this week. They expect they can take me. The bad news is, I don’t think I’m going to go with a midwife after all.

There seem to be two midwivery collectives in Ottawa, neither one of which has priviledges at the Civic hospital where both boys were born. I don’t have a lot of attachment to my OB as far as the actual childbirth is concerned, but I do feel strong ties to the Civic. Plus, Tristan was even conceived there before the IVF clinic moved off site.

Both midwivery collectives only seem to have priviledges at the Montfort Hospital, against which I have to admit I have a bit of a bias. I’ve heard of English-speaking patients having trouble there, even though it’s here in Ottawa, finding a fluently bilingual nurse. And while I’ve never really paid attention, there has been a lot of talk about closing it over the years and I don’t know why. I know the Civic, I trust the Civic, and I can’t say the same for the Montfort.

There’s a midwivery collective out in Carleton Place that has priviledges at the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which is convenient to where I live and several of my friends have given birth there. I’d happily consider that option – except then I’d have to find my way to Carleton Place, a good 20 minute drive from the house and probably an hour from work – for each appointment. Oh, and we only have one car. Not going to happen.

So, while I’m quite drawn to the concept of midwivery and I was ready to make the switch all things being equal, they aren’t equal at all. My OB’s office is a bloody pain to get to from work (as you’ll remember from my epic tale of the good-hearted cabbie and the very, very bad day) but fairly convenient to home. I’m ambivalent about her personally, with some significant pros and cons in each column. But mostly, I’m loyal to the hospital where the boys were born because I think that’s the most critical factor for me.

And besides, you know I’m not so good with change.

When I posted yesterday about eating meat straight out of the bag in the Farm Boy parking lot, Loukia commented that pregnant women are not supposed to eat cold cuts. Hey, I never said they were cold cuts – it was raw steak I was snarfing in the hot June sun.

Okay, so that’s not true. It was cold cuts – Westphalian ham to be specific, a thinly-sliced, extra-salty ham that my German grandmother used to serve with sliced Gouda on rye bread for Sunday lunch, one of my favourite childhood traditions. No sandwich has ever tasted as good as the ones she cut into tiny triangles for me, served in her tiny, crowded kitchen that always smelled of my grandfather’s cigars and some indefinable sweet perfume. Salty comfort food – there’s nothing better.

I have to say, I’ve become rather cavalier about the pregnancy food rules. For my first two pregnancies, the one I lost in 2000 and Tristan, I was obsessive about the “rules”. I would not eat cold cuts or hot dogs, salmon or soft cheese. I dropped coffee completely – or, more accurately, it dropped me and I switched to expensive foamed hot chocolate instead. I gave up caesar salads because of the raw eggs, and Greek salad because of the feta. I can’t remember exactly what I was eating, but it must have been a complete departure from my usual fare.

In the last few pregnancies, I’ve become much less obsessive in my eating habits. A younger me would have been scandalized by the “risks” I take. This is partly motivated by experience, and partly by sheer laziness. Sandwiches are one of the foods I tolerate best right now, so I’ll eat cold cuts a couple of times a week. I’d be face-down on the floor without some injection of caffeine during the day, so I’ll drink a cup of tea in the morning, or a rare cup of coffee. I’ll actively seek a caffinated soda some afternoons, just to make it though the day.

It’s become an issue of moderation for me. The incidence of listeriosis is incredibly small; this study found an annual occurence of 7.4 cases per million people. I’ve discovered that almost all cheese in Canada is pasteurized, and have been hard pressed to actually find any that is unpasteurized at the local grocery store. Having squeezed out 9 lbs and 10 lbs babies, I’m not too worried about interuterine growth retardation (she said while touching wood.)

There are a few things I’ve remained diligent about. I have never been a fan of aspartame, and suspect it contributes to my headaches. Plus, I just can’t stand the taste of it. So I’ll go to great lenghts to avoid it while pregnant – which is too bad, because I’ve just recently discovered that Coke Zero actually does taste a lot like my beloved Coca Cola without the 12 teaspoons of sugar in it. But, for the remainder of the pregnancy at least, I’ll stick with the original – and the extra calories.

Same with alcohol. It’s not a huge stretch for me to avoid it, but I do find myself with a wicked craving lately for Corona with lime. It’s a summer thing, I guess. But I’ll hold off.

Is it wrong to be salivating at the thought of a beer at 8:15 on a Tuesday morning?

How do you spot the pregnant chick in the Farm Boy parking lot?

She’s the one rooting through the bags recently deposited into the back of the station wagon, eating the meat directly out of the package.

I’ve just been for my first ultrasound, and everything looks great. One wee baby snuggled in just the right spot, measuring one day ahead of schedule at 7w4d and with a steady, strong heartbeat of 158 bpm.

One tiny piece of the iceberg of anxiety has melted away. I can’t quite give myself over to giddy joy, but I find myself stoically satisfied. My next appointment, the ultrasound and blood work of the first step of the integrated prenatal screening test, seems a lifetime away at five weeks from today.

My regular OB was accompanied by a resident with a soft voice and careful manner. He welcomed me and asked me if I had any questions about the pregnancy. I told him that this is my fifth pregnancy and that I’m an obsessive researcher, and I could probably answer a few questions for him instead. He laughed in an uncertainly polite way, and excused himself as quickly as he could. I should have been less blunt, but I was feeling disconcerted instead of comforted by being back in the OB’s all-too-familiar exam rooms again.

I did have a few questions for my OB, things I just wasn’t comfortable asking the kindly resident with the liquid brown eyes. I wanted to know about testing for abnormalities, and I wanted to know if there was a pathology report from the D&C last November. I was standing next to her when she pulled out my file, thick with the reports and results from two full-term pregnancies, two miscarriages and the lost twin. I found myself reading over her shoulder, knowing it was a dangerous game and yet unable to stop.

As she told me that the pathology report did not include information about Trisomy 18 or other genetic abnormalities, I held my breath and felt separated from my roaming eyes, wondering almost idly what I would do if I stumbled across information about the lost baby’s gender and wondering if that’s what I was really seeking. Perhaps for the best, she closed the file before I could make sense of any of the clinical report and assured me that there was nothing in the file to cause any concern about my current pregnancy.

Seven and a half weeks and all is well. It’s all I need to know.