I am so grateful to have made it to this milestone. After our 3 first trimester losses in the past year (2 DW’s, 1 mine), the second trimester seemed like a pipe dream. I am not sure if it’s the intralipids, prednisone, or fragmin, but I’m glad that I strong-armed our RE into implementing a more aggressive protocol after my NK cytokine findings in October.
Pregnancy has been nice lately. I’m still a bit pukey at certain times in the morning, usually when I have been slow to get food into my belly, or when I’m brushing my teeth. I’m still on the 4 Diclectin daily, as it’s allowing me less food aversions, so I’m eating healthier. I’m up about 12lbs from pre-pregnancy, and up 17lbs from pre-IVF. I’m starting to not care so much about the weight gain, as my bump begins to show more.
Sleep has been terrible, as my anxiety has been high from this elevated NT crap. I’m a little less obsessed with it now that the NIPT has been sent off, and there’s just waiting to do now. It’s out of my hands. Work has also been stressing me out, as we are 99.99% going on strike, and that means “bye bye salary!”. As a two-teacher household, we are hit even harder. We have money saved (that was supposed to go towards a minivan), and there is a strike fund that we’ve been paying into for years and years which will start to pay us back and definitely soften the blow. It’s all just crazy town over here though. DW’s is leading her school in this strike, and has been stressed out worse than I’ve ever seen her be.
I started weaning down from my 10mg of Prednisone last week. Last week I went down to 7.5mg daily, and today I go down to 5mg daily. Next week I will be down to 2.5mg daily, and then off of it completely. During December’s failed FET, they didn’t give me proper weaning/tapering instructions and told me to go off cold turkey. My body didn’t respond well, as I had full-body aches, was exhausted to the point of bed-ridden, and I was super hypotensive (my normal BP is around 100/70, and it went down to 90/70). I’m hoping to avoid all of that this time. I have developed a wider “moon face”, and have probably gained more weight than I would’ve without the prednisone, so I’m looking forward to going off of it soon. I’m still on the Fragmin though, and will probably ask to stay on blood thinners until 6 weeks postpartum because while I don’t have a thrombophilia, my sister had a DVT and my grandpa died of a pulmonary embolism. I’m supposed to stay on the aspirin until the end as well.
My hair remains a mess. The front half has been combed out, but the back is still in dreads. DW likes to say that I’m “all business in the front and party in the back”, which makes me laugh my ass off. A couple of days ago, I had a meltdown because I regretted taking out those hard-earned mature dreads. I hate my hair not in dreads. It’s this super fine, wavy sometimes curly always frizzy mess. I have to put way more work into my “normal hair” than I do with my dreads. DW came home to me bawling my eyes out over this one day, and agrees that I should just redread what I took out. I always wanted my dreads a bit thinner, so I might take this as an opportunity to get what I want. It’ll take a while, but I’m glad I didn’t continue to take more out.
I’m definitely showing now, and DW has been coming home and greeting both me and my bump. My belly kinda asserts itself in our hugs now too, which is kinda fun, thinking that Dumplin’ is part of our hug. Clementine has been guarding my belly more closely now, insisting on lying such that her front legs rest on my belly, in Sphinx pose.
I’m getting more and more excited about Dumplin’, and have been itching to pull out the boxes of baby clothes that were handed down from my BIL and SIL almost five years ago. We’ve got lots of shuffling to do of stuff in different rooms. We’re moving the entertainment stuff from the rec room to the living room, the office stuff into the rec room, and turning the office into Dumplin’s room. We chose to keep the spare room as the guest bedroom, because all of our family is from out of town and do often stay over.
I’ve been visualizing good things for us, partly because it helps me get through this tough time, but also because I’m trying to believe in the law of attraction. In my mind, Dumplin’ is perfect. Early next week, the NIPT results will show no/low risk for all trisomies, and we can breathe a sigh of relief. We start moving furniture in preparation for Dumplin’s room, making space for him/her in our home. The next week, at our early anatomy ultrasound, Dumplin’ measures normal on everything, especially his/her heart. We start setting up Dumplin’s room. Two weeks after that, he/she measures normal for everything at the anatomy ultrasound and fetal echocardiogram. We celebrate by washing, sorting, and putting away the baby clothes we’ve been waiting so long to finally be able to use. The rest of the pregnancy is full of happiness, laughter, and love shared between myself, DW, Dumplin’, and those we care about. We have a wonderful summer spent at the cottage or travelling. We celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary with a baby moon. I return to work in September and love being back at my old school. I am able to work until close to Dumplin’s due date. Dumplin’ is welcomed into the world through a meaningful, intense, birth without fear. He/she continues to be wonderful. These are my hopes and prayers.