The Quickening

I’m still not 100% convinced, but yesterday morning in the pre-dawn silence, I was lying in bed concentrating very hard on my uterus, and I’m pretty sure I felt the baby moving.

Cool, eh?

It was that indistinct, barely-there sort of flutter that I once read described as similar to the flick of a goldfish’s tail.

I’d thought maybe I’d felt it a few times before, but then the bubbling feeling passed its way down my digestive tract and I realized what I had been feeling was indeed gas from the previous night’s guacamole and refried beans.

But this time, the movement was more fluttery and less, er, bubbly, and it stayed in one place for the few minutes that I indulged in just lying there feeling it. It’s a long way from those seismic tremors that will visibly shake my whole belly in three or four months, but it’s a start, and I love love love being able to feel the baby move. It’s my hands-down favourite part of being pregnant. That, and the whole excuse for being centre of the universe for nine months. Ahem.

But I got to thinking… don’t you think it’s rather, um, undignified that the poor fetus in utero so closely resembles so many of our less savoury bodily movements? I mean, the baby's first kicks feel like gas, and I clearly remember being astonished when pushing Tristan out how much birthing a baby feels like the world’s largest bowel movement.

So much for the romanticism of pregnancy and childbirth!

By the way, there seems to be a rash of pregnancies where I work. Last count there were five of us all due between March and May, and most of them are first-timers. I know at least a few of them read the blog, so it will be fun to share our horror-stories honest accounts of pregnancy and childbirth with them in mind over the next little while.

Speaking of being pregnant, I’ve been trying to think of a more clever category name for my pregnancy-related posts than “a little bit pregnant.” For one thing, a woman who births 9 lbs and 10 lbs babies and who has switched to maternity clothes by the 15th week is hardly a “little bit” pregnant – especially with the sky-high beta numbers I had. And then of course, the name is also dangerously close to a rather well-known somebody else’s blog.

So speak, bloggy friends. Today is “name that label” day. What should I call my pregnancy posts?

Milestones

Today, I'm officially 14 weeks pregnant.

(pause for cathartic sigh)

I've had my eye on this particular milestone since the day I found out I was pregnant. I had my miscarriage, way back in 2000, when I was 13 1/2 weeks pregnant, and every subsequent pregnancy, that 13 1/2 week mark has loomed heavily on my horizon. Completely without logic, I know, but there are some things that are so deeply entrenched in the psyche that they defy logic.

The first hurdle was just after the 9 week mark, where we lost Tristan's twin. When the ultrasound a couple of weeks ago confirmed all was well, I felt the anxiety lift from my stomach to my chest. With this latest milestone passed, I think I can finally believe that I really am pregnant. (superstitious flinch)(touch wood)

I told Beloved on the weekend that I had passed the 13 1/2 week mark, and he was blissfully oblivious. "Does that mean you're in the second trimester now?" he asked with a sweet lack of awareness. Later that night, I mentioned the same thing to my mom, in almost the same words, and she looked at me with obvious recognition and said, "I know. I've been patiently waiting for you to get to this point. I'm so happy for you." Maybe it's a girl thing.

In a little bit less morbid vein, I am completely perplexed by my body this pregnancy. According to more than one scale, I've gained about five pounds since Labour Day - which is great. I was 15 lbs heavier than I would have liked when I got pregnant, so I've been a little bit leery about weight gain.

But if I've only gained five pounds, where the hell did all this extra me come from? I'm already visibly showing, depending on what I'm wearing, and even my fat jeans had to be retired last weekend. I can see extra weight on my thighs and around my middle - where did it all come from? Did my bones get decidedly more brittle and less dense in the month of October?

Aside from a two-week holiday from the gym at the end of October, I've been working out fairly regularly and intend to do so for most if not all of the pregnancy. But man, it's amazing how much extra effort you have to exert just to compensate for a lime-sized baby. I get that it will be harder for me to catch my breath and work at the same intensity when I'm really big, but it's amazing how much harder the cardio part of my workout is even now.

Where am I going with all this? I have no idea. Did I mention my other significant pregnancy symptom is massive pregnancy brain? And that would be on top of my regular micro-sized attention span. What? Were you saying something? Where was I and what did you do with my peanut-butter bagel?

