My name is Lisa, and I'm an ultrasound junkie. It's been 2 days and 11 hours since my last encounter with the transducer.
At first, I could make it almost two weeks before I'd be jonesing for my next hit of the sonar induced serenity of seeing my cervix stable. But as the weeks went on, the addiction grew stronger and I'd need a new fix after only 6 or so days. This week I hit an all time low: a mere two days after I last gelled up, I was curled up on my bed, crying with desperation for another dose, nothing big, just a small peek to help smooth things out. Come on, man: I need this.
I'm not the only junkie living under this roof. My partner is a real enabler. He saw me curled up on the bed, shaking with need, and he actually encouraged me to call my dealer/doctor to schedule a fix. And he drove me there, and held my hand while Dr. Dealer doled out a hit of transducer tranquility. And he too felt the sweet relief as the sound waves flowed through my body, and images of an unchanged cervix flowed onto the screen.
My next hit is in a mere 3 hours, so today is a good day.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Circling
Today I am deep in the crazies. Of course I am. Yesterday we heard the "f" word at our doctors appointment and once either Bruno or I hear that word, it is like some sort of hypnosis trigger: the sane parts of ourselves fall into a deep trance and the crazy people are left running the show.
When Bruno came home last night and I gave him the rest of the doctor's report, it was exactly how I feared (minus the swimming to Croatia part). He yelled at me to get in bed (he wouldn't continue talking to me until I walked to the bedroom and laid down in bed), yelled at my belly to tell my cervix to stop funneling, yelled at the ceiling that it couldn't give us one G.D. day of peace. He yelled for a while.
We've both been in kind of a zombie state since then. Breakfast was a dreary drudge, and then he was off to work, and I was off to paranoia land. My buttocks keep falling asleep: is that because my cervix has opened?! I eat a snack and my belly gets hard with digestion: is that a contraction? I had one yesterday I'm pretty sure: is this a new pattern?! I called Mom and it's been an hour and she hasn't called me back: she must be furious with me for the e-mail I sent yesterday and Dad must be mad at me too and how dare they be mad at me right now, don't they know I am hanging on by a thread over here. A few hours later, I get a sunny phone call from Mom saying how she's been out most of the day, just getting my message now, and hopes today is a good day for me.
The pinnacle of the crazy was when I was lying in bed this afternoon, trying to take a nap, and I realize that the p17 shot they gave me yesterday didn't hurt at all. Normally they sting like mad and it lasts for two hours. This shot didn't hurt even for a minute. I conclude that they must have forgotten to draw the medicine up into the shot and instead shot my ass full of air! As I type the words now, a few hours post-nadir, I can't help but laugh out loud: even I recognize how insane this thought was.
I stand in the kitchen, holding the medicine bottle in my hand, trying to assess how much is left, crying with the impotence of it. A small (oh so small) voice of reason reminds me that the bottle I am holding contains hormones and maybe, just maybe, the proof that the shot did contain more than air is the outrageously irrational fears I am buying into at this very moment. I throw on my shoes and leave the house. The fresh air and sunshine immediately start to cut through the crazy. A call to my sister-in-law while I walk finishes the transition. Thank goodness.
Of course, as I write this, my buttocks have fallen asleep again, and I wonder...
When Bruno came home last night and I gave him the rest of the doctor's report, it was exactly how I feared (minus the swimming to Croatia part). He yelled at me to get in bed (he wouldn't continue talking to me until I walked to the bedroom and laid down in bed), yelled at my belly to tell my cervix to stop funneling, yelled at the ceiling that it couldn't give us one G.D. day of peace. He yelled for a while.
We've both been in kind of a zombie state since then. Breakfast was a dreary drudge, and then he was off to work, and I was off to paranoia land. My buttocks keep falling asleep: is that because my cervix has opened?! I eat a snack and my belly gets hard with digestion: is that a contraction? I had one yesterday I'm pretty sure: is this a new pattern?! I called Mom and it's been an hour and she hasn't called me back: she must be furious with me for the e-mail I sent yesterday and Dad must be mad at me too and how dare they be mad at me right now, don't they know I am hanging on by a thread over here. A few hours later, I get a sunny phone call from Mom saying how she's been out most of the day, just getting my message now, and hopes today is a good day for me.
