Looking for 1st trimester buddies

[kappy]

Hi all!
We had a wonderful day yesterday. The scan was perfect. The baby doubled in size since last week and the heartbeat was a strong 140 bpm! I can't tell you how relieved we were. I couldn't get over how much clearer the scan was this time. You could see the yolk sac, and the placenta. Our first one was much fuzzier. So ... needless to say we finally allowed ourselves to go out and celebrate with a fabulous dinner that seemed to never end. Then we rolled home and called a bunch of family and friends

Wendy - Sophie is a great name! We were just talking about the fact that we need to at least find a nickname for our baby. Something other than "the baby" or "he/she". It just seems too impersonal.

Edi - great news on the m/s subsiding a bit. Crossing my fingers that it stays away and gives you a break. At least for the weekend! Enjoy your dinner out. As for working out I'm doing my own thing at the minute. I didn't want to join a prenatal class until my scan came back okay. Now that I'm in the clear I'll look into it. My gym offers a variety of prenatal classes so I'm anxious to check it out. Are you doing prenatal yoga or a regular class? For now I'm back to jogging 3 miles. I've lowed my pace so that I don't overheat too much, but it still feels great. Looking forward to getting back to some yoga though. Wendy ... if you've never tried yoga it's just the best! Very relaxing and it makes you feel so energized.

We were officially discharged from our Fertility Spec. yesterday, so I'm calling my OB today for an appointment with them. Very excited!
Wishing you both a glorious weekend!
Kelly

[Wendy]

Hiya, fantastic news with the scan. I want another one, I can't wait till 12wks. The clinic havn't exactly discharged me - it was the local obstetrician that called me and told me to come in for a scan, he'd been sent copies of my results from the lab for some reason. Afterwards I told the clinic and they were very surprised and said it was them that normally did the first scan, so i'm secretely hoping they'll call me in for one of there own so we can see our gorgeous little 'peanut'.
Last time we found out Benajmins sex as soon as we could, and we'll do the same this time. I know everyones different but we felt that its just as much a surprise when they tell you at 4/5mths and afterwards you really get to bond with them even before they arrive as you call them by their name. A lot of people were quite shocked saying how could we possibly know he'd look like a Benjamin ! We also found it helpful as my brother then lived in australia, so it was lovely being able to talk about a real person. I guess everyones different and most people choose not to find out, but we found it helped a lot.
I'm hoping for another c-section, I don't want another repeat of last time and I had no problems whatsoever recovering afterwards, but saying that we are in France now and things are different, they were horrified that I'd been allowed to go on so long. They also do a scan on your pelvis to make sure the babies head can fit through. My sister in law is australian and had a horrendous labour followed by a c section. With her second, they said every labours different and she would have to try naturally again, then she moved here to france, they scanned her pelvis and found it was such a weird shape there was no way on earth she could ever have a natural delivery, so was given a pleasant planned c section.
I really shouldn't go on about such things should I !! The vast majority of woman have wonderul easy deliveries, its just they never talk about them, only the ones with horror stories mouth off about it all !!

Being in France is my excuse for the lack of excercise too. We live in a really rural location, so although there are towns within travelling distance, they've never heard of yoga - why do excercise - farmers don't d to excercise they work too hard. We arn't farmers unfortunately and enjoy the food and wine too much. I did join the village keep fit class, which despite being for woman over 55 who've been told they have to excercise so they don't drop dead, was actually quite good fun, but thats stopped now due to lack of demand. Benjamin go for a walk most days, but hes only got little legs and EVERYTHINGS absolutely fasinating to him. But since you two have shamed me, I'm going to go for a walk each day with him in the pram, so we get somewhere and I work my heart up a bit.

I have gone on for rather a bit havn't I. What do you both do for a living ?other than the wonderful process of creating a human being, which is the most important and tiring job in the whole world) Me, I'm a mummy, which is a wonderful thing to be able to say after such a long time trying to be, but also we have a holiday cottage rental business which keeps us busy all summer. Chris is in the wine trade (which we use for the rental business - theming the holidays around wine) and in the winter hes developing (building) another cottage complex .

ttfn loads of love and look after those bumps to be Wendy xxxx

[kappy]

Wow Wendy ... what a great place to live and raise children! If I lived there I doubt I would worry about yoga either. Nice that the village has a fitness class though. Working with holiday rentals is so much fun. I used to when I lived in the mountains (small ski town). The best part was all the fabulous people I'd get to meet. Have you been in the business long? What a blast it would be to make your own wine! How did your husband get into it?

