Last Ultrasound? Please?

I have been wrong before, but I really do think that we are all done with the ultrasounds.

Joyce acknowledged that the radiology dept at Little Hospital is not really all that great, so she sent me back to Big Hospital to have a final growth estimate/fluid check/cyst update. We went yesterday morning.

The final weight estimate (@ 40 wks, 1 day) is 4,088 grams, just a smidge over 9 pounds. This is fairly consistent with Big Hospital's estimate from 38 weeks — they estimated 7 lbs 12 oz, with a rate of growth of 1/2 pound per week, so this is fairly consistent with that. I don't know whether it is accurate, but it is consistent.


Since I have had approximately a million ultrasounds during this pregnancy, I feel qualified to offer a few suggestions to the techs/doctors who do these scans:

• If you are going to use the entire bottle of gel on me, the very least you could do is hand me an extra towel at the end. I have long since learned that you will not, under any circumstances, actually help me clean myself up, and I suppose that's ok, but the towel tucked into my underwear is already covered in gel, so it isn't really adequate for the full cleanup job.
• It is very uncomfortable for me to lie flat on my back at this point. Please get on with what you are doing in an efficient manner.
• It is also difficult for me to shift positions, especially since the "bed" is a flimsy, narrow gurney with no handrails, not an actual bed. With this in mind, please keep requests that I turn on my left side, then my right side, then my left side, then my back, then my left side, to the absolute minimum necessary for you to get the shots you need.
• Narrate. I know the techs are not allowed to say anything diagnostic, but a simple, "Now, let's have a look at the kidneys" would be much appreciated. It all looks like static to me, and I have been very pleased with the very few techs who have bothered to tell me what they are doing.
• Always give me a picture. I will feel better about being sticky and uncomfortable if you give me a picture of my baby at the end of the procedure. It doesn't have to be a shot of her face! Hands and feet make excellent ultrasound pics — even the heart looks pretty cool. Leaving me with no pics makes me grumpy.

I hope we have seen the last of Snapdragon's ultrasounds. It's time for us to see her in person!

Stupid Doctor's Appointment

I went to my appointment this morning, where the doctor checked my vitals, measured my belly, and shrugged at me. Yes, I have too much fluid, but there's not really anything anyone can do about that.

For the record, my belly is GIANT. When they measure it, the number of centimeters is supposed to correspond to the number of weeks (24 cm = 24 weeks pregnant, etc.). For most of the pregnancy, I was right on target, but around 35 weeks, I started measuring 1 or 2 cm bigger than expected (this was when they noticed the high fluid). Today, I measured 47 cm. For the love of all that is holy, get this baby out of me.

The doctor also told me that the weight estimate from yesterday's ultrasound was 9 lbs 14 oz, but that is bullshit. Snapdragon was moving around so much and was so uncooperative that I know that they did not get good measurements. Besides, the Tufts estimate from last Wednesday was 7 lbs 12 oz and I trust their staff and machines way more. The Tufts office specializes in obstetrical ultrasounds and sees all the high-risk patients, while the Cambridge Hospital radiology dept is an all-purpose unit that does everything from mammograms to gall bladder scans, so their technicians don't do growth ultrasounds all day long. I don't expect that Snapdragon is a tiny peanut, but there is no way she is a 10-pounder at this point.

The doctor did offer me a c-section, though. I declined.

So, I have a huge baby, extra fluid, and an itchy, stretched-to-the-max stomach. Still no progress with the whole effacement/dilation thing. Due date is in 5 days, but it is looking like that is not going to happen.

Side note: my blood pressure is 100/68. Does that sound too low to anyone else? I'm not running any marathons over here.

39 Week Appointment

My appointment with my midwife this morning was a bit more eventful than I was expecting. I have felt a difference in Snapdragon's movements these past few days — the kicking has been all over the place, rather than on the right side, where it has been for weeks now.

I was afraid that she may have turned and Joyce was suspicious as well. I got an internal exam (lovely), which revealed that I am 0 cm dilated, 0% effaced, and that Snapdragon's head was not within feeling distance. Since Joyce couldn't really tell whether the baby was head-down, I got sent over to the hospital for an ultrasound. Inductions and c-sections were mentioned.

