Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Cystic Fibrosis

I got the news yesterday that I am part of the only 3% of the population that is a symptomless carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene. This was a real shock to me given that it is nothing I had ever heard of or thought about.

Now my husband has to be tested (which he's doing today) and, if he is a carrier as well, our baby will have a 25% chance of having CF. This has totally freaked me out. I knew nothing about CF until I spent way too much time yesterday Googling it. It isn't good. I'm praying hard that his test comes back negative (of course, we have to wait several days for results). AHHH!

The fact that I am part of a 3% minority in that area and that I am RH-, which makes up only 15% of the population, and infertile, which is another minority population, I'm starting to have some serious worries about myself! I'd sure like to be common for once!

Monday, October 19, 2009

An uncooperative (but healthy) baby

A bit of good and a bit of disappointing news. Most importantly, the baby is healthy. We had our 18 week ultrasound today and the doctor spent over 30 minutes measuring all the different parts of the little one and nothing raised any concern - super cool to see all 4 chambers of the baby's heart! She also did a transvaginal u/s to check the cervix. While that all looked good, she did say that right now I have placenta previa, but that it usually sorts itself out. If it doesn't, a c-section is likely.

On the disappointing side, we have the most relaxed, chilling baby ever - arms folded behind its head and legs crossed - which means no good look at the nether regions. I was so looking forward to knowing whether it was pink or blue in our future. The upside is that, due to the baby's position, there were a few measurements she couldn't get, which means we get to go back in a few weeks for another check. She originally said 4 weeks but I pushed it forward because I want to do it before I register (important stuff, you know?!?)...my sisters-in-law are coming up to visit on 11/7 to help me so I was able to get the appointment for 11/6! Baby better cooperate or it's grounded!

As promised, here is a picture at 17 weeks.



And here's baby's profile from today (I didn't think the u/s pics came out that well...)

Thursday, October 15, 2009

I'm So MIA!

Well, I've fallen into the trap that so many others seem to find...blog a lot during the IVF cycle; disappear into the abyss after. Sorry! So I'll try to give an update of the last 5 weeks...

I just passed 17 weeks - hooray! At 14 weeks, I switched OBs. I had so many bad experiences with my other OB, which culminated in the 12 week ultrascreen appointment that left me crying in the waiting room. There were two other pretty big issues, at least to me...

1) I was going to have to deliver in Washington, D.C. at a hospital pretty far from my house. As a Virginian through and through, it was important to me to have the baby born in Virginia. My new OB delivers at a hospital pretty close to our house.

2) The old practice had 20+ doctors. Even if I saw a different OB every time, I may never meet the lucky one that gets to bring our baby into the world. The new practice has 4 doctors, which seems much more manageable. So we had our 14 week appointment at the new OB and are very, very happy that we switched. I finally feel like a patient, not a number. At the appointment we got to hear the baby's heart thumping away - I just love that sound. The HB had gone from 161 at our last appointment to 155 so the nurse guesses boy :)

The other exciting news to report is that our big ultrasound is this coming Monday (10/19). We will actually go to the hospital for it - to the perinatal specialist - because of doing IVF, we are considered high-risk. Hopefully they have great equipment and we do get to record it, which is great to share with our moms who, unfortunately, won't be there. We are praying, most importantly, that everything is a-OK, and secondarily, that the baby shows his/her parts so we can determine whether it's sugar and spice or snips and snails...

I've been feeling terrific the whole pregnancy and actually feel guilty talking about it. No sickness at all. No tiredness. I'm still running each morning and doing pilates twice a week. I plan on scaling back the running in the near future just to be safe, not because I feel bad. Hubby took a pic of my belly at 17 weeks so I'll have to post that shortly. Not really anything to see - looks more like a beer gut than a pregnant belly. Thank goodness for the belly band, which I now wear every day.

And this is very, very belated, but wanted to post a few pics from Vegas (which seems like ages ago). Not as exciting as the baby pics I hope to post next week, but hopefully will do until then. First one is hubby and me and the second one is of all my girls! We had such a great time! Right now, we are trying to plan a weekend to Wintergreen Resort in Virginia because we got a gift certificate last year for Christmas that we need to use soon. Trying to get in as much "fun, single couple" time as we can.