Did you say that your next scan was sometime the first week of February? Is that your 12 weeker? I scheduled my appointment with my OB. It's set for February 3rd, and I'll be 9 weeks at the time. I'm hoping he wants a 12 week scan, but somehow I doubt that will be the case. Now that I'm away from the clinic I fear the scans will come less frequently.

As for finding out the sex, I'm not sure what we're going to do. Originally I didn't want to. I was hoping to save it as a surprise, but DH really wants to find out early on. Now as the pregnancy is progressing I'm starting to see that it's going to be really tough to say "no" when they ask if we want to find out the sex. I have a feeling I'll change my mind quickly =) It will be too strange to think that the Dr. knows the sex of my baby, and I don't!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. We're experiencing spring like weather here in Denver! Very odd for January, but I'm loving it! Running outside beats the gym any day.
Love,
Kelly

[Edi]

Mornin' girls,
How's everyone today? Sorry I haven't been on in a few days but got tied up with this thing called work. Corporate America has been keeping me well occupied over the past week.
I'm nine weeks today and I feel great. The nausea and m/s is mainly gone and it feels just brilliant to be free of its shackles.
I have my final (10 week) scan with the clinic next week then they hand me over to the hospital. I just can't wait to have this 1st trimester over so we can start to enjoy this pregnancy.

Wendy - lucky you living in wonderful France. Sounds like you have a fantastic quality of life.
We've been debating finding out the sex as well. I'm more in favour of it, dh wants to wait. I like the idea of being able to build some bond with "he" or "she" prior to the birth. We've started using "Itsy Bitsy" - I know, a bit dodgy

Kelly - Sounds like you are in great shape, running around beautiful Colorado. It is so much nicer exercising outdoors isn't it? I used to horseback ride up until treatment started in December. I really miss it and it's fantastic at this time of the year when the air is really crisp. Although some of the younger girls continue to ride up until six months I just couldn't bear to take the risk of a fall. I've been through so much that I just felt it wasn't worth the worry. So now I have to resort to tramping across the muddy fields on 2 leg rather than 4

Roll on next week,

Hugs
Edi

[Toni]

Hi guys

sorry to butt in, but Edi (see, im still keeping an eye on you!! ) i just wanted to say there is nothing wrong with Itsy Bitsy, expecially when you think that my DH nicknamed our Twins Widdle and Biddle ....................... try living with that.

good luck to you all........

Toni xx

[Wendy]

Hiya, glad to hear everyones happy and alls going well. My next scans not till 12wks and I'm only 7wks today so I've gotta wait till 4th March - seems like a lifetime. Anyway, I'm pleased some morning sickness has kicked in, well its all day nausea really - not close to being sick really, but far worse than with Benjamin, so at least it feels like things are happening. Are you guys still taking progesterone pessaries (or did you ever ?) I'm still on them and not due to come off for another 15 days - a lot longer than last time.
As promised we started to go for a walk the other day but got as far as the end of the road when my face fell off with the cold arctic wind blowing in my face, it was -2c but felt more like -12c with the wind chill. I couldn't face it, despite it being a beautiful sunny day. Benjamin was devastated, he doesn't seem to feel the cold. I felt so guilty we played in the slightly more sheltered garden for half an hour. I might wait till spring (!) or at least a warmer day !!
I would of loved to of learnt to ride. I have visions of my hair blowing behind me as I gallop on my black stallion across the moors, but I wouldn't really like the mucking out and grooming business, I wasn't into horses that much - just the romantic ideal.
Sounds like you are both a bit unsure about the naming thing, still theres plenty of time. Chris and I were both absolutely sure we wanted to know - so it made it easy when we were both in agreement. I'm sure whatever you both decide will be right for you.
We are going to have to build an extension to the house to get an extra room - at the moment our third bedroom is our office which we can't do without. Its really exciting thinking about decorating a nursery (its not too early to think about that is it ? I keep thinking I'm getting ahead of myself) Edi, how exciting - a 10wk scan and soon to be handed over to 'the real world' and so close to the 'momentous 2nd trimester' You know you'll have to post in both places then.
gotta go - its coronation street (do you have that in Denver ?? Probably not !) loads of love Wendy xxx

[Edi]

Mornin' girls,

When will we be through this first trimester? I've had an awful few days of being sick. I'm feeling really fed up with things today. I really would have prefered to have stayed in bed this morning, work is almost impossible with my stomach churning and my head pounding.
Anyway hope you are all feeling a lot better than me.

