Everybody else is pregnant too

In my very first post for this blog I wrote about how everyone in the world except me was pregnant. Now that I am finally pregnant, it again feels that so is everyone else too. The amount of baby news popping this autumn is ridiculous. If I wasn’t preggo I would have lost my mind for good. At my workplace my boss and one workmate are pregnant. One of my cousins is pregnant. My godmother’s daughter is preggo. DH’s godson’s mother (the one pregnancy I cried over here) has her due date 2 weeks before us. A wife of DH’s childhood friend is about to give birth any second now. I keep hearing about acquintances and friends of friends who are expecting too. And a little voice in my head is saying still: it must have been so easy for them.

I’ve kind of pushed somewhat unconsciously all memories of last autumn and spring to the back and tried to concentrate on the situation I’m enjoying now despite our rough and very uncertain beginning. But as I sat on the couch watching bbc’s documentary series ( “make me a baby”) about conception and pregnancy and seeing some couples going through ivf and icsi I became very emotional and it all came back to me very strong. How the disappointments crushed my world every month and how all hope seemed to have deserted me at times. I consider myself extremely lucky to be here and sometimes feel we really got pregnant easily comparing to many others. But then again it took, 4iuis, one ivf and one fet to make this baby whereas majority of people only need to have sex once in a while so the word easy isn’t quite applicable to this baby’s conception after all.

This pregnancy however could be described as easy. I didn’t have a lot of nausea in the beginning, I haven’t had much pains, I haven’t been a hormonal raging bitch (so far). After the first 3 months as mrs pizza-face my skin and hair have been in better condition than ever. I’ve even gotten the breasts I’ve always wanted, at least for a while.

I chose to get the vaccination after consulting our RE who strongly suggested it. On the same evening my arm got really sore and was like that for almost two days. I also felt a little sick and tired. My two pregnant workmates had it harder; they both got fever over 38C after taking the shot. The epidemic is starting to rise in Finland at the moment and some people are getting overly hysterical about it. I pondered first about the risks of the shot but now I’ve stopped worrying over it since I got it and that’s it. There are risks both ways.

Today I had again visit with my maternity nurse. Hemoglobine was 130, blood pressure 110/70, baby’s heartbeat 150. My results for gestational diabetes test (which was horrible btw, I was so close to throwing up) came back normal but the 2 hour value was on the border line so they are keeping closer watch on me. Especially since there’s a history of big babies in my family. I’ve gained 11 kilos from the beginning. My belly isn’t huge but according to nurse tall women tend to have smaller looking bellies. The baby is moving and changing position all the time and now we can feel him/her quite well through my belly. I still don’t have a feeling if it’s a boy or a girl but I’ve started to have dreams about the baby being born and me taking care of it. I’m actually quite scared about that part.  What if I’m going to be the suckiest mother on earth and drop the baby on it’s head? I don’t have any experience of taking care of small babies. Do they give you instructions when leaving the hospital?

 

Growing belly (with a picture)

All through this pregnancy I’ve been waiting eagerly for my belly to grow. And now when it finally has started to happen, it feels weird. The fact that strangers can see that I’m pregnant.  One of my sisters friends even congratulated me on facebook after seeing our photos from Spain there. And I thought it wasn’t showing! Yesterday I was shopping with my cousin who has lost a lot of weight after breastfeeding and is now maybe European size 34 (XS). I looked huge next to her, even though I’ve only gained 2 kilos during these 14 weeks. But I love my belly and can’t wait for it to get even bigger.

Here’s the picture (with no head because I looked like a complete moron). It doesn’t look so big here but it’s definetely showing.

I also had my monthly visit to the maternity counseling yesterday, everything was in order (though my hemoglobine had dropped to 124) and I got to hear the heartbeat too Next month we’ll have the second ultrasound, after that there are no u/s appointments unless we’ll go to a private doctor. That sucks.

We visited DH’s friend couple on Wednesday, they are the ones whose pregnancy drove me to tears just before getting our bfp. Apparantely they don’t know about our struggles, although majority of our friends do, and when the preggo lady joked how we both couples have been active in the bedroom around the same time I felt a bit uneasy. I felt I should have told them that actually in our case it was the doctors who were active, but for some reason I couldn’t open my mouth. And afterwards felt like a cheater. Sometimes it feels like too much work to explain all about IVF and why we can’t have babies like normal people, especialyl when the audience isn’t someone close to me.

