Believing
Today we had our scan. Over the last week or so I've begun to relax more into the idea that yes, actually, I might just be pregnant. It's amazing what a constant dose of exhaustion and nausea can do in that regard. Having some very definite pregnancy symptoms has certainly helped along the way to having faith that at least something was going on there, despite the fact that I've continued to have occasional spotting. However, today we had our scan and as this week dawned and I knew that some definite information about how well or not this pregnancy was going was just around the corner, my level of anxiety has been on the increase again.
On the way to the hospital today, P and I came up with an action plan of what we would do if we found out that we'd had or were going to have a miscarriage. By the time we got out the car, somehow the fact that we knew what we'd do if the news was bad was a little more calming. We got in and had to wait half an hour before we were called, and during this time my heart rate gradually slowed and I became more calm again.
Then we were called. At first, the nurse decided to try to do an abdominal scan so she smeared my belly with jelly and gave me a good once over with the scanner. She couldn't even see my uterus as it was nicely tucked away somewhere, so she sent me out to empty my bladder and wipe off the gunk in preparation for a vaginal scan. I have developed a very close relationship with the dildo-cam after all the months of ovulation tracking scans I've had so this felt better to me in a strange kind of way. Anyway, she started the scan and I reached over and took P's hand. My nerves had suddenly returned.
I've seen enough images of scans to know what we should have been seeing, and as soon as the probe was in there we got a lovely clear image of an amniotic sac... and more amniotic sac... I was waiting and waiting for the blob that was our baby to appear but then the nurse ran out of sac and went back over it for a second run. It was only at the end of this second run, several long, long seconds after we'd seen this lovely big sac appear empty that she found the little corner where our baby was hiding. We finally found our blob. I think I may have dared to breath again at this point. The nurse zoomed in to the blob and there before our eyes was the steady pulse of a tiny heartbeat. At that point I think I said something along the lines of 'Oh thank goodness' and promptly started crying. P managed to be much more cool, and she just stared at the screen with a big grin on her face. I think she might have managed a 'Wow'.
So we have a blob. We have a blob with a heart beat. Look! (OK, you can't see the heartbeat on our static print-out, but you can imagine it.) The black kidney shape is the amniotic sac - at least it's the little bit of it that the baby is hiding in - there was a lot more of it than this. The blobby thing inside it is the baby and the point where that meets the uterus is the placenta.
This has actually, really happened, and it's actually, really working. We are, without a shadow of a doubt pregnant. So far, we appear to be healthily so too. Depending on what report you read our risk of miscarriage has now dropped to somewhere between 10% and 2%. I like those odds. They're definitely better than the 20-30% odds we had just this morning.
Since the scan, P and I have been slowly beginning to feel it hit us. We've realised that the years we've spent trying have hardened us somewhat. We've both been so cautious about this, about letting ourselves have faith that this might work out that our defences have become so strong that neither of us has really been able to let ourselves think about the possible positive outcome in this. It's been too painful in the past to have hoped for it and then lost that hope over and over again. The fact that we might actually be having a baby later this year is something we've tried very hard not to get attached to, and so far in this pregnancy we've pretty much managed it.
I think that today, we've finally begun to let some of those defences down. Some of the moments we've had this afternoon, the 'Oh fuck, this is really happening isn't it?' moments are ones that years ago we might have had as soon as we had a positive pregnancy test. We've both commented that there's been no leaping for joy and no bubbly excitement since we had that first positive test, and I think we'd expected there to be at least some of that. But now I think we might begin to get it. Now we might begin to let ourselves believe it. We're not out of the woods yet, but we're a lot closer now and maybe, just maybe, we can finally begin to let ourselves believe that we have a baby on the way.
On the way to the hospital today, P and I came up with an action plan of what we would do if we found out that we'd had or were going to have a miscarriage. By the time we got out the car, somehow the fact that we knew what we'd do if the news was bad was a little more calming. We got in and had to wait half an hour before we were called, and during this time my heart rate gradually slowed and I became more calm again.
Then we were called. At first, the nurse decided to try to do an abdominal scan so she smeared my belly with jelly and gave me a good once over with the scanner. She couldn't even see my uterus as it was nicely tucked away somewhere, so she sent me out to empty my bladder and wipe off the gunk in preparation for a vaginal scan. I have developed a very close relationship with the dildo-cam after all the months of ovulation tracking scans I've had so this felt better to me in a strange kind of way. Anyway, she started the scan and I reached over and took P's hand. My nerves had suddenly returned.
I've seen enough images of scans to know what we should have been seeing, and as soon as the probe was in there we got a lovely clear image of an amniotic sac... and more amniotic sac... I was waiting and waiting for the blob that was our baby to appear but then the nurse ran out of sac and went back over it for a second run. It was only at the end of this second run, several long, long seconds after we'd seen this lovely big sac appear empty that she found the little corner where our baby was hiding. We finally found our blob. I think I may have dared to breath again at this point. The nurse zoomed in to the blob and there before our eyes was the steady pulse of a tiny heartbeat. At that point I think I said something along the lines of 'Oh thank goodness' and promptly started crying. P managed to be much more cool, and she just stared at the screen with a big grin on her face. I think she might have managed a 'Wow'.
So we have a blob. We have a blob with a heart beat. Look! (OK, you can't see the heartbeat on our static print-out, but you can imagine it.) The black kidney shape is the amniotic sac - at least it's the little bit of it that the baby is hiding in - there was a lot more of it than this. The blobby thing inside it is the baby and the point where that meets the uterus is the placenta.
This has actually, really happened, and it's actually, really working. We are, without a shadow of a doubt pregnant. So far, we appear to be healthily so too. Depending on what report you read our risk of miscarriage has now dropped to somewhere between 10% and 2%. I like those odds. They're definitely better than the 20-30% odds we had just this morning.
Since the scan, P and I have been slowly beginning to feel it hit us. We've realised that the years we've spent trying have hardened us somewhat. We've both been so cautious about this, about letting ourselves have faith that this might work out that our defences have become so strong that neither of us has really been able to let ourselves think about the possible positive outcome in this. It's been too painful in the past to have hoped for it and then lost that hope over and over again. The fact that we might actually be having a baby later this year is something we've tried very hard not to get attached to, and so far in this pregnancy we've pretty much managed it.
I think that today, we've finally begun to let some of those defences down. Some of the moments we've had this afternoon, the 'Oh fuck, this is really happening isn't it?' moments are ones that years ago we might have had as soon as we had a positive pregnancy test. We've both commented that there's been no leaping for joy and no bubbly excitement since we had that first positive test, and I think we'd expected there to be at least some of that. But now I think we might begin to get it. Now we might begin to let ourselves believe it. We're not out of the woods yet, but we're a lot closer now and maybe, just maybe, we can finally begin to let ourselves believe that we have a baby on the way.