Here's today's pic of the blobby. I have no idea what the ufo over his/her head is... I don't remember that being on the screen so it may just be a glitch when it printed. The white arrow is pointing to the white spot that is the heart and the rest are labeled. Off at about 4-5 o'clock, you can see the shadow from a portion of the bleed. Like she said, it's substantial and is at least 3 times the size of the shadow and wraps around the gestational sac, along the top, to about 11 o'clock. I take comfort in the fact that she said it was already healing and I haven't had any spotting or bleeding from it yet so maybe I'll get lucky with this. I read a little saying today that said something along the lines of "If you're going to pray, why worry? If you're going to worry, why pray?"

Short Update...

Phew! Baby is doing well, measuring right on to ovulation date now (I thought that first measurement two weeks ago was off but that's ok) heart rate was steady at 158 bpm. She doesn't know if they'll change my edd again or just leave it. I really don't care, I just want a healthy baby and in the end 5 days is nothing. She spent a LOT of time looking at my ovaries and cyst, even checking blood flow and things of that nature, external, internal, lots of measurements so that made me kind of nervous. She also discovered that I have a "substantial but healing" bleed. I really hope that totally resolves itself and I don't see any brown spotting because spotting/bleeding of any kind has never ended up good for me. So, in a nutshell, baby is great... I'm kind of a mess but baby is fine! Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers! I'll be back later with the pics!

Bad Blogger...

I've been a really bad blogger lately! Thanksgiving made this last week fly by, which I'm totally fine with. That coupled with all the Christmas rush and I'm behind. We do have our tree up but we're not going crazy with the other decorations this year since we won't have anyone else here to enjoy it anyway which is actually a nice change. We have a few gifts that we're waiting on to arrive, a few to send out and then we're done! I'll be glad to have it done. The meaning of Christmas certainly doesn't escape me but it just doesn't have the same feeling that it did as a child. I mean, I never expected it to stay that way but it still kind of bums me out. Blah.

Things still seem to be progressing just fine. I'm a little nervous because my docs office called this morning and said that they needed to schedule my appointments. I figured they just missed something since I already have one scheduled for Friday and I called the Maternal Fetal Medicine office directly when I scheduled my NT scan. But instead, she told me that they need to get me in for a viability ultrasound... "like now". Of course at first my thought was "Woohoo! Yay for being followed closely and another peek at this little one." So I scheduled the appointment for tomorrow morning at 8:30. Drinking that 32 oz of water at 7:30 in the morning should be fun to say the least. However, as soon as I got off the phone the negative thoughts started... "this couldn't have waited until I go in on Friday?" "What's wrong now?" The reality is, I can't imagine that there would have been much that they could have seen on that first ultrasound anyway and as I recall, that was technically a dating scan - I was just lucky to see a heartbeat - so now they can do the viability scan and it's coded differently for insurance purposes. That still doesn't ease my nerves though. Luckily, I won't have to wait a long time to know what's going on either way. But to say the least, my mind has been pre-occupied with having a scan sprung on me so quickly. I assumed that I'd go to my appointment on Friday and we'd attempt the heart beat with the doppler and then if we couldn't get it, I'd get a quick scan.

So, that's the newest update. Still feeling very "first trimester" and my nerves are back on edge a little bit more than they had been. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be nothing but optimistic again.

An Update about Nothing!

I can't believe it's almost been a week since I posted anything! No worries. As far as I know, all is continuing to go without incident. I'm certainly feeling what is typical for my pregnancies - tired, bloated, totally scatterbrained... but luckily I have, so far, *knock on wood* avoided any yuckiness that would be worth mentioning. I felt much more sick with Eli than with any of my other pregnancies. I have a theory about that. I wonder if the Clomid preps my body for the hormone rush so I don't really experience morning sickness to the extent that I did with my one unmedicated conception. Eh, just a thought, who knows, but I'm not complaining!

I've been preparing for Thanksgiving, which I'm hosting again this year and is fine by me. I can cook and the kids sleep so much better in their own beds. I've been working on holiday card orders that are rolling in and even got it together and have ours finished and on the way. The Christmas shopping is almost done which also feels great. It's been nice having something to keep my mind busy.

It's also been strange to continue to schedule appointments for the future. This week I made my appointment for my NT scan for December 31st. It's hard to keep the thoughts of "why are you even bothering to make the appointment?" out of my head. I just keep reminding myself that this is a different pregnancy. It is. I am trying to enjoy every day and every moment. We have let our guard down and discussed names, room arrangements, bedding thoughts and all of that fun stuff. I am a habitual planner so not doing some of those things would probably make me break out in a cold sweat. It's good. I should be doing those things.

I hope each and every one of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. It's hard to be thankful for the path that my life has taken this past year but I am thankful for where I am now and thankful for those who I have reconnected with and for those who have prayed for me and lifted me up through this time. Without going through the things that I have, I wouldn't have those things to be thankful for.

Beautiful...

Another beautiful sight today from the shores of Western Australia.

Relief...