The pinnacle of the crazy was when I was lying in bed this afternoon, trying to take a nap, and I realize that the p17 shot they gave me yesterday didn't hurt at all. Normally they sting like mad and it lasts for two hours. This shot didn't hurt even for a minute. I conclude that they must have forgotten to draw the medicine up into the shot and instead shot my ass full of air! As I type the words now, a few hours post-nadir, I can't help but laugh out loud: even I recognize how insane this thought was.
I stand in the kitchen, holding the medicine bottle in my hand, trying to assess how much is left, crying with the impotence of it. A small (oh so small) voice of reason reminds me that the bottle I am holding contains hormones and maybe, just maybe, the proof that the shot did contain more than air is the outrageously irrational fears I am buying into at this very moment. I throw on my shoes and leave the house. The fresh air and sunshine immediately start to cut through the crazy. A call to my sister-in-law while I walk finishes the transition. Thank goodness.
Of course, as I write this, my buttocks have fallen asleep again, and I wonder...
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Just The Facts, Ma'am, Week 19
Today's appointment was with the Ob/Gyn, Dr. R.
Baby girl A and B are looking great: kicking around, kicking each other, playing Red Rover with the membrane separating them. They are in constant motion. Dr. R remarked that they seem to take after their mother. I think he just doesn't know Bruno that well yet.
My cervix is measuring 4.3, down a bit from the 4.7 of two weeks ago, and the 5.0 of the month before that, but Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal and well within the range of what a cervix should measure at this point in a pregnancy. They don't start to worry about a cervical measure until it falls below 2.5, so we are still way above that.
There was some funneling (opening), at the internal os of the cervix (the side closest to the uterus). Oh, how I'd hoped to go our whole pregnancy and never hear the "f" word. But, again, Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal at this point in a second pregnancy and says he'd be surprised if he didn't see this. I asked if I should stop my 20 minute walks, or get in bed and stay there: he said no need for that. I cross-referenced this with my perinatologist, Dr. K, who writes back, "My feel is that nothing has changed so far. See you next week"
OK then. No one is concerned. This is normal. I even call my sister-in-law who tells me that, at week 19 of the pregnancy she just successfully navigated, she had funneling and her cervical measure was only 3.0.
OK then. Everyone stay calm. No need for alarm.
Except it sounds so exactly like the beginnings of what happened last time that I notice I slyly skipped my 20 minute walk today, choosing instead to spend the day in bed, napping. And I notice that I haven't yet told Bruno the full details of today's appointment, other than to say that Dr. R says all is normal, out of fear that Bruno would swim to Croatia to retrieve his Mama, swim back with her on his shoulders and then order her to sit on my hair all day in order to keep me lying in bed.
These are some things that I notice.
And those are the facts.
Baby girl A and B are looking great: kicking around, kicking each other, playing Red Rover with the membrane separating them. They are in constant motion. Dr. R remarked that they seem to take after their mother. I think he just doesn't know Bruno that well yet.
My cervix is measuring 4.3, down a bit from the 4.7 of two weeks ago, and the 5.0 of the month before that, but Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal and well within the range of what a cervix should measure at this point in a pregnancy. They don't start to worry about a cervical measure until it falls below 2.5, so we are still way above that.
There was some funneling (opening), at the internal os of the cervix (the side closest to the uterus). Oh, how I'd hoped to go our whole pregnancy and never hear the "f" word. But, again, Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal at this point in a second pregnancy and says he'd be surprised if he didn't see this. I asked if I should stop my 20 minute walks, or get in bed and stay there: he said no need for that. I cross-referenced this with my perinatologist, Dr. K, who writes back, "My feel is that nothing has changed so far. See you next week"
OK then. No one is concerned. This is normal. I even call my sister-in-law who tells me that, at week 19 of the pregnancy she just successfully navigated, she had funneling and her cervical measure was only 3.0.
OK then. Everyone stay calm. No need for alarm.
Except it sounds so exactly like the beginnings of what happened last time that I notice I slyly skipped my 20 minute walk today, choosing instead to spend the day in bed, napping. And I notice that I haven't yet told Bruno the full details of today's appointment, other than to say that Dr. R says all is normal, out of fear that Bruno would swim to Croatia to retrieve his Mama, swim back with her on his shoulders and then order her to sit on my hair all day in order to keep me lying in bed.
These are some things that I notice.
And those are the facts.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Lemonade
Wow, what a week.
