Ten Week Update

We met with the high risk ob/gyn on Friday and all was fine.

Really.

First I drank four glasses of water and had an official abdominal ultrasound in a different part of the hospital. Everything measured on time (10 weeks, three days) and we saw the heartbeat and the fetus was even waving at us with one of its arms up by its head. Waving is something I'm more likely to do than the Mister is, so I immediately surmised that we're having a girl who will be happy and wacky just like her mom, not numbers-oriented and grumpy like her father. (Mr. L. harrumped at that.)

It was great to see everything look so normal, but honestly, I had so much water in me (it helps the person doing the ultrasound see things more clearly when the bladder is full-to-bursting) that I was just counting the minutes til I could run to the bathroom and let it all out. The ultrasound woman printed out four pictures for us and gave us these cards you can put the ultrasound in that say "It's my first baby picture!" (Actually, this is the fifth pic we have of this kid so far, including the five-day blastocyst shot, but why quibble?) When we finally tell our parents and the rest of the world about this kid, we'll hand out the cards with the latest (waving!) ultrasound shot in it.

Then we waited and waited and waited to meet with High Risk Ob/Gyn doc, who we've met with once or twice before and who is, quite simply, a Hottie. She's also our age, and highly recommended (and pretty self-confident herself) so we like her plenty so far. But waiting forever to see her wasn't my favorite part of the day.

While waiting, we happened to run into a couple we know who are also patients of High Risk Ob. The woman is scheduled to have her second kid in a few weeks, and I ran into her just as I was coming out of the bathroom (a few hours after the ultrasound, leaving my obligatory urine sample). I was so flustered running into her that I managed to both swear her to secrecy and to tell her I was ten weeks along. She congratulated me, and assured me that her husband was oblivious and wouldn't figure out that we were there for a prenatal visit (we share an endocrinologist and that doc is also in the same office. While I could have said we were just there for an Endo regular checkup, I didn't think that fast).

As a result, when I finally got in to see High Risk Ob, my blood pressure was slightly elevated (which I honestly attribute to running into the friend outside the bathroom). The Mister and I peppered her with our Type A, Nervous Nellie, First Time Parents To Be list of questions. She was kind, answered most of them, and told us we could hold off on answering questions about post-delivery and breastfeeding questions until we were later along in the pregnancy.

There's a kind of ultrasound and blood test I can have within two weeks or so that will give us a 97 percent chance of whether the fetus has signs of having Down's Syndrome and (I think) something called Trisomy 18, which isn't invasive like an amniocentesis is, and therefore has no risk of miscarriage. Typically I wouldn't think twice about having the amnio, but as someone pointed out, since it was such an project to even get pregnant, any test that might have a chance of causing miscarriage is one I'd want to think twice about, especially if this ultrasound/blood test can tell us if we have a high or low risk of having a kid with Down's. So we'll move forward on this one test, and figure out what to do next based on what the results show. High Risk Ob also said that there was no reason to have a CVS test, which she'd recommend if I'd be 38 or older when I gave birth because that test also has some risk to it that are lower when you're under 38. (I know I'm not writing with a lot of detail here, but all my notes on this are in the other room and I'm feeling lazy right now).

I'm also slated to have one laser surgery on Friday, and although one blogger emailed me to say she'd had laser and had to have a shot of anesthesia in her eyeball for the laser, I've since talked to others who have had laser and not one of them had a shot in the eye. I'm going to call my eye doc tomorrow just to double check this, but I think I'd rather have laser treatment without any anesthesia at all if it entails a shot in the eyeball. I may be a tough broad, but mere eyedrops cause me to squirm and I honestly don't think I could handle getting a shot in the eyeball. It just sounds so medieval torture and not 21st century medicine. Any laser veterans want to weigh in here? (Update: I called the eye clinic today and they confirmed that for a laser procedure, there is NO shot to the eyeball. Thank God. I mean, seriously, WTF?)

It's also up in the air if my eye doc and High Risk Ob will allow me to have a vaginal birth. Apparently my eyes may dictate how I give birth. I don't think I feel strongly either way about it, although I'd like to hear what the final doc say will be. I've been reading a lot about midwives and a history of childbirth due to a story I'm working on at my job, but I honestly don't think I have the luxury of deciding what kind of birth I can have.

I seem to have legit medical concerns that I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to give birth without having a lot of doctors and potential intervention nearby. Again, I haven't given birth (yet), but when I hear about women who are angry about having had c-sections, I just think, "Aren't you just glad you have a kid? Who cares how the kid got here?" I read blogs by women who are trying to conceive and seem hesitant about moving on to IUIs or IVFs, and I think "Why?" After months of trying and not getting anywhere, I was glad to finally move on to assisted reproductive treatments, and when the IUIs weren't working, I was glad and somewhat excited about moving on to IVF because I knew we were doing everything we could to try to get pregnant. I've probably written this before, but living with diabetes for so long has sort of attuned me into thinking that my body rarely works the way it's supposed to work "naturally," so that having a c-section or conceiving with IVF, honestly, makes me glad that those options exist for someone in my shoes.

I'm so used to having things go awry that I still can't believe it when things go right. In fact, if I ever get a diagnosis for something minor (like years ago, I got some kind of yeast infection for the first time) and was surprised when the doctor told me it wasn't permanent and could be easily treated and would go away.

I'm off work today for Yom Kippur (but not fasting; the pregnancy and diabetes always trump not eating), but have to go make a salad for a break-the-fast celebration we're going to in a few hours. Off I go to chop and slice.