The "science" of predicting gender

I've been spending an inordinate amount of brain power lately speculating on whether this little baby of mine is a girl or a boy. I know I'm not supposed to have any preference, and I'm probably going to have to go back and do a lot of revising of this blog one day so the boys I do have don't think I only kept them around because I was holding out for a girl, and I certainly don't want a potential future boy to think he was unwanted.

But, let's face it - I really do want a girl. *cringe* (That cringe is partly because I feel bad stating it so baldly, and partly because I feel like I'm tempting fate. Knock some wood for me, wouldja please?)

There's lots of reasons I want a girl. I want a girl because I think it would be an easier family dymanic to have two boys and a girl rather than strand Simon in the middle of three boys. I want a girl because I was a girl, and I've always had such a wonderful relationship with my mother, and she with her mother before that, and I would love to carry that on to the next generation. I want a girl because when boys grow up, they tend to move away and girls stay close. I want a girl simply because I don't have one.

Another day, I'll blog about why I want another boy. Because I do. Ambivalence, thy name is Dani.

I've heard a lot of women say they just 'knew' what the baby's gender is. So far, I'm two for two - I was convinced in my heart of hearts both Tristan and Simon were girls, right up until they exposed themselves on the ultrasound. (Exhibitionists they both are to this day.) This time, I can admit an absolute lack of insight - I have no inkling whatsoever.

The waiting, it is making me a little squirrelly. Four more weeks to the day - not that I'm counting - and we'll hopefully have some resolution to this mystery. What I will do with a result like "well, it's about 60% likely that it's a ..." remains to be seen.

In the interim, I've succumbed to folklore to tickle my fancy. I came across an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, where they set about to disprove three common "old wives' tales" for predicting gender. Sad though it is, I was more than happy to run through them all to see if I could glean any inside information.

The three tests they examined are the fetal heart rate test, the Chinese calendar test and the Draino (!) test.

The fetal heart rate test implies that babies with heart rates greater than 140 bpm were girls, and heart rates slower than than were boys.

Check! Baby's heart rate at the last ultrasound was 169 bpm. Girl.

The ancient Chinese birth gender chart, "buried in a tomb near Beijing for 700 years", apparently predicts gender with "over 90% accurracy" based on the month of conception and the mother's age at conception.

Check! Conceived in August, when I was 37 years old. Girl.

The third test involves peeing on some Draino, and even I, the queen of impatience, am not willing to risk a chemical burn to my nether regions to try this particular test. Call me crazy. We'll leave a question mark beside that one and call it a day.

And in case you are wondering, yes, it was always in the back of my mind that the whole predicate of the article in the CMAJ is the fact that the tests did NOT have any statistically significant value in predicting gender. I know, I know.

So anyway, I was willing to fold this up and keep it in my mental hope chest as a good omen when it occurred to me that I have my own control group to work with. I ran through both tests again given the same information I had for Tristan and Simon and the results, although somewhat deflating, are hardly surprising.

Turns out Tristan and Simon are both girls, too.

Pregnant thoughts

I don't know about you, but I got really, really tired of seeing that picture of a pregnant Brittney Spears wearing a T-shirt that says, "I've got the golden ticket" with an arrow pointing to her belly. Then again, maybe I'm just bitter because I couldn't pull that t-shirt over my leg on my skinniest day.

It got me thinking, though. If I were a maternity-wear designer, here's what I would print on my fabulous, brightly-coloured and roomy-without-being-tentlike pregnancy t-shirts:

You'd be cranky too, if you spent all day and night
building ears and eyes and elbows.

If pregnancy were a book
they would cut the last two chapters.
(Nora Ephron)

Life is tough enough without having someone
kick you from the inside.
(Rita Rudner)

By far the most common craving of pregnant women
is not to be pregnant.
(Phyllis Diller)

Hey, are you going to eat that?

You can play along, too. Or, how about this one? Not too long ago Marla, the Oracle of the Arcane Corners of the Interweb, sent me this link to the collective names of just about every animal on the planet. Did you know, for example, that a group of magpies is called a tiding? Or that a group of geese in flight is called a skein? And I've always loved the idea of an 'unkindness' of ravens.