I texted Pete, who had stayed home to get some more work done before Snapdragon's *hopefully* imminent arrival. He rushed right over, just in time to sit through the world's longest, most uncomfortable, and most boring ultrasound. All the poking and prodding made for an angry Snapdragon — she decided that she was not going to cooperate AT ALL, so everything took 3x as long as it should have. She would not stay still for a single second, meaning that I had to lie flat on my back for over an hour as the ultrasound tech tried to luck into the shots she needed.

Long story short, Snapdragon is still head-down, just twisted in a weird way. She should be good to go.

The ultrasound did reveal that I still have too much fluid, so I have to go to a doctor's appt tomorrow morning. It is unclear to me how this will help. What is the doctor going to do about it? I'm hoping that I will have less amniotic fluid soon due to my water breaking.

Ultrasound Update

I'm back from my unnecessary ultrasound, which (thankfully) turned out to be a super boring waste of my time. Everything looks fine/normal/the same, which is infinitely better than finding something new and exciting. Still, I had to get up early and drive into Boston for a test that probably didn't need to be done at all.

Snapdragon is up to 7 lbs, 12 oz (72nd percentile). The weight measurements from ultrasounds are notoriously unreliable, but since the 35-week ultrasound from this hospital put her in the 6-6.5 range, this recent estimate seems to be consistent. She's right on schedule.

It is getting really uncomfortable to stay on my back for any length of time, so I had to focus more on breathing than on watching the monitors, but I did get a few glimpses of Snapdragon's little face. Her feet and hands are definitely chubby — not the skeletor hands from earlier ultrasounds. The ultrasound technician even assured me that she could see hair on Snapdragon's head, though I couldn't see it. Plenty of babies are born at 38 weeks and look perfectly normal, but I still have a hard time believing that there is a fully-formed, ready-to-be-newborn baby living in my abdomen. It still seems rather abstract, even as I get my internal organs knocked around for hours every day.

The technician was not able to see whether my cervix has progressed at all, but my guess would be that it has not. I have felt no contractions, so I would be surprised if I am dilated much at all. I have an appt with my midwife tomorrow, but I don't know whether she will do an internal exam to check for progress. I could still be looking at up to a month more of this, so I'd better settle in.

Updates

For the past few weeks, I have been struggling to overcome a bizarre mental paralysis that has made it difficult for me to do anything other than watch trashy TV and play computer games. Anything that involves mental exertion — even something as simple as updating this blog — has seemed like an huge, unmanageable task. Is this the much-talked-of "pregnancy brain"?

Anyway, a lot has happened, but it would be tedious to write a dozen posts, so I'll do bullet points:

