Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The longest 40 weeks...

Well, it's been over a month since we last updated the blog; I guess the best news is that we really haven't had anything especially noteworthy to share with the world! We've had another visit with another one of the OB staff at Maine General, and we go for our anatomy scan down in Portland on Monday. Our baby's heartbeat has been great whenever we've listened to it, and so it seems that everything is just humming along towards next March. The SCH (clot) had unfortunately not disappeared as first thought, our next scan showed it still to be there, and still at ~3cm. The good news was that it was completely inactive, which was a first, and there's so far been no more bleeding, a huge success really.

Except that it's not that easy, of course. R still has a lot of Round Ligament Pain (RLP) that has been her constant companion. Between that and the various other mysterious pains and pressures (hip pain, pressure 'down low', etc.), we haven't really been able to relax. I know my intention for this second round of IVF was to enjoy each day of success, but it turns out that's harder than you might think. I still get a little knot in my stomach every time R heads to the bathroom, wondering if this will be the time that she comes out and says she's bleeding again. When she hurts, I brace myself to hear her say something is really wrong.

We're both trying to stay positive and plan for success - we've been buying some baby gear as we find it on sale or see something that we think is particularly cute. We've told more of our friends that we're expecting, and R let everyone at work know too. In some ways that's helped me, I think, in that you get a lot of positive energy from folks who hear the news and don't have the emotional baggage that we do from the previous cycle and the early part of this one. In other ways, it's hard to let more people know because we can't help but think that it's one more person that we'll need to talk to if this pregnancy goes bad.

One thing's for sure - this is going to be the longest 40 weeks of my life. We're counting days and weeks, and we're not even halfway there yet. I always remember what one of R's friends said when we told her about the twin pregnancy - "The next 40 weeks will fly by!" As it turns out, reality couldn't be further from that statement. Still, we're happy to know that our little baby is still in there, kicking away at R's bladder and making her uncomfortable. We'll just wait and hope.