It begs the question: what do you call a group of bloggers?

Twelve week update

I've just been for my 12 week OB appointment and prenatal screening ultrasound. Baby looks lovely in every way!

The ultrasound tech was having a little trouble getting the images she needed because the baby was in an awkward position and seemed to be sleeping. She gave my stomach a jolt hard enough to leave a residual sore spot an hour later (I'll stop worrying about damage from wayward preschooler elbows now) and my heart soared as the baby began to swim and dance on the screen. It's easy to forget in these early days that there's an actual baby in there with moving parts!

The tech pronounced the baby a docile soul, and wouldn't that be a gift? Truly, the third child should by some cosmic law be the most docile and good-natured of the three, right? RIGHT?

I myself am doing equally well as we head into the second trimester. Although I haven't had any actual morning sickness, my stomach has turned rather greasy and sour every day around 4 pm for the last month or so, lasting until bedtime. Not exactly the best time to be planning, making and eating dinner, let alone trying to accomplish domestic tasks and bedtime rituals. Thankfully, after feeling particularly crappy all last week, I'm feeling a whole hell of a lot better. Maybe there's something to this 'second trimester as honeymoon trimester' after all.

The earliest we can find out whether this baby has indoor or outdoor plumbing is six weeks from now, and we officially have the ultrasound booked for December 4, first thing in the morning. It's Beloved's birthday - can you guess what he wants for his birthday?

Ugh, six more weeks. How do people go an entire pregnancy not knowing? I've said every time someone has asked me whether I want to know the gender that if I could pee on a stick in the morning to know I'm pregnant, I'd like to pee on a stick in the afternoon to know the gender.

Six more weeks...

Nine-week update

I had my first OB appointment this week. I'll have the same obstetrician I had with my other pregnancies, and I really like her. She's warm but not touchy-feely, and while she's very kind and empathetic, she doesn't let me get away with anything. It's a nice mix!

Frankly, I could have practically phoned this appointment in. I'm only at nine weeks, so it's too early to hear the baby's heartbeat with the doppler. There isn't too much that she could tell me that I don't remember from my last two pregnancies, either. (I always stumble over the number of pregnancies. This is in fact my fourth pregnancy, since we lost the first one, but I don't want to keep dragging that into the conversation. Anyway, I digress...)

She listened to my heart and lungs, and took my blood pressure, which always tends to the low side. The only part I didn't like was the weigh-in, mostly because her scale is a full five pounds heavier than the scale I've been using at the gym to monitor my weight weekly. Ugh. I'm more paranoid about my weight this time around than I ever was before.

The one conversation that I meant to have and that I forgot about was the "advanced maternal age" issue. I'm 37, which while not exactly ancient still puts me into the risk category. I'll be having the Integrated Prenatal Screening (IPS) test that's available to all pregnant women in Ontario (can I get a hallelujah for socialized medicine? Throughout my entire pregnancy, the only cost I am likely to incur is in the hospital when I give birth, because I will upgrade from a ward to a private room at $100 a night.) IPS consists of an ultrasound at 12 weeks, plus two blood tests, and screens for increased likelihood of Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18 and neural tube defects.

What I can't quite bring myself to do is an amniocentisis. Because I know my OB fairly well by now, I don't think she'll push one on me, despite the 'advanced maternal age' issue. When I was pregnant with Tristan, the 18 week ultrasound showed an echogenic cardiac focus, a bright spot of calcification on the heart that was at the time considered to be a 'soft marker' for Down Syndrome. We went for genetic counselling, but facing a 1 in 200 chance of Downs, I couldn't bear the risk of the 1 in 200 chance of miscarriage with an amnio.

Although, it sure would be nice to know whether this baby's plumbing is of the indoor or outdoor variety - and the amnio can confirm that. Waiting another nine weeks for the ultrasound that shows gender is going to be excruciating!

The one thing I love about my OB's office is the chart on the wall with the actual-size representation of what your baby looks like right now. I'm thrilled to see that the little munchkin has developed fingers and toes already, and is roughly the size of my thumb. Nine weeks down, 31 to go!