Wednesday 28 November 2012

On Getting Knocked Up


Check out my Trans VAGINA!  This is how we announced our pregnancy on Facebook (the foetus scans look just like any other foetus scan).  My friend Helen pointed out, it looks kinda like a monster.  Yay!

Firstly I apologise to this blog and its small readership for not posting recently.  I can tell you right now this is directly due to being knocked up and its bearing my ability to work my brain good.  There has been a LOT going on, and much I’d love to have written about had my brain been willing. 

Now that apology is out of the way, I have to say this has been one helluva year.  And as is always the way, the timing for this fantastic occurrence was, interesting. 

As with my last pregnancy my boobs were a fairly good indicator that I was pregnant.  As you will have read in my previous blog, I was ovulating around the time I started having pain and ended up in hospital requiring surgery.  We noticed my boobs had blown up about three days after I got home from hospital.  We confirmed the pregnancy eight days after my last surgery.  So I was pregnant when I had surgery.  Freaky.

So many thoughts travelled through my brain when I found out.  My first thought was ‘Holy crap! That basal thermometer reading stuff actually works!’  The second thought was ‘Yay!  Now I don’t have to stress about trying to get knocked up any more!’ And then I thought ‘Crap!  I can’t drink in Melbourne’ then ‘This could be ectopic, and we won't be able to go to Melbourne.’  And then I worried about the impact of the pregnancy on my body so close to having had surgery.  And having to tell people and them being gooey and me being grossed out by it but it not being polite to make gagging noises when people think they're being nice.  And a bunch of other stuff.

Because of my previous history, the doctor organised for me to have an early scan to catch any possible ectopic early.  Unfortunately, the best time to see things on the scan was going to be when we were already in Melbourne, so we had to organise to have this just before we left. 

The other thing I haven’t been able to post about (cos brain) is that Mum had major surgery the day before we left for Melbourne (this year has been one of just horrible timing).  It was a long awaited surgery to improve a long standing, debilitating problem, but the risks were high, and recovery difficult, so it was scary.  Our scan was booked in the day before Mum’s surgery.  If things went badly at our scan, not only would it mean facing another ectopic, and more surgery, but it would mean not being able to support my mum, or have her support me.  Both Mum and I were very worried about this.  It would also mean no Melbourne trip, which we were really looking forward to after a crazy year.

The day of the scan came.  Because all of my recent scans have been in emergency, I forgot about the horribleness that is having a full bladder and someone press on your stomach.  Here is some advice: if you ever need a full bladder scan, you honestly don’t need to drink the whole litre of water.  I only drank 700mls for this scan, and my bladder was too full (which is bad because you have to let some out).  I drank two glasses for the most recent scan, and that was sweet.  Sitting waiting for a scan is uncomfortable with a full bladder, but kind of good as it's hard to stress about the scan when all you can think about is not pissing yourself.

There were a number of odd things about the scan (the technician seated Murray in an odd place so he could hardly see what was happening) but I didn’t notice at the time.  As soon as I could see my uterus on the screen, I knew things were ok.  Because there was an obvious something in it.  In fact, because of how the yolk sac sits by the embryo, Murray thought there were two somethings in it, so I had to tell him several times it was not twins.  This scan showed I was less pregnant than we thought by 5 days, which was not technically possible (severe pain requiring eventual hospitalisation = no nookie) and made me question the skills of the technician.  Regardless, the pregnancy was not ectopic, which was the most important thing.

The cool thing we learnt in that first scan was that the egg had come from my left side which has no fallopian tube (they can see the burst follicle on the ovary in the scan).  This means that my single fallopian tube is doing double duty, and my chances of getting pregnant are the same each month.  This is awesome.  This means that unless this remaining tube stuffs up, we probably won’t need IVF.  There is nothing at all wrong with IVF, but it is nice to know we won’t need it all the same.

So yay we’re knocked up!  And although I’m not enjoying this whole pregnancy thing, I am glad that we get the chance to make a person.  And mum is recovering from her surgery, and we did get to Melbourne.  I didn't get to do Poverty Week like I planned as I had surgery a week and a half before it started, and I found out I was pregnant three days beforehand, and everything is a mess.  Still feeling guilty.  I will try and blog about these things more soon.  If my brain will let me.