I have a question - have either of you thought about whether you are going to do the tests - nuchal, CVS, amnio etc? As I'm 11 weeks this week there's a bit of pressure on to make up my mind. I'm leaning towards not having any of the tests. As I'm 37 I've been told that I've already got a risk factor of 1 in 243 before the test and before factoring in IVF. Obviously if everything comes back clear then it's a fantastic relief but if it doesn't I don't want to be faced with the options. After all of what we've been through to get here i don't think that a termination is something that we could even contemplate. So I'm thinking if that is not an option for us then why bother going through the trauma of tests???
Any thoughts?

Toni - Great to hear from you. glad you're still keeping a watchful eye on things. I know that you've been having a pretty rough time yourself over the past few weeks. Hope things start improving now that you're hitting that 2nd trimester.

Have a good week,

Hugs Edi

[Toni]

Hi Edi

just a quick thought. Im definitely having the nuchal translucency for downs done, but im in a different boat to you. I agree that a termination would be a pretty much 'non idea', with us cos of the situation. because of what u have gone throught o get to this stage you have already gone on to love your baby/ies as real little people, not just inside you but almost as if they are already in your arms. you can't help it really can you - the joy and happiness just kinda takes over. the reason i say im in a different boat to you is cos of my age, im only 25 so im lucky that the age factor has worked well for me through this whole thing. and there is no history of it in our families either.

however, i did decide that even if worst was worst and it showed a problem, I would rather know. If no termination went ahead, then at least i could prepare myself for what life was about to bring as far as care and education etc went, and then on the day the babies were born could just enjoy the experience than being told that there was aproblem with my babies and miss out on enjoying the fiurst few days of their life in the way id like (not that its gonna be easy with twins anyway!!! ) does that make sense??

Take care and let me know your thoughts

Love always,

Toni xx

[Edi]

Hi Toni,

Thanks for the reply. It's good to get another perspective on things and to at least get the opportunity to debate the issue. The midwife wasn't very helpful on this as I guess she didn't want to be seen to be influencing me in any way.

I started off thinking that I would want to know in advance as I could then prepare myself for the future and any changes that we would have to make to our lives as a result of having a disabled child. But the more i thought about it the more I felt that I would be taking the happy event of the pregnancy and the birth of a new life and turning that into a "problem". And if we know in advance does that mean we should also tell other people not that we were expecting a child, but that we were expecting a disabled child. I just couldn't imagine doing that.

Also on the odds : 243 to 1, I know it's not 1500 to 1 but nonetheless it's still high. And the way I look at it, I had a 1 in 4 chance of getting pregnant through IVF and that took 7 attempts. So 1 in 243 feels prettty remote to me!

In the end I guess whichever way any of us chooses to go on this one - knowing or not knowing - we are all praying for healthy baby (or babies) on birth.
How are your little ones, have they settled down a bit? You have a scan this week, don't you?

Love Edi

[kappy]

Hi girls,
It's been a while for me. Not sure why though. DH and I are busy looking for a house. We currently live in a highrise in downtown Denver. Our place is nice, but not big enough. We've decided to bite the bullet and look for a house. It's exciting, but a bit frustrating. At least we know where we want to be and what we want. Now it's just a matter of time before we find something that fits. We hope to move sometime this spring or summer.

How are you both? Edi - sounds like your m/s is back. Good news is that it should be ending soon. I think you said you have your 10 week scan this week. Good luck if you haven't already gone in. I think the 2nd trimester begins with the 14th week, so you're getting close. Itsy Bitsy is adorable as well as accurate =) We refer to our little wonder as "P Pod". It's a combo of the first letter of our last name (which is very unique since my husband is Ukrainian) and the Pod is for our love for Mac (Apple) products. A little too techie for me, but it works. I like the duel meaning.

Wendy - when is your next appointment? You said your 12 week is the beginning of March, but you must have something before then? It would make me crazy not having an appointment for an entire month. I'm still on my pessaries. My fertility specialist told me that the length you're on them depends from doctor to doctor. Some will stop you at 8 weeks, some 9, 10, etc. I have my first appt. w/my OB on Thursday, so I guess I'll find out how much longer then. I'm exactly 9 weeks today, so I hope he'll end the pessaries soon.

As for all the tests that are coming up ... I'm not really sure which ones we will do. I'm sure my Dr will ask on Thursday, so we need to start thinking about it soon. I'm 35 and will be 36 when I give birth, so we are also in the higher risk category. I'm pretty sure we will do an amnio, just to prepare ourselves should it come back positive for Downs. Since the other tests often come back with false positives we really don't want to put ourselves through that.