• On the night of 8/18, I started having extreme pain just above my right hip. That's right where my ovarian cyst is, so I was worried that the cyst was twisting or rupturing. I tried to sleep and wait until my scheduled appointment with my midwife the next morning, but by 3 a.m., I was in so much pain that I decided to go in to the hospital. I called my parents, who were on vacation in Maine, woke up my sister, and drove myself to the hospital. I thought I would vomit in the car because the pain was so intense, but I made it to L&D. Of course, as soon as I got there, I felt much better, but they kept me for monitoring. I had an ultrasound in the morning, which showed that my cyst was fine, but I have a kidney stone. I don't think that was what was causing my pain because my kidneys are up around my ears at this point and the pain was just above the hip, but that's everyone's best guess. The ultrasound tech estimated Snapdragon's weight at 6 lbs. 13 oz.
• They also diagnosed me with polyhydramnios (too much amniotic fluid). The cut-off for this diagnosis is 25 somethingorothers and my fluid measured 25.8, so I had to see an OB to be checked. More on that later.
• I felt terrible about interrupting my parents' vacation, even though they were planning on coming back on Thursday morning anyway. They raced down from Maine — there is no traffic at 3 in the morning. Though I hated to bother them, I know that they would have been pissed to find out later that I hadn't called them right away. Everything turned out fine, but they would have been upset if I hadn't told them.
• After sleeping for less than an hour and a half on Wednesday night, I drove home to CT with my family. My mom rode in the car with me in case I needed to switch drivers. We ended up hitting a HUGE traffic jam — it took us almost 4 hours to make a trip that usually takes 2 hours or less. That was the real low point of the whole thing — I was on the verge of tears, tired, and missing Pete. It sucked.
• On Friday, 8/20, I spent the day shopping for the babies with my mom and sister. Our family threw a joint baby shower for Snapdragon and Giuliana on Sunday, so we needed to buy presents for the babies from our family and from my Naunie. It was lots of fun, but we were out for 6 hours and my feet were throbbing by the end. We spent all evening wrapping, which was easier on my feet. We wrapped Schnappi's things in animal-themed paper to cut down on the explosion of pink and pastel.
• Our baby shower was 8/22. I'll write a separate post about that.
• In general, August has been much more pleasant, weather-wise, than July, but these past few days have been brutal. It's so hot and humid that it's hard to breathe. I've been getting by with cold showers, drinking gallons of water, and taking air-conditioned car trips to run unnecessary errands. I know that it is not an earth-shattering revelation to note that August is hot, but pregnant hot is a whole new kind of gross.
• I'm pretty annoyed with my midwife. I had an appointment yesterday (8/30) during which she went over my ultrasounds and NSTs from my trip to the hospital. I am measuring "big" (39 cm instead of 37 cm) and she is concerned about the discrepancy in the measurements of Snapdragon's weight (6-6.5 lbs on 8/17 (63rd percentile), 6 lbs 13 oz on 8/19(82nd percentile)). I asked whether the discrepancy was really that big a deal — after all, don't those late ultrasounds have fairly wide margins of error? She looked at me blankly and just said that she was concerned because Snapdragon "grew so much" in just two days. WTF? She didn't grow — two different ultrasound techs made slightly different estimates, both of which estimated her weight as "biggish, but totally normal." Long story short, the midwife wants another growth ultrasound next week. Whatever. I think it is completely unnecessary, but at least I will get to see how she's doing. My next appointment with my midwife isn't until 9/9, so it will be nice to have some reassurance sooner than that.
• No matter what the ultrasound says, Snapdragon is BIG. Very big. I can tell you that without taking any official measurements. She moves around ALL DAY LONG and it is very uncomfortable. Between the vigorous stretching and the pelvis-pounding hiccups, I am feeling pretty beat-up. My skin is so stretched that the skin around my ex-belly button is numb. Come on out, Snapdragon! There is so much more room for squirming on the outside!
• Tomorrow is Sept. 1st, and Snapdragon will be full term! That means she is welcome to come at any time! I've got my fingers crossed for sooner rather than later. Obviously, she will come when she is good and ready, but I can't even entertain the idea that I could still be pregnant on October 1st. I am mentally prepared for 3 more weeks, tops.
• I've got my money on Sept. 19th — Talk Like a Pirate Day. Various nerds among our friends think that Sept. 22 would be a cool birthday because it is Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' birthday.
• My guess for birth weight is 8 lbs 12 oz, but I would be unsurprised if she turns out to be a 9-pounder.
• I am not scared for labor. I am awkward, uncomfortable, hot, bored, and tired. There is very little left to do to get our house ready for Snapdragon, so I don't even have any little projects to keep me busy. I have tried to do dissertation work, but that's not going so well. I am impatient to get started on this whole parenting thing!

That's it for now.

Last Ultrasound (I Think)

I had my last ultrasound today. At least, it should be my last ultrasound — the perinatologist has decreed that my cyst does not need to be checked anymore. Once Snapdragon is born, I will go back to see whether the cyst persists. If it does, it will need to be removed surgically.

Snapdragon is looking good. Her head is still down and she weighs between 6 and 6.5 pounds. If she gains half a pound a week and is born on her due date, she should weigh between 8.5 and 9 pounds. That's pretty standard for babies in my family, but is certainly on the larger side. Who knows how big she might get if she goes late. I feel reassured, though — if she is born in the next couple of weeks, she should be a healthy size.

Since FB is gone, my parents and sister came up to take me to my appointment. The doctor only lets one person in the ultrasound room with the patient, so my sister came in with me. I felt bad that mom and dad came up and didn't get to see the ultrasound, but, in all honesty, it was a pretty boring ultrasound. Snapdragon is so big that you can only see squashed parts — an elbow here, a femur there. The ultrasound tech could barely get her whole face in the frame. Most of the time, we couldn't really tell what we were looking at.

My parents are headed up to Maine to celebrate their anniversary. They're leaving B with me for a few days while they are gone. We will probably do something girly, though I do not know what. It can't involve much walking — my back cannot handle it anymore.

Growing Snapdragon

We had another ultrasound this morning. Everything's looking fine. They estimate Snapdragon's weight at 3 pounds, 13 ounces at 30 weeks, 6 days. She's head down, which confirmed my suspicions — I've been getting kicked in the upper right quadrant of my belly for several days in a row.

