Follow-up

Chris and I talked about the possible options to clear my womb, and I did some reading on this messageboard.

I don't want to wait until I lose it naturally, and if I have an induced miscarriage there's still a 5% chance of needing a D&C afterwards, which isn't a good idea considering that we're flying to Australia in a week and a half.

I called the hospital today and booked in to have the D&C on Monday morning. I feel horrible about it. It's like I'm giving them permission to take my baby away.

It's all gone wrong

We had the scan today. I was so scared, but I was trying to convince myself that I was worrying about nothing.
The sonographer looked really thoroughly, but couldn't find a baby. It looks like the baby stopped developing at about six weeks, before it even had a heartbeat. Everything else kept growing, which is why I was still having symptoms. I think that's what makes it worse - if only I could have miscarried at the point when it stopped, rather than giving me hope for four more weeks.

Tomorrow I need to phone the hospital to arrange for my D&C.

I can't stop crying.

First Midwife Appointment

Well, last Thursday we went to see the midwife. She's very nice and competent and answered all our questions. She also took about half of my blood and got me to wee in a pot again.
She'd already got us our scan appointment made, although it's at St John's rather than the hospital we planned to use - they could give us an appointment two weeks earlier. We want to be reassured before we fly halfway round the world! Chris asked her a lot of things, to the point where he was worried that he was asking too much, but he was just checking the things that I would have done had I remembered...

I'm so scared. Every time that I hear of someone losing a baby I become sure that I'll lose mine too. I have to wait until the 23rd to know that it's all ok.

Appointments and updates

Ok, I know I said I'd post after my doctor's appointment, but I forgot - my brain is like mince recently!
The doctor was very nice, and told me off for doing too many home pregnancy tests. He asked if I'd done one, I told him that I'd done four, he said "Why do you women always do that?".
When I said that Chris has told me not to do any more the doctor suggested buying champagne with the money instead!

He then said that, even though I'd done all those home tests, I still needed to supply a pot of wee for their official test....

I handed that in, and phoned the surgery on Monday. They confirmed that I am pregnant, (I know, what a surprise!) so I went in a few days later to fill out the booking form for the midwives. It was a tiny little form, and then they gave me a huge thick envelope of things to read - yay!


The thing is, even though I have no reason to think that anything's gone wrong, I can't stop worrying. My problem is that I think too much about possibilities. I hear about one woman who had her baby die in the womb, but who didn't find out until her 12 week scan, so of course I go Googling, then discover that actually it's quite common. Now I don't want to think about the embryo as a baby, because then I'll get attached to it and I think something will go wrong.

Every time I tell somebody else about the pregnancy I think I might be jinxing it, that each new person who knows is someone else to get upset when this doesn't work. I almost wish we hadn't told anyone until I'd had a scan.

One of my colleagues only found out she was pregnant at 16 weeks. She missed a lot of the excitement, but also a hell of a lot of worrying. I can't decide whether or not I'm jealous.

Freaking out

Ths morning I had some brown spotting which really worried me, even though it was just a tiny bit. There was a little bit more during the day, but it seems to have stopped now.
I did some online research, and apparently it's very common in early pregnancy, and doesn't usually mean there's any problem, but that doesn't stop me freaking out and obsessively checking my knickers.

I finally phoned my doctors' surgery and explained that I was pregnant and didn't know who I should be making an appointment to see. The receptionist said that I should probably start by seeing a doctor, and managed to find me an appointment for Thursday afternoon.

I'm really nervous. I'm scared that the doctor will say I'm not really pregnant (Yes, I know - despite the sickness, huge boobs and four positive tests...) or that the things I did before knowing I had conceived might have hurt the baby. The week before my period was due I had alcohol, pate, blue cheese, antihistamine tablets and a tiny bit of hash. (Not all at the same time!)

I'll post tomorrow once I've been for my appointment.

Symptoms

It looks like things are progressing well, if unpleasant symptoms are anything to go by.
As I said in my previous post, I had huge boobs from the week before my period was due, and the day I was expecting my period (Monday) I started feeling sick on the bus. By Wednesday I was feeling queasy all evening, which was when Chris asked when I
was due. I said that I was three days overdue so we decided to do the test the next morning.

Even having done two tests I've still been paranoid about all this being wishful thinking.
I've been consistently queasy since then, plus feeling faint, having less energy, and being really tired, which is probably to do with not being able to bloody sleep! I'm all twitchy and restless,and can't drop off until 2 or 3 a.m.
One of the worst things is not being able to tell people - I can't explain why I've been a bit crap at work, I had to lie to my samba friends at the weekend about why I wasn't drinking alcohol.

I'm going to call my doctor tomorrow to find out what I need to do about making a first appointment, whether it's with the doctor, nurse or midwife.

Oh, and I did a third test this evening. Even with it not being first-thing-in-the-morning wee, the line appeared instantly, so I think my hormone levels must be increasing. :)

!!!!!!!!

Followed the next morning by this.




So, it looks like I conceived on our second attempt. I stll can't believe it -somehow, even though we were trying to get me pregnant, now that it's happened I'm really shocked.
I only did the test after Chris suggested it. I'd been feeling really nauseous for a couple of evenings, and my boobs are enormous, so when Chris found out that my period was three days late he thought I should do the traditional peeing-on-a-stick.

He was still asleep, so there I was, sitting on the lid of the toilet and staring at this little piece of plastic. I'd been trying so hard not to get my hopes up and had pretty much convinced myself that there'd be no second line. I went through and woke Chris up, waving a little wee-ey stick in his face and asking him if he could see two lines too. He was a lot less surprised than me, and very happy.

We're not telling anyone yet. I'm really paranoid about something going wrong. I read all the statistics about how many pregnancies succeed and think that there's no way I'm going to be one of the lucky ones.

We'll probably tell people if things are still going well in a couple of months.