One of our cats was missing for almost 3 weeks. He disappeared from our balcony and although we searched the forest near us several times we couldn’t find him. We put posters in the neighborhood and this week two people called they had seen him, which gave us some hope. Other of them offered to borrow a trap to catch him, and we set it up last evening just 100 meters away from our balcony. This morning I went to check the trap and couldn’t believe my eyes, our cat was there ! He had lost a lot of weight and had some mites but otherwise was ok. We took him to the vet for check up and he was given some antibiotics and medicine for worms and now he’s been sleeping almost the whole day. We are so happy he’s home again

Something good came out of his disappearance though; we found a treasure of mushrooms just a few hundred meters away from home. We never thought that this suburbian small forest could be the home of hunderds of chanterelles, and apparantely nobody else thought so too. I’m going mushroom hunting this evening too, chanterelles are the best mushrooms in the world if you ask me and you have to pay like 20 euros a kilo if you buy them in a shop. Now they cost nothing

Midsummer pics

We celebrated midsummer in Finland last weekend. It was freaking cold of course. But the cottage at the island by the sea was awesome. Me and DH stayed in a small sauna cabin just 10 meters from the sea and could hear the waves inside. Very relaxing, as was the whole weekend. Just going to sauna, swimming (the water was ice-cold), eating and chilling. I loved every second of it, even though the weather was cold and windy. There were 2 other preggo ladies (DH’s friend’s wife and DH’s friend’s sister) with me so if I hadn’t been pregnant myself the weekend would have been horrible, continuous stabs in the heart. Even still I really can’t identify myself within the “pregnant” group. And if I share my news with a friend who doesn’t know about our struggles I feel I need to tell them I’ve had if-treatments. I just can’t pretend to have been knocked up “normally”.

But here are some pics from the weekend:

Me in the boat

Boys barbequing

View to the sea

In front of the sauna cabin

Me and the sea

Watching the bonfire

The bonfire closer

After last weekend the weather changed totally. Now it’s real summer! This week has been great; for once I’ve been able to do all summerish stuff I’ve always wanted to. First I spent Tuesday with my friend M at the flea market selling our old stuff, me gaining 100 euros. On wednesday me, M and two other friends went to Suomenlinna which is an old fortress in an island just outside Helsinki (very popular with the tourists) and had a picnic (that lasted 4 hours). Today I’m going swimming to an outside pool with a friend and in the afternoon I’ll drive to my parents as tomorrow me and sis will be selling jewelry at a small rock festival near them. This is how summers should always be. I’ve been even able to wear my cute summer dresses

On Monday I had the first visit at the maternity counseling. They took my blood pressure (which was surprisingly ok, usually I have high figures), Hemoglobin (great 140!) and some pee tests. I was also weighed and so far I’ve only gained one kilo. My nurse was a bit goofy and didn’t understand anything about if-treatments. I also got all kinds of brochures about pregnancy and the list of foods I’m not allowed to eat now like blue cheese, roe and liver.

We had the NT-scan yesterday and everything seemed to be in order. The baby was so stubborn though that he/she didn’t want to have his profile picture taken and turn into right position  so the nurse had hard time measuring the nuchal translucency but somehow succeeded, it was 1.0mm which is fine. He/she measured now 4,7cm and again I was a few days ahead the previous schedule, so now my due date would be 10th January which is actually the due date I should have had originally compared to my treatment schedule.

My face still looks like a disgusting pizza and pretty much all acne medication is a big no-no when you are preggo. The morning sickness is more of evening sickness these days. And my belly gets ridiculously swollen after eating anything; yesterday after having salad I looked 5 months pregnant. I even had to buy myself new capri-pants from the flea market as the ones I had before don’t fit anymore. Today I’m either 11 weeks 2 days or 11 weeks 5 days, depending on which schedule I’m looking.

Next Tuesday we’ll leave for Spain! I reserved an apartment for us so we’ll be living in a real Andalusian house! The only problem is that the proprietor doesn’t really speak English and we don’t speak Spanish. Well, I hope we’ll manage somehow. After the trip I think I’ll come out of the closet and tell all my friends about the baby.