We had beautiful weather in January, so DH and I did a good deal of running outside. Unfortunately winter is back, so we're back in the gym now. Crazy weather here lately! Someone asked what we do for a living. I was a Technical Recruiter for 10 years. Met a lot of great people, did a lot of traveling, and made a good deal of money. I decided to change careers a couple years ago. I just got burnt out on what I was doing. It wasn't making me happy anymore, so I went back to school to get a second degree in nursing. I'm currently finishing that up and hope to get a job as an RN someday soon.

I'm feeling pretty good overall. Anxious to see the dr. on Thursday. I'm not sure if he's going to do a scan or not. I assume he will, but then I thought he may wait and do one at 12 weeks. We'll see.

Hope you both are having a great week. Edi ... let us know how your scan goes!

Love,
Kelly

[kappy]

Hi again!
Wow ... that last post was a long one. Sorry about that. Just wanted to mention that DH recently bought me a HugOO pillow. Not sure if you guys have heard of it, but it's wonderful. It's extremely soft, rather small, and molds to your body. It's filled with something called micropolystyrene powder beads, and the fabric is super soft. My breasts are so tender these days , so I've found it's the perfect solution to sleeping without pain. If anyone is interested I know they sell them on-line at The Sharper Image and Brookstone.

Kelly

[Edi]

Mornin girls,

It's friday, m/s is not TOO bad and I'm taking a half day from work to fly to Ireland to see my family and start to tell people our news so I'm feeling good.
We had our last scan with the clinic yesterday. A big teary affair I have to report. The scan itself was great, there is such a big difference between eight weeks and 10 weeks. Yesterday we werre able to see tiny legs and arms and to make out the head distinct from the body - it was incredible. The little wonder now measures 35 mm which means the little marvel tripled in size in 2 weeks!! (Is it any wonder I was feeling sick ) Based on that size I was 10 weeks 4 days yesterday.
The tears came afterwards as we started to say our final goodbyes to these marvelous people who have been so good to us for two years. I hope I didn't frighten any of the couples in the waiting room who witnessed this teary scene and were probably thinking that poor girl must have gotten some really "bad" news

Wendy - How's the m/s? Hopefully you'll only get a mild dose and it won't be long now before we are all hitting that longed-for 2nd trimester and we'll all be bursting with energy again. I've also been given the OK to wind down the progesterone pessaries and tablets hooray. But I have to stay on the daily aspirin which they say there are mixed views about but our consultant felt strongly that it wouldn't do any harm and that it has proven beneficial effects against pre-eclamsia. Anyone else on daily mini aspirin?

Kelly - How are you feeling? P Pod that's so cute. Did you meet with the doc yesterday? Did you have a scan? Hope everything went really well let us know.

Have either of you heard anything about taking it particularly easy between week 11 and 15? My yoga teacher won't even allow me to come to her class for the next month because she says it's a crucial development time. To my mind the whole of the 1st trimester is crucial development time with all the vital organs starting to form so I'm not sure that I'm convinced about her caution. Any thoughts?

Have a great weekend

Edi

[kappy]

Good morning!
Glad to hear that your scan went well Edi! It is sad to leave the clinic. I felt like I was starting over again with a bunch of strangers yesterday. I'm sure by the 9th month I'll feel as close to my OB group as I did with the clinic. It's amazing how much they grow in a matter of weeks! Much more to look at now. I was at 9 weeks yesterday, so I'm not to far behind you. The baby actually moved while on camera =) Pretty exciting!

I did get some disturbing news though. Apparently my fibroid also grew quite a bit in the past two weeks. It actually doubled in size from 6cm to 11cm. Fortunately they said it should cause any harm to the baby, and they are hoping it starts shrinking when the placenta kicks in. Anyone else have fibroid issues?

I'm not on mini asprin. I was on it when I did my IVF cycle, but not with the IUI. They never mentioned starting once I was pregnant, so I never did. Dr did decide to have me continue with the pessaries. Said it couldn't hurt to just keep me on them until the end of the 1st trimester. But he also said that they really don't do much. He said they probably put me on them just because I was bleeding (early on) and they wanted to feel better by "doing something". Strange about the warning for weeks 11-15. That's the first I've heard of it. Like you ... I've read hundreds of times about the entire first trimester being crucial.

Hope you both have a nice speedy Friday and wonderful weekend. We have the super bowl (end of football season) Sunday ... so I think I'm going to skip the male maddness and go out with the girls!