Big scares have been had and resolved, statistics have been doled out and adjusted and retracted and yet irretrievably absorbed into the psyche, markers have been, well, marked, babies have been looked at and looked at and looked at, Mama has been poked and prodded and gooped up and wiped clean and sent hither and thither. Tears have been shed and anger and panic have been felt and decisions have been made. And relief is beginning to be felt.
Last Thur, week 18, we had our big level 2 ultrasound where the technician takes measurements of every possible aspect of baby A and then of baby B, saying nothing while doing so. Nothing, while measuring aspects of baby A's brain again and again and again. Nothing, while the two bright white dots appear in Baby B's heart. Nothing, while the strange reptilian images flash on the screen, freeze, and disappear. Then the doctor comes in and measures some more of the exact same things, and just before Bruno is about to remove the last of his hair from his head, finally tells us. She has found a soft marker for Down Syndrome on Baby B's heart: an echogenic focus. And, more alarmingly, the tech captured a shot of Baby A's heart that seems to show a potentially fatal congenital heart defect, but the doctor can't repeat the tech's findings and thinks it is just a bad camera angle, but, just to be on the safe side, she wants to send us today, now, to get a fetal echocardiogram. Just to be sure.
Bruno looks like he is about to faint. I can tell the reins have slipped his hands and the horses of his fear are now running wild. He has abandoned the sanity ship, forgotten his life jacket and jumped straight into the roiling sea of assuming the very worst. Poor guy.
Through something that could alternately be called motherly intuition, abject denial, or base survival instinct, I am not worried about the potential heart defect. That is the red herring in our story, I am certain, and not our path. We will need to go through the inconvenience of getting over to the hospital and getting through the ordeal of another 2 hour ultrasound, but in the end we will be told all is well with Baby A's heart. And that is exactly how that part plays out: a wonderfully warm new pair of technician and doctor spend another two hours silently measuring all kinds of things, the "nothing" hanging so heavily in the room that Bruno actually has to excuse himself to the lavatory for a while. But, two hours later, we are told that, yes, in fact, the first tech just got a lousy angle, and this doctor finds nothing wrong with Baby A's heart.
Ok. Phew. Now back to Baby B.
Before we were bundled off for our second 2 hour ultrasound of the day, we were taken into a room for genetic counseling. We were told that echogenic foci (the bright spots on Baby B's heart), have absolutely no medical repercussions, no impact on anything, only that a certain number of Downs Syndrome babies have them. And so finding this marker on Baby B increases our odds to 1 in 150 that one of the girls has Downs. Except, we are told, really we should ignore that because 5% of "normal" babies have this marker and 7% of Downs babies have it, so really it is a nearly useless marker, the softest of the soft. But they are compelled to report it. But really we should ignore it. But would we now like to consider having an amnio?
Oy.
They advise us to take the weekend off from thinking about it, and to weigh the two worst case scenarios against each other. Worst case scenario 1 being we have an amnio and the amnio either goes wrong or causes a complication which causes us to lose the entire pregnancy. Or, that in finding that one of the girls has Downs and choosing to selectively terminate, we lose the entire pregnancy. Worst case scenario 2 is that at the successful birth of our twin girls, they tell us that one or both of them has Downs, and our lives are altered forever.
We do take the weekend off from thinking about it. Bruno flies up to Vancouver to ski with a friend and I go for a weekend at Spa Morse (Mom and Dad's place). We come back together on Monday to begin to work our way through this statistical nightmare and the crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth begins at the Universe which just won't cut us any slack and make anything easy for us.
After a day or two of picking at the threads of the dilemma, beginning to tease apart the complicated knot of our feelings, we got down to brass tacks on Wed evening and discovered that we were actually very clear about how we felt, and very much on the same page. We both felt that if we chose to do an amnio, and anything at all went wrong with the pregnancy from that point on, we would assume that it was because we had intervened, had needed to know and control things. And we wouldn't survive that. We'd eat ourselves alive with guilt and we don't think we'd recover. Whereas if we got to their birth and discovered one or more daughter had Downs, we'd feel sad and mad and Job-like for a bit, and then we'd make magic. We'd pull together and build a beautiful life for our family. I'd start an Arts Camp for developmentally disabled kids and Bruno would run some sort of camping/hiking/biking retreat for families with DS kids. We actually decided that regardless of whether our girls are born with Downs, we will do these things.