Have a great, sunny weekend everyone

10 weeks!

I’m already ten weeks today I still can’t believe it. I’m nauseous most of the time but haven’t puked after the one time, I have to eat all the time, my face is still covered in acne, I’m a bit moody and my boobs are a little sore. I don’t have a real belly yet, but after eating it get’s really swollen.

I was supposed to have my first maternity counseling appointment on Monday, or at least I thought so. After waiting for 40 minutes I stopped a nurse and asked if it’s common that the appointments are running late. Turned out that the person I was supposed to see was on holiday and my appointment is only at next Monday. GREAT. And nobody cared to tell me when I registered at the reception. Thanks assholes.

I wanted to get my first appointment earlier because we are leaving for Spain soon and I’m anxious about hospital’s timetables for the 11-12 weeks u/s. When I told this to the nurse she dared to say that “you don’t necessarely have to go to the u/s, it’s not compulsory. Or you can do it at a private clinic if there’s a problem with the timetables”. Seriously?! Who would miss the u/s where they measure the swelling of the neck and other important things? Or how would I find magically 200 euros to pay for it at a private clinic since we have no money at the moment after spending everything on making this baby? I knew moving to public healthcare would bring problems and I was right.

We visited my granny at the nursing home last Sunday and I told her that we are having a baby on January. Even though she doesn’t really talk anything anymore she did recognize me and obviously got excited about my news. I was so happy I could share this with her.

Midsummer is next weekend and the weather forecast promises us 13C with thunder and rain. Fuck this Finnish pathetic excuse for a summer, I’m so glad we get to go to Spain so I’ll see at least a little sunshine. We are going to spend the Midsummer at DH’s friend’s cottage at the archipelago by the sea, so nice weather would have been a great bonus but we’ll enjoy barbequing and sauna anyway, no matter the weather.

9w2d (with u/s picture)

We had the u/s on Wednesday and to my relief everything was in order The baby measured now 2,3cm so it was one day ahead compared to my calculations. Now my due date is 13th January 2010. I like the sound of that, number 13 feels lucky to me. Of course I know that most babies aren’t born on the exact due date but I think that would be a cool birthdate. Only that sis and her hubby will be in Vietnam at that time, which sucks. We heard the heartbeat too, it was amazing. It suddenly made this much more concrete.

Now he/she actually looks almost like a real baby (though DH said he looks like a teddy bear )! Next u/s will be in a couple of weeks but no more at the infertility clinic. We can move now to the normal pregnancy control!

Yesterday we had our Belgian guests at Helsinki. They are maybe the nicest couple on earth. Though it had been 2 years since we last saw each other, it didn’t matter. We visited the market hall and some shops, went to a nice cafe I found a couple of weeks ago and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. They have just gotten married and were on a cruise at the Baltic Sea for their honeymoon, continuing to Stockholm the same evening. I wish we can go to see them in Belgium after the baby is born. I would post pictures but I can’t because I look like a swollen pig in all of them and my face is covered in terrible acne.

This evening a friend of mine is having her graduation party. I haven’t told her about the baby yet, but I think I’ll have to do it tonight since I will anyway look suspicious without a drink in my hand. Tomorrow we’ll head to my parents for some barbeque and sauna and on Sunday we’ll visit my grandmother with whom I want to share our news with. The only problem is she’s not doing so great at the moment, and I can’t be sure if she’ll even recognize me. I still want to tell her.

My cousin gave me some baby magazines and we’ve been browsing them with DH. It’s still really hard to relate to the stuff they are writing about, like a comparison of strollers. And I don’t like the attitude of holy super motherhood that is shining through the text. I’m pretty certain I won’t be a supermom who will feed her children only organic food, take them to all kinds of activating hobbies at the age of 3 months, talk endlessly about breastfeeding and baby poop. I’m certain I will be quite a mess of a mother but still confident that we can raise a decent human being.

Now I’m going to be a good little housewife and do the dishes and clean some of this mess up. And then watch the L-word on telly

Pregnancy milestone

I puked for the first time this morning while brushing my teeth! Yes, I know you were all just dying to hear this enchanting detail Overall the nausea is almost 24/7 but still manageable if I remember to eat enough. Last Friday as I drove 2 hours to my sister I had a box of grapes and salt crackers on the passenger seat and munched them constantly.

