The End of the Beginning (Almost)

We're closing in on the end of the first trimester, and all signs are still good. I'm starting to look forward to going public. I want to wait until I can just say, "Be as happy as you want, tell everyone you want to" instead of having to start off with warnings of caution. I'm starting to feel less cautious myself, and more like this is actually going to happen and parts of it will actually be enjoyable (hasn't been too much of that so far).

I'm definitely less sick. Right now I'll have about two days where I feel pretty good, and then about every third day is a bad day. That's a huge change from feeling bad every day--just getting those breaks in between makes the bad days so much more tolerable.

My weirdest symptom is a super-Spidey sense of smell, though. Everything has an odor, a lot of things have a strong odor, and a lot of things smell . . . weird. Like my shampoo. Or Geoff's deodorant ("Sorry, I'm not going to stop wearing deodorant"). As you might imagine, that one's bad when coupled with nausea. No wonder bloodhounds look so sad--it's easier to be happy when you're ignorant of what the world really smells like.

I had my third OB appointment this week. We got the OB on recommendation from one of Geoff's colleagues, and so far I really like her and the practice. She seems to understand my mindset coming off a previous loss with no successful births yet, and thus far we've agreed on the best course of action anytime there's been a choice to be made, and so hopefully it will continue to be that way. I will be delivering at Geoff's hospital--Evanston Hospital, which is two and half miles up the street from us.

Because of a fluke in scheduling, my first appointment was early, at 5 weeks 5 days. I knew that was too early for them to tell anything, so it was just taking my history, routine exam, blood draws, urine, etc.

I came back for just an ultrasound a week later at 6w5d. That time Geoff came too, since that one was a big deal. In last year's pregnancy the first ultrasound was where I found out it was a no-go, so we definitely both wanted to be at this appointment. At first she tried an external ultrasound wand and couldn't find anything. She commented that I have a tipped uterus, which evidently puts it in poor position to see anything small in there. After a tense couple of minutes we got set up for internal ultrasound and this appeared:
It was actually much more impressive watching it moving on screen--twitching on its own separate from my movements. The still pictures just always look like a bunch of smudges to me. The dotted line shows where the embryo is, and the "CRL" stands for "crown-rump length." I know it's supposed to be a moving moment and all, but at that point I could only think how fragile it looked and how far we still had to go together. I was still thrilled that things were going so well. Just hitting that one milestone dropped the chances for miscarriage down to 3 or 4%.

My third OB appointment was this past Wednesday at 9w5d, and that one was just routine--blood pressure, urine, weight. And I got to hear the heartbeat with the Doppler machine. At first it was faint, but after she chased it around into a better position you could hear a definite rapid little heartbeat in there. A heartbeat way down in my gut--pretty wild. It's nice to hit these milestones, and we're really getting close to where the risk is dropping to a level where it's not worth constantly worrying about.

We're getting close to where I'll just be flat-out pregnant with no reservations.

Currently: 10w1d pregnant.