Today was my first ultrasound of this pregnancy. I didn't go into it with my hopes too high because frankly, at 5 weeks 6 days, not seeing anything much isn't necessarily a sign of a doomed pregnancy. It could be that ovulation was a little later than assumed or implantation that took a little longer than average. So, I went to the office with my bladder totally water-logged and waited. Before long, the ultrasound tech took me back to the same room where I had learned, for sure, that Eli's heart had stopped. My nerves were on the high end and when I am nervous I get shaky and giggly. So we chit-chat, chit-chat and we laugh about the fact that I "played by the rules" and drank my 32 oz. of water as instructed even though I knew we wouldn't see much on the trans abdominal ultrasound. Sure enough, not much there to see, got to go potty and came back for a closer, more intimate look. We were both quickly able to see the gestational sac and the bright white yolk sac. That is exactly what I was hoping to see at this gestation, confirmation that the pregnancy was where it was supposed to be. However, with a couple more clicks, it wasn't long before we were able to see the tiny baby AND a tiny heart beating away at 101 beats per minute! Talk about a sigh of relief. She told me how perfect baby looked, took a few more measurements and told me that my due date is going to change. Baby was measuring almost a week ahead at 6 weeks 4 days, ironically, the exact same gestational age that Eli measured on our first ultrasound with him. Of course my ovaries are looking "angry" from being hyper stimulated from the Clomid and she said that it was a good thing that I didn't need to take it another cycle because I probably would have just had very stimulated ovaries without decent follicles. She said "it looks like it was a one shot deal". Wow. At any rate, I got some screen time with my ovaries today too... not the pretty ones that we saw a couple months ago. But, they've done their job and now they can recover. When I was pregnant with Karleigh I had one mega-cyst on my left ovary and now it's my right one acting up this time. I'm totally ok with it though as I know it will calm down as the pregnancy progresses. Instead of one large cyst, I have a bunch of oh, probably grape sized and smaller cysts. I haven't had any pain from them, just bloating which I can live with.


So, here's our first baby picture! To make it a little easier to find, the baby is the grey blob inside the black spot. Not the greatest picture of course but it's confirmation that it's real!

Today was a full day because after my appointment at 10 am, I picked up Karleigh's x-ray from her dentist, came home, ate some lunch and got the kids and Jim gathered up to head off to Karleigh's dentist appointment. Jim and I have been discussing it and we decided that a second opinion on the tooth issue was the best idea. So, I called the children's dentist that is right across the street from our dentist and they were happy to get her in today. Oh my goodness, it's the coolest office, all decorated with a fish theme including an impressive saltwater fish tank specifically stocked with fish that look just like the characters from Finding Nemo. No kidding, in fact they even had a bit of a dramatic moment when they realised that Peach had fallen on top of Bubbles and a quick rescue had to take place! Short story long... we have found a new dentist for the kids. They are great with the kids, the hygienists are more than happy to take the kids to the tank, and the toy box and hang out with them while the dentist talks over the treatment with the parents. And what we discussed is that yes, that tooth does need to come out so it doesn't interfere with the eruption of the permanent tooth. She has an appointment for December 10th to have it "wiggled" out. They'll do it in the office with some yummy nitrous-oxide that she'll get to choose the flavor/scent of, give her some Novocaine and wiggle it out. Apparently she's even going to get a special box for the tooth. This dentist was great in that she didn't make us feel like freaks just because she had an extra tooth bud that sort of formed and it sounds like Karleigh's case is straight forward. She told us about a little boy earlier in the week who will be heading to the oral surgeon since he has two of these teeth but they are erupting in opposite directions. So, we're lucky that we get to do this with a simple 15 minute or so procedure.

All in all a totally wonderful day with a lot to look forward to. Jim treated us all to a trip to Starbucks when we were done, 2 strawberry frappuccinos, one hot chocolate and one decaf peppermint white chocolate mocha and we were all happy campers!

Still Progessing...

I worked up the nerve today to call my OB's office and harass them about the hcg draw that I had them add to my labs on Friday. Of course I also had to find out which office my next two appointments are at because the gal scheduling them was all over the place. Evidenced by the fact that she scheduled me for an ultrasound on Wednesday AND Thursday. Pretty sure my insurance wouldn't be happy about that! Anyway, I got it all worked out and left the message requesting my numbers. On Friday, they were up to 4375, so still progressing right along pace with what they should be doing.

It's actually been nice to have a few goals along the way these last couple of weeks. I've pretty much had something to look towards every two days for the last week so, I suppose after my appointment on Wednesday, I'm going to go through withdrawals or something!

On the other hand, Karleigh has an appointment with a different children's dentist on Wednesday afternoon. We are going to see about having that "mutant tooth" extracted. I know it doesn't sound nice but really, kids are not supposed to have two sets of baby teeth and this one is pretty much growing straight out and is rubbing on her lip. So, we'll see what they suggest in a couple of days.

Aside from baby and kid news, the weather has been excellent the last few days. I got a huge amount of yard work done this weekend and even talked Jim into mowing the lawn so that was nice. It was great to get out and absorb some natural vitamin D, take in some fresh air and accomplish something!

As far as I'm concerned right now, boring is good!