Tomorrow is the next u/s. Although the symptoms are strong I’m still very anxious. All kinds of morbid, bad scenarios have been rolling in my head. I think it’s partly because it is still so difficult to believe that this could actually work for us. DH tries to sneak from his work to the clinic too. I hope this will be our final visit to that expensive place, everything will be fine and we can move on to the public healthcare (that doesn’t cost a penny!).

Last weekend’s visit at the market place wasn’t too profitable, since the average age of people there was around 60. And it was freezing cold. The joy of Finnish summers; +7C in June and I was wearing my autumn jacket and gloves. I hope the weather will change soon, as our Belgian guests are coming on Thursday and I would like them to enjoy sunny Helsinki.

Some pics from the market:

our beautiful market table

close-up on the earrings

me, sis and a random old lady on the background

We bought a new sofa as the old one dated back to 1960’s and belonged first to my grandparents, then to my parents, then to sis and finally to me. All these years and people had worn it down so it was time to get a new one. We love it, and so do the cats.

The afternoon kitten nap club

I just went to the supermarket to get some bacon. I know, I’m a disgusting person. But I craved some hangover-food, so I used it to bake a pie together with mushrooms, onion, pineapple and cheese. And a lot of butter. To my defense I have to say I haven’t still gained any weight, the little vampire I carry just sucks everything that I eat to her/himself.

7w6days

I’m almost 8 weeks already! That is, if I’m counting correctly. Because of the low initial beta the length of my pregnancy is still a mystery, hopefully one that will be revealed on next week’s u/s. Which of course already makes me anxious, I hope everything will be ok, baby will have grown enough, has a strong heartbeat and we can stop worrying.

I feel nauseous most of the time but I’ve managed to avoid puking yet. I’m craving all fresh stuff like watermelon, grapes and fruit juices, and strangely coffee and chocolate (usually my biggest favorites) don’t sound too tempting at the moment. And I eat all the time but still gain no weight. In the evenings my belly looks bigger but that’s just probably because I’ve stuffed myself with food all day. Overall I have a strange zombie-like feeling, a little tired, headachy, dizzy and nauseous, like all energy would have been sucked out of me. I’m still cramping every now and then but not too bad. Apparently due to endo and lap my insides are quite scarred and the growing uterus makes those scars hurt.

We had some really warm sunny days but now it’s gray again. We are going with sis to sell jewelry on an outside market on Saturday, and the forecast promises rain and cold for the next weekend. They are also holding a sing-along happening on the market place at the same time. Awesome.

Next week we’ll get visitors from Belgium as a friend couple from there is coming for a cruise on Baltic Sea for their honeymoon. Can’t wait to see them, it’s been 2 years from last time already! I got to know them when I was studying in Maastricht and they’ve already visited Finland once after that.

Not much happening here, took the entrance exam for the Master’s programme last week and it was quite challenging. There was an article (in English) about usability and then some difficult questions based on the information. We’ll know in July how it went… Don’t have much work at the moment and the unemployement office hasn’t paid me anything yet either.

I’m still having difficulties to believe I’m actually preggo. Ok, I feel pregnant now but the the thought of us becoming parents for real after all is still too amazing to think too much about. I guess I’m holding my guard up just in case, after the disappointments I’m overly cautious about everything. I don’t want to share the news with everyone yet (and I know from my stats that I have basically 0 hits from Finland so no one I know is reading this), although quite many friends already know.

Our neighbour guessed right away at our 90’s party because I wasn’t drinking the usual way. Apparantely my non-alcoholic ciders weren’t convincing enough to fool him. In Finland it’s basically impossible to keep your pregnancy a secret if you are going to a party/bar/restaurant. Everyone expects you to drink if you have done so before and if you are having only water/coke/coffee it immediately raises questions. Saying “I just don’t feel like drinking today” is no excuse. Because everyone feels like drinking, especially now it’s summer and the terrace bars are open. Even at my cousin’s daughter’s graduation party last weekend I’m sure people wondered why I took my glass from the children’s tray for toasting. Luckily DH followed my example so that might have distracted my nosy relatives because nobody asked anything.

