....

I'm sorry that I have not much to write about.

I feel like I may slowly be moving to a better place in my life, but that is also so tenuous as I also feel that the bean's life may end at any moment without warning. Let's say I'm in a more neutral rather than utterly painful place now.

It's been a long time since I had any vaguely suicidal thoughts, DH and I are getting on well and there are some inklings of general harmony in life at last. My mother seems to be doing as well as she can. She's independent and intelligent and is coping so far. She's going to visit my brother in the US and then she'll be here for a long weekend and then I will be in the UK for Christmas.

I have my 15 week ultrasound next Wednesday at the end of which I need to decide on amnio or no amnio. At the moment I'm thinking no amnio unless there's an indication to have one from the ultrasound. It's at this ultrasound that we could see A.'s heart defects (not visible two weeks before).

I've had to up my thyroxine intake slightly as I spent the whole week I was in the UK utterly lethargic and cold, with a swollen neck. A short week after self-changing my dose I have a lot more energy.

OK, this must be the most boring post in the history of blogging. See sentence 1.

Hospital I

I had my first scare. I say "I" as I am in the UK at my mother's and DH isn't here. After having lower abdominal pain all day, but nothing else as in no bleeding, we called a family friend and neighbour who is a general practitioner. (In the UK GPs follow normal pregnancies).

He felt the tenderness in my lower abdomen and told us that it was safer to go to hospital to get checked out. My mother, my brother and I went to the nearest hospital. Our friend had already called ahead to brief the OBGYN registrar on call.

At the hospital they had my records because.... I was born there! The OBGYN saw me very quickly and was very understanding. Thanks to our friend he had my history and took my panic seriously. I didn't have a scan but I did hear the heartbeat with teary relief. Diagnosis: ligament pain or digestive pain (I think more the latter).

Phew.

*******************

Yesterday morning we scattered my father's ashes in the North Sea. They should have gone into the Holy Ganges in Northern India but we figured that all ashes end up in the sea. We couldn't do it until now as my brother and I haven't been here at the same time since Dad died. It was at sea off the coastline where Dad spent about 45 years of his life. I grew up in an industrial area and the coastline here isn't exactly pretty beaches and white thatched cottages with a sea view. But I thought it was very fitting since Dad was a chemical engineer and spent his professional life working here.

It's the third time I've scattered ashes in recent times. It didn't upset me too much as I really believed that Dad wasn't in the little box anymore. I couldn't help contrasting the large, heavy amount of ashes compared to the tiny sachets of ashes that V. and A. had.

*******************

Had everything gone right with A., he would have probably been born this week. I wouldn't have been allowed to go to full term and his due date was 30th October. This isn't upsetting me too much as I've integrated the fact that he isn't here anymore, the same way as I am, ever so slowly, integrating the fact that V isn't here. I'm thinking Christmas spent with my nephew may turn out to be less hard than I imagined. Of course, this could be true only as long as the new bean sticks around in rude health.

*******************

Many congratulations to Sarah and to Laura!

Nuchal fold

I wept on the table as the measurements were being taken and refused to look at the image on the ultrasound screen. I was stripped of any pretence that it couldn't possibly be bad news again - why couldn't it be? My psyche was open and exposed to the universe.

The nuchal fold measurement was 1mm. (A's was 4mm). We need to wait for results of the combined blood test and u/s measurements but on the u/s it seemed good.

I will have another u/s at the end of October and will have to decide on amnio / no amnio.

Update: the statistical result is 1 in 4015. Thank you for all your good wishes.

Pg update

I had a check up today. The bean is no longer a bean but a baby with arms, legs, hands and feet. In three weeks s/he has gone from 18mm to 50mm. Still has a beating heart. Was waving around.

I am at 11 weeks - just too early to do the 1st trimester tests. They will be next Thursday. If they turn out to give a good statistical result, we will have to decide whether we want to have an amniocentesis anyway. The false negative of this 1st trimester test is 10% which sounds HUGE to me.

Statistically 10% of babies with T21 don't have their T21 detected by this test.
Statistically I have a 1% chance of having another baby with T21.
Statistically there is a 0.5% chance of an amniocentesis at 15 weeks causing a miscarriage.

We all know that statistics are a load of crap when you turn out to be the "1" in "1 in 100" or "1 in 200" or even "1 in 4000".

Updated: my appointment is fixed for Wednesday morning.