We got one good picture, but FB doesn't like it because he thinks her mouth looks like the Joker's.

If you're having trouble figuring out what you're looking ta, maybe this will help:

See? Much cuter. Not a demon child who will claw her way out of my uterus. I like the way she is relaxing with her arm over her head. She slept through the whole ultrasound.

Here's one from last month (@26 weeks, 6 days):

Waving Hello!

27 weeks

Had another ultrasound this morning - my cyst looks the same as it did last time and Snapdragon looks good. They measured her arms and legs and estimated that she currently weighs 2 pounds 13 ounces. That means that if she were born today, she would have very good chances.

Snapdragon continued her usual ultrasound behavior - hands in front of the face and kicking really hard at the wand. It is weird to feel her kick and see it on the screen at the same time. The technician was able to give us a picture of her face - not a profile like the other ones, but a straight-on shot taken while she faced outward. I'll try to scan it later today.

All in all, things are looking good. I feel uncomfortable in the heat, but not much can be done about that. It is very reassuring to have these opportunities to check in on the Snapdragon and make sure she's ok in there.

Ovarian Cyst Update

We had another ultrasound this morning. Snapdragon looks great — heart rate of 152, wiggling around vigorously, etc. Her skeleton is much more defined than it was a month ago — every bone lit up bright white and her spine and limbs looked much more robust. No wonder her kicks/punches have gotten so strong!

My ovarian cyst is about the same size, but now it has a little node in it. Up until this point, it has been perfectly smooth, but now there is a little bump about .5cm x .5cm on one side of it. The doctors didn't really know what it was, so I'll have to go back in two weeks. If it is the same size, they won't do anything other than check on it regularly, but if it is growing, I will have to have an MRI to try to figure out what is going on.

I have felt pretty calm about this cyst all along because it is most likely benign and not a threat to Snapdragon. It's more annoying than scary. Still, I am glad that Snapdragon is over 24 weeks now. If they find that the cyst is malignant or if it starts causing problems in any other way, there is a chance that she could survive if she had to be born early. Her odds get better every day, which is a great comfort to me.

Medical Study

Today, I had a 3D ultrasound as part of a medical study I'm participating in. The doctors running the study are researching the causes of preterm labor and cervical incompetence by applying pressure to the uterus, taking measurements, and then following moms to see if they can correlate the early measurements with preterm labor.

It was not a big deal. I suppose I am so used to being poked and prodded that I hardly mind. It did involve a vaginal ultrasound and a catheter with a balloon on the end to measure the pressure, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I thought they would push much harder on my stomach, but it wasn't much more uncomfortable than the pressure from accidentally rolling onto my stomach during the night.

I was supposed to get a 3D ultrasound pic of Snapdragon's face in exchange for participating in the study, but she refused to participate. As she has done at all the other ultrasounds, she stubbornly covered her face with her hands and refused to budge. I think it's possible that she doesn't like the ultrasounds themselves. Perhaps she covers her face in distress when she's getting poked with the wand? I don't know, but I now have an adorable picture of Snapdragon hiding behind her fingers.

FB's Joke

On Friday, the sonographer told us that she would try her best to tell Snapdragon's gender, but that it was a little early. She tried her best to take a peek, but Snapdragon was moving so much that she had some trouble. She got a few halfway decent shots, but nothing crystal clear. We couldn't clearly see the 3 lines that indicate "girl," but there was definitely no obvious penis. She said, "I can't be 100% sure, but it looks like a girl."

When the sonographer left to get the doctor, FB and I had a long conversation about the ultrasound — he hasn't been obsessively examining other people's photos on the internet, so he had a harder time determining what we were seeing, so I explained to him where the head was, the feet, etc. Several times during this conversation, we talked about the fact that the sonographer had not seen anything that looked like a penis.

Later, when we were leaving, I said to FB, "I'm glad she thought it might be a girl — I won't get totally excited yet, but no obvious penis gets my hopes up for a girl!" He looked at me like I was crazy. "What do you mean?" he said. "She said she thought it was a boy."

Um, no.

By this point, we had discussed the lack of a penis about 5 times. The sonographer CLEARLY said "girl" when she was standing not 3 feet from FB. Why on earth would the LACK OF A PENIS make you think it was a boy? I understand being hesitant to say it's definitely a girl until you see some clear girl signs, but there was literally no evidence for boy.

Yet, FB is convinced that she said boy and that I have lost my mind.