My cousin gave me this amazing present. It’s a silver bola-necklace originally traditionally worn in Bali by pregnant women. There’s a little bell inside the ball that makes a pretty sound when you move and when the baby starts to hear it’ll hear the sound too and recognize it when he/she is born. I know our baby is still too small to hear anything but I wear it anyway since it’s so pretty

A bola-necklace

Constant hangover

That’s how I feel these days. Nausea (no throwing up yet), dizziness, constant hunger and headache accompany me throughout the days but I’m not complaining, having symptoms make me feel more trusty that there is someone actually on board. I’m about 6w5days and I’m going to call our local midwife today to make my first appointment for the maternity counseling. I told my sister on the phone last weekend and to my big surprise mom hadn’t blurted the news out to her yet. Sis started to cry but I hope it was happy tears, at least it felt like it and she told me how amazing this is and that she’s really really happy.

Still I know that if this pregnancy continues normally (and I surely hope it will!) and I get to have that big belly in the end I will surely cause bad feelings for someone. Because I felt so devastated seeing  those bellies around me during this struggle and thinking that they must have gotten knocked up at their first try. And I know there are a lot of us out there who struggle to get pregnant, face the disappointments month by month, swallow our tears and bite our lip watching others build their families. I still can’t understand totally that I’m pregnant after all the desperation I felt this spring. And I’m still really scared that something bad can happen.

Tomorrow is the entrance exam for the Master’s programme I applied to. I have no idea how the test is going to be like so I can’t really stress about it in advance. Also tomorrow evening I’m picking up our good friend H from the airport, she is coming back to Finland after spending over a year around Africa, can’t wait to see her!

Summer is here, everything is green and it’s +20C! I hope this summer we’ll have LOTS of sunshine and only a few gray, rainy days. But knowing the capriciousness of Finnish summer, we’ll surely get bucketloads of water.

They are fixing the plumbing of our building for a few days and we have to go to bathroom outside, like the bathrooms you have in rockfestivals. AWESOME. And can’t use water either.

Btw non-alcoholic red wine tastes like shit. Don’t bother. Non alcoholic cider on the other hand was good, almost like the real stuff.

Never-ending rollercoaster ride

I had terrible, terrible continous cramps from Wednesday afternoon all the way to the following night. Felt really like AF showing up any minute and had to even leave my Russian class in advance because I was so devastated about how I was feeling and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Symptoms have disappeared completely and I don’t feel preggo at all + I had some light brownish discharge and I know these put together isn’t very promising.

I just couldn’t bear the anxiety anymore and phoned the clinic this morning (yesterday was a public holiday) and requested an u/s. My own RE was super busy so they arranged me to see another doctor. My heart rate was maybe a million when she inserted the dildocam.

There was the gestational sac. The tiny fetus.
And the tiniest flickering heartbeat.

I can’t describe the relief I felt. I was so SURE that it was all over since the pain had been so intense and the symptoms had vanished.

Now I’m going to ban any googling/ttc boards from myself during the rest of my pregnancy. I’m not gonna think about the odds, I’m not going to compare how my fetus measures to others, I’m not gonna stress about my low beta levels or the lack of symptoms.

The fact is I AM pregnant right now whether I feel it or not. And for fuck’s sake I think I’ve earned the right to be happy about it even for a second and put the stressing aside. I am 6 weeks (+ maybe some days) pregnant today and I’m gonna enjoy now every second of this.

Anxiety

I’m really really scared that we are going to lose this baby. Since Monday I’ve been cramping a lot and my symptoms have been gradually vanishing to zero. I know neither of those is a good sign. I don’t feel preggo at all at this moment, I only feel pretty much like before AF.

I almost called RE for a new u/s for Friday but in the end, what good would it do. There’s no way they could prevent an early miscarriage if it’s about to happen. I just hope it won’t.

I always thought that if I’d ever would get pregnant that would be it, no more worries and we would end up with a healthy baby. Now I know that the true anxiety only begins with the BFP; the nervousness waiting for beta numbers, u/s visuals and watching your symptoms come and go. And nothing is for sure.

Please, baby stay with us.
I so want this to work.