Kelly

[Wendy]

Sorry I've not been on for ages. Last week I suffered the worst morning sickness I've ever had and I actually threw up - twice except it was evening sickness for me. I generally feel under par from about 3pm onwards and have to force down dinner to make me feel better, then I'm ok, but last sunday I just got real bad real quick and was in bed by 5pm with the washing up bowl next to me, then at 8pm I gave up everything I had, I thought I'd feel better then but it hit me again at 10pm, so I had an awful night and after wishing for some actual sickeness I was now praying this would not be the next few weeks for me. The next day was nearly as bad, but I forced small amounts of toast and ginger biscuits down me every few hours and that seemed to keep it at bay a bit, since then I've got back to being like before, just a bit under par and I'm glad I don't get it every day like some woman.
Anyway, enough of the gory details !!
You were talking about tests for downs etc. With Benjamin I had the nuchal done as its standard here for everyone and that was fine, then I was given the triple blood test which to our absolute horror came out at
1 in 30 , I was 35 at the time. We were in complete shock - we had never considered our precious baby might be not perfect. The Dr advised an amnio, which we took - we had no idea what we would do after the result, but had to know. It was the worst 5wks of our lives - 2wk wait for the amnio then 3wks for the result, plus the extra worry of thinking you might miscarry a completely healthy baby. The result came and all was well - what a relief. This time, I'm terrified from the beginning. I'm 2 yrs older and I just know the result will come back as a high risk - how can it not. I've asked about CVS but the Dr doesn't seem to think its an issue until after 38 (but I'm 38 in July) The thing is I honestly do not know what I would do, I don't think I could rule out termination until I knew more about the whole thing and also how disabled the baby might be etc etc. But I also know there is NO WAY I could have a termination as late as 20wks which is roughly when the results of an amnio would arrive - having experienced the size of your bump and the movement and kicking at that stage - it would be unthinkable. I definately think if you are not even considering a termination it is still worth knowing as you will need to prepare yourself mentally and knowledgably and its useful for the delivery so they can be prepared to incase there are complications.
Anything under 1 in 200 is considered high risk, but the test is designed to cover as many as it can, so its bound to have a huge % of false positives and the only way of knowing is cvs or amnio. CVS is more common now and the fact they do it later (after 12wks usually) its miscarriage rate has dropped to the same as amnio - 1% and its lower than that if you choose a hospital that is used to doing them. I'm waiting for the nuchal and will make a decision based on that - if that comes out bad then I'll opt for cvs but if it comes out ok then i'll wait and may be tempted not to take the blood test at all as I know the result will be bad and I don't want all the worry again - which goes completely against all the advice I just gave about knowing being better !!! ANYWAY - we are all going to have completely healthy babies so what am I stressing about and I should stop wibbling and just get on with enjoying being pregnant.
Wrt scans - I don't have one until 4th march which is horrendous, I desperately want to see everythings ok. (But my jeans are tight so I guess thats a good sign (or maybe its all the ginger biscuits I've been eating !)
Glad everythings going great with everyone, will try to log on more often. Look after your bumps.
love wendy xxx

[kappy]

Good morning.
It's quiet on here lately. DH and I had a rough weekend. I started bleeding Friday night. Not heavy, but bright red. But no sooner did it start, then it stopped. I wasn't too worried, just shocked to see blood. Unfortunately it came back Saturday with a vengence. The heaviest bleeding I've ever experienced. I was scared to death and called the doctor on call. He told me what I knew he would ... that there really isn't much I can do. "If I feel my life (not the baby's) is in danger go to the ER". That wasn't too comforting. He did say he could meet me at the office the next morning to check on the baby. I jumped at it. In the meantime I continued bleeding all night until I passed a huge clot. I was devasted. Thought for sure I miscarried. The bleeding immediately slowed down, but didn't stop. DH and I were up all night. It was the worst night of my life ... just waiting for sunrise so we could go see the doctor. We went in that morning and to our surprise (more like shock) the baby was there, heart beating away, moving around! I couldn't beleive it! I did have some clotting on one side of the sac, but the doctor seemed sure that all would be well. That I would pass the clot or my body would absorb it at some point. Good news is that as of today no more blood or brown spotting! I am taking it easy this week (no exercise ... pelvic rest). DH and I are just amazed at how strong a healthy pregnancy is, even at 10 weeks! We're both in awe that the baby was able to survive that night. I feel very lucky.

I hope you're both doing well. Wendy - sorry to hear that your m/s was so bad last week. Hope it's slowly getting better. March will be here before you know it! Edi - Hope you had a lovely trip back to Ireland and loads of fun sharing your good news. The first trimester hurdle is almost over! Whew!

Hugs,
Kelly