I have considered the possibility that this is a belated April Fool's joke intended to make me doubt my own sanity, but he assures me that he heard her say "boy." He is deluded.

Well, we'll find out for sure in three weeks. As FB says, "If it's a girl, I'll be happy because it's a girl. If it's a boy, I will be happy because I am right."

Medical Stuff Update

On Thursday, we met with the midwife for Snapdragon's 15-week checkup. Everything looked fine. Snapdragon's heartrate was a strong 160 and my uterus measured at a perfectly average 16 centimeters. All of the pregnancy books say that my uterus should be 2 or 3 inches below my belly button at this point, but I am short, so it's actually less than an inch away.

On Friday, we went to the big hospital for an ultrasound with the perinatologist so she could check on my ovarian cyst. The good news: Snapdragon looks perfectly healthy. The bad news: my cyst has gotten slightly bigger. It's about the size of a baseball, which isn't such a huge problem at the moment, but will be a problem as Snapdragon gets bigger and takes up more of the room in my very short abdomen.

So, long story short, I have to have my anatomy scan at the big hospital instead of at the birth center. If my cyst is the same or smaller, they'll let it stay, but if it hits 8cm, the perinatologist wants me to have surgery, which will mean general anesthesia, a 3-inch incision in my abdomen, and 6-8 weeks of bed rest recovery time. Not fun.

I've been reading online and thinking about it for a few days now, and I think that I am inclined to refuse the surgery. The perinatologist assured me that the cyst looks simple and benign and that it does not threaten Snapdragon in any direct way. The major issues are that it could break, which would hurt like hell, or it could get twisted and cut off the blood supply to my ovary. Either of these things would be extremely painful and dangerous in terms of my ovary, but not necessarily bad for Snapdragon. The surgery will definitely be extraordinarily painful as well, so there's no net gain there. I would like to save my ovary if possible, but I'm fairly unexcited about having major abdominal surgery in my second trimester. The doctor told us that they couldn't do laparoscopic surgery during pregnancy, but wasn't very clear on why not.

We'll see. I'll be back at the big hospital in three weeks for the anatomy scan and we'll see if it has grown more. If it's about the same, there will be no talk of surgery, but if it is still growing, I'll need a second opinion.

Snapdragon at 15 weeks, 2 Days

Left-handed thumb sucking?

Ultrasound

Arms, Legs, and a Big Chin

On Friday, I went for a nuchal translucency scan at the big medical center in the city. FB is on a business trip, so my mom came with me. We got to see Snapdragon for the first time, which was pretty exciting.

S/he was flipping all around, so it took a little while for the ultrasound tech to get a clear picture. When she was finally able to take measurements, Snapdragon's neck was totally normal and her/his length was right on track for 12 weeks 2 days.

I am an otter.

We were in there for at least 20 minutes and Snapdragon was squirming like mad the whole time — jumping from one side to the other, waving its arms around, touching its face, etc. It was fairly alarming to see so much movement, but not be able to feel anything at all. When you consider that Snapdragon is nearly 3 inches long, I could have a hamster running around in my abdomen and never know the difference.

After the tech got some good looks at Snapdragon, she looked at my ovaries. My left ovary looked fine, but I have a big cyst on the right. One of the doctors came in and took a look at it and said that it's normal to have a cyst from ovulation, but that mine was pretty big (about the same size as Snapdragon, actually), so she wanted to keep an eye on it and ordered another ultrasound for 3 weeks from now.

I'm not particularly concerned — I've had ovarian cysts before and as long as they don't get twisted, they're no big deal. I'm glad we'll get to have another ultrasound when FB is home. It's reassuring to see that Snapdragon has a head and an appropriate number of limbs. At the next ultrasound, s/he will be 15 weeks and 2 days — perhaps the tech will be able to take a guess at the gender.

I also got to talk to a genetic counselor before the exam to discuss the nuchal translucency test. When she took my history and looked at my blood panel, she seemed pretty alarmed at my iron levels and my history of thalassemia. She ordered that I get some extra blood tests and that FB get tested as well, even though there is virtually zero chance that he is also a thalassemia carrier. I find that doctors asking about my thalassemia ask me very strange questions — "Do you feel ok?" "Are you tired?" I can say for sure that I am tired, but I am also pregnant. Sure, I feel ok, but it's silly to ask me if I feel normal — it's a hereditary blood disorder, so I've never felt anything different.

The Claw