Friday, February 14, 2014

Almost 13 weeks!

An update for you, as promised: We are almost 13 weeks along, yay! Baby is about the size of an egg, and eyelids have formed and arms and legs are moving all around!

Our ultrasound on Wednesday went great: nuchal scan was negative as well as the Materni21 blood test. Doc said baby was absolutely perfect! We will get another peek at the little in about 6 weeks when we have the big anatomy scan. Since all is well, I am carrying on as usual.

The ultrasound was fun as I had a fantastic tech who kept commenting on how cute the baby was and how much bean was moving around. I love having a tech that really enjoys her job...not like those tight-lipped ones that I seem to get lately. She took several pictures that I was able to send to C. Here are my favorites:



I love how baby looks like he/she's smiling in the first pic; really, he/she was gulping the amniotic fluid. Baby also kept waving his/her little hand around. I'm not feeling any movement yet, but I hope to be able to in the coming weeks. That's almost my favorite part of pregnancy!


My pants are definitely getting snug and it's likely I could need maternity clothes soon...sooner than my previous pregnancy even. Baby is measuring about 5 days ahead, so maybe that's it...yeah, that's what I'm going with. ;)

I'm off to spend a quiet Valentine's evening with my two youngest boys; the hubby is traveling for work and my eldest are doing their own thing with friends. The boys and I are grabbing a movie, a heart shaped pizza, and dessert'ing with a strawberry shortcake. Happy Valentine's Day, friends!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Forgive me again?

My apologies again for not keeping you all updated as promised. I always have the best of intentions, then life gets in the way. Although I do have a super good excuse: terrible, awful first trimester nausea and incurable fatigue! Shortly after my last post, my rhinitis symptoms calmed down, but those icky first tri feelings kicked themselves into high gear, and I spent most of pregnancy weeks 6 - 9 on the couch either sleeping or trying not to be sick. It was miserable! I was sleeping for 10 hours at night and was also napping during the day; I could NOT get enough sleep. And when I wasn't sleeping, I was just laying around. I know fatigue is normal, but I don't remember being this tired of my past pregnancies. Maybe it's my age (I'm no spring chicken ;)), or maybe it's one of those "every pregnancy is different" things. Whatever the reason, it totally kicked my butt.

I have started to feel better in the last 2 weeks. The nausea has moved out and an insane appetite has taken its place. Seriously, I'm ravenous -- making up for lost time, perhaps? I have a little less than a week on the fertility hormones, so I'm hoping my mood and appetite will balance out after that. If they don't, I'm going to gain 100 pregnancy pounds and be too moody for anyone to put up with!

But enough about me. I know y'all come here to check on the  little one. And there is only one healthy baby in there. While I'm a little sad that both embryos didn't stick, I'm happy that we have a good strong heartbeat!


The little guy/gal was moving those little limbs all over the place. That's always so cool to see! 

We had a nuchal scan done at the 10 week appointment last week. The nuchal scan is a soft marker for Down Syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities. It's performed by measuring the tissue at the back of baby's neck. The measurement can determine risk factors for Down Syndrome. Our test did come back positive. I had some blood drawn as well that can measure fetal DNA; my OB and a high risk OB will use that in conjunction with a follow-up scan next week to decide baby's risk factors. My OB shared with me that it was a little early for the nuchal scan (they usually do them between 11 and 13 weeks), so this could be a false positive. We will know more after a re-test on November 12. IM and I are not very concerned yet as this sweet baby's egg donor was a healthy 23yr old and the embryo had PGD testing. In the meantime, we wait. 

And I will try really, really hard to update after that appointment.

If you're still keeping up and following along, bless you for your patience. See you all next week, hopefully. ;)