When we laid it out like that, it became clear that there was only one choice for us right now: option 1 had the potential to lead to emotional Armageddon, whereas we could live with and even thrive with option 2. So, we decided, once and for all, to eschew the amnio: to open up our controlling little fists and let go and see what happens next. And I have to say, that decision, and coming to it together as a couple, has given me a lot of peace, and a lot of hope.
I guess when you find yourself in the middle of a two year lemon hailstorm, eventually you find your way to getting out the juicer and making something sweet.
Big scares have been had and resolved, statistics have been doled out and adjusted and retracted and yet irretrievably absorbed into the psyche, markers have been, well, marked, babies have been looked at and looked at and looked at, Mama has been poked and prodded and gooped up and wiped clean and sent hither and thither. Tears have been shed and anger and panic have been felt and decisions have been made. And relief is beginning to be felt.
Last Thur, week 18, we had our big level 2 ultrasound where the technician takes measurements of every possible aspect of baby A and then of baby B, saying nothing while doing so. Nothing, while measuring aspects of baby A's brain again and again and again. Nothing, while the two bright white dots appear in Baby B's heart. Nothing, while the strange reptilian images flash on the screen, freeze, and disappear. Then the doctor comes in and measures some more of the exact same things, and just before Bruno is about to remove the last of his hair from his head, finally tells us. She has found a soft marker for Down Syndrome on Baby B's heart: an echogenic focus. And, more alarmingly, the tech captured a shot of Baby A's heart that seems to show a potentially fatal congenital heart defect, but the doctor can't repeat the tech's findings and thinks it is just a bad camera angle, but, just to be on the safe side, she wants to send us today, now, to get a fetal echocardiogram. Just to be sure.
Bruno looks like he is about to faint. I can tell the reins have slipped his hands and the horses of his fear are now running wild. He has abandoned the sanity ship, forgotten his life jacket and jumped straight into the roiling sea of assuming the very worst. Poor guy.
Through something that could alternately be called motherly intuition, abject denial, or base survival instinct, I am not worried about the potential heart defect. That is the red herring in our story, I am certain, and not our path. We will need to go through the inconvenience of getting over to the hospital and getting through the ordeal of another 2 hour ultrasound, but in the end we will be told all is well with Baby A's heart. And that is exactly how that part plays out: a wonderfully warm new pair of technician and doctor spend another two hours silently measuring all kinds of things, the "nothing" hanging so heavily in the room that Bruno actually has to excuse himself to the lavatory for a while. But, two hours later, we are told that, yes, in fact, the first tech just got a lousy angle, and this doctor finds nothing wrong with Baby A's heart.
Ok. Phew. Now back to Baby B.
Before we were bundled off for our second 2 hour ultrasound of the day, we were taken into a room for genetic counseling. We were told that echogenic foci (the bright spots on Baby B's heart), have absolutely no medical repercussions, no impact on anything, only that a certain number of Downs Syndrome babies have them. And so finding this marker on Baby B increases our odds to 1 in 150 that one of the girls has Downs. Except, we are told, really we should ignore that because 5% of "normal" babies have this marker and 7% of Downs babies have it, so really it is a nearly useless marker, the softest of the soft. But they are compelled to report it. But really we should ignore it. But would we now like to consider having an amnio?
Oy.
They advise us to take the weekend off from thinking about it, and to weigh the two worst case scenarios against each other. Worst case scenario 1 being we have an amnio and the amnio either goes wrong or causes a complication which causes us to lose the entire pregnancy. Or, that in finding that one of the girls has Downs and choosing to selectively terminate, we lose the entire pregnancy. Worst case scenario 2 is that at the successful birth of our twin girls, they tell us that one or both of them has Downs, and our lives are altered forever.
We do take the weekend off from thinking about it. Bruno flies up to Vancouver to ski with a friend and I go for a weekend at Spa Morse (Mom and Dad's place). We come back together on Monday to begin to work our way through this statistical nightmare and the crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth begins at the Universe which just won't cut us any slack and make anything easy for us.
After a day or two of picking at the threads of the dilemma, beginning to tease apart the complicated knot of our feelings, we got down to brass tacks on Wed evening and discovered that we were actually very clear about how we felt, and very much on the same page. We both felt that if we chose to do an amnio, and anything at all went wrong with the pregnancy from that point on, we would assume that it was because we had intervened, had needed to know and control things. And we wouldn't survive that. We'd eat ourselves alive with guilt and we don't think we'd recover. Whereas if we got to their birth and discovered one or more daughter had Downs, we'd feel sad and mad and Job-like for a bit, and then we'd make magic. We'd pull together and build a beautiful life for our family. I'd start an Arts Camp for developmentally disabled kids and Bruno would run some sort of camping/hiking/biking retreat for families with DS kids. We actually decided that regardless of whether our girls are born with Downs, we will do these things.
When we laid it out like that, it became clear that there was only one choice for us right now: option 1 had the potential to lead to emotional Armageddon, whereas we could live with and even thrive with option 2. So, we decided, once and for all, to eschew the amnio: to open up our controlling little fists and let go and see what happens next. And I have to say, that decision, and coming to it together as a couple, has given me a lot of peace, and a lot of hope.
I guess when you find yourself in the middle of a two year lemon hailstorm, eventually you find your way to getting out the juicer and making something sweet.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Me and U
Picture:
1:39 AM: a buck-naked, overheated, irrationally incensed pregnant woman, strung out on sodium and sugar from a pulled pork sandwich and way too many whole grain chocolate chip cookies (ostensibly nutritionally valuable, but actually composed entirely of pregnancy crack) gets up and yanks her new acquisition, a U shaped pregnancy sleeping pillow, which takes up nearly the whole bed and weighs nearly as much as her pre-pregnancy weight, from said bed and onto the floor. With tears in her eyes, she gathers her previous system, a complicated collection of normal sized pillows in varying states of dilapidation, tosses them on the bed, marches off to the office to admit her folly on her blog, and then returns to the scene of her U shaped crime to attempt to gather any sleep still available to be had that night, not to mention the shreds of her dignity.
Thoughts:
1) Thank goodness Bruno isn't home to witness her pillow mutilation.
2) Thank goodness he comes home tomorrow. Apparently, she's become a bit unglued.
1:39 AM: a buck-naked, overheated, irrationally incensed pregnant woman, strung out on sodium and sugar from a pulled pork sandwich and way too many whole grain chocolate chip cookies (ostensibly nutritionally valuable, but actually composed entirely of pregnancy crack) gets up and yanks her new acquisition, a U shaped pregnancy sleeping pillow, which takes up nearly the whole bed and weighs nearly as much as her pre-pregnancy weight, from said bed and onto the floor. With tears in her eyes, she gathers her previous system, a complicated collection of normal sized pillows in varying states of dilapidation, tosses them on the bed, marches off to the office to admit her folly on her blog, and then returns to the scene of her U shaped crime to attempt to gather any sleep still available to be had that night, not to mention the shreds of her dignity.
Thoughts:
1) Thank goodness Bruno isn't home to witness her pillow mutilation.
2) Thank goodness he comes home tomorrow. Apparently, she's become a bit unglued.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Shout out
I think I am beginning to find some rhythm and fun in all this. Today, Bruno and I decided to go on an outing to Napa. Our doctors had said that a drive of that distance would be fine, and since we anticipate an ever closing ring of movement, we decided to try getting out while the getting was good.
We were both pretty grouchy wrecks this morning, nervous that somehow something would go wrong. Bruno shouted a bit about, hmmm...I don't know what he was shouting about, and I changed outfits a few times, desperately trying to imagine clothes I could wear over my ballooning body for a whole day out and not want to tear off after a few hours. But eventually Bruno shouted out whatever nerves he needed to get out, and I packed a bag of alternative outfits, along with lunch, water, second lunch and a book, and we made it out of the house. And we only had to double back once, to pick up the bag which I left on the kitchen counter: pregnancy brain is sort of at the level of cow consciousness.
But then, really, we were off, and we started to relax a little and enjoy life. The California rain stopped and I was able to take in the beautiful green rolling hills, and the vineyards filled with yellow flowers: it's mustard season in Napa. We ate lunch as we drove, and even stopped in Petaluma on the way where Bruno let me trade in my 20 minute walk for 30 minutes on my feet trying on clothes at the Motherhood Maternity outlet. (I got a fetching red dress for $20 that floats effortlessly over my bubble belly, impinging no part of my body: bliss!) Then I sat like a queen on a series of chairs and fitting room benches declaring Yea or Nay while Bruno modeled various renditions of male work clothes. A lovely drive through more Napa scenery while I ate second lunch, another sit at the coffee and cupcake cafe (of course) and then an early dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Ubuntu, a bio-dynamic vegetarian place with first-rate food all from things grown either in their own gardens or locally by other gardeners. On our drive home, I reclined the passenger seat all the way down, turned on the tushie warmer, and napped the whole way.
And here I am, having spent 9 hours out of the house (but only 45 minutes total on my feet), and I'M NOT FREAKING OUT!! I know it is too much to hope that I've turned this emotional corner for good, but I'm going to shout out my gratitude for this new found peace and happiness for as long as it lasts!!
We were both pretty grouchy wrecks this morning, nervous that somehow something would go wrong. Bruno shouted a bit about, hmmm...I don't know what he was shouting about, and I changed outfits a few times, desperately trying to imagine clothes I could wear over my ballooning body for a whole day out and not want to tear off after a few hours. But eventually Bruno shouted out whatever nerves he needed to get out, and I packed a bag of alternative outfits, along with lunch, water, second lunch and a book, and we made it out of the house. And we only had to double back once, to pick up the bag which I left on the kitchen counter: pregnancy brain is sort of at the level of cow consciousness.
But then, really, we were off, and we started to relax a little and enjoy life. The California rain stopped and I was able to take in the beautiful green rolling hills, and the vineyards filled with yellow flowers: it's mustard season in Napa. We ate lunch as we drove, and even stopped in Petaluma on the way where Bruno let me trade in my 20 minute walk for 30 minutes on my feet trying on clothes at the Motherhood Maternity outlet. (I got a fetching red dress for $20 that floats effortlessly over my bubble belly, impinging no part of my body: bliss!) Then I sat like a queen on a series of chairs and fitting room benches declaring Yea or Nay while Bruno modeled various renditions of male work clothes. A lovely drive through more Napa scenery while I ate second lunch, another sit at the coffee and cupcake cafe (of course) and then an early dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Ubuntu, a bio-dynamic vegetarian place with first-rate food all from things grown either in their own gardens or locally by other gardeners. On our drive home, I reclined the passenger seat all the way down, turned on the tushie warmer, and napped the whole way.
And here I am, having spent 9 hours out of the house (but only 45 minutes total on my feet), and I'M NOT FREAKING OUT!! I know it is too much to hope that I've turned this emotional corner for good, but I'm going to shout out my gratitude for this new found peace and happiness for as long as it lasts!!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Journey On
So here we are. Nearly halfway through the journey, and yet also at the beginning again. I am now 17 weeks and 4 days pregnant, and when I was 17 weeks and 4 days pregnant with Pedro and Archer, we had a detailed ultrasound which showed my cervix to be "long" and "closed". We never got any measurements, and it was the first time in the pregnancy that anyone had measured my cervix so we don't really know what "long" meant. And as far as I know, no one pressed down on my belly to see if there was any funneling. But we were given the stamp of approval and sent on our way to drive across the country. Three weeks later, without my having felt a thing, my cervix had completely opened and our pregnancy was in peril.
So, here we are. At a familiar moment, embarking on a familiar journey, again through the dangerous period, but this time with so much more to guide us. We have taken so many steps to prepare for this moment, to try to pave the way onto a new road. We had the cerclage placed, added vitamins and supplements to bolster my immune system and quiet my uterus, started weekly monitoring of my cervix and our girls, began modified bedrest at week 12. And today, we started p17 shots, a painful little injection into my gluteal muscles, another weapon in our arsenal to fight against the path of the past.
So, here we are. I feel as though everything we have been through so far has been leading to these next three weeks. Of course, we need to make it much father than the next three weeks, but I feel the true battle begins now, the battle to change the course, to not repeat history. If we make it through the next three weeks without my going into labor, without my cervix opening, then I think we will have achieved a major step forward and an immense morale boost for the troupes.
So, here we are. And I, for one, am excited and even hopeful about what happens next.
.jpg)
So, here we are. At a familiar moment, embarking on a familiar journey, again through the dangerous period, but this time with so much more to guide us. We have taken so many steps to prepare for this moment, to try to pave the way onto a new road. We had the cerclage placed, added vitamins and supplements to bolster my immune system and quiet my uterus, started weekly monitoring of my cervix and our girls, began modified bedrest at week 12. And today, we started p17 shots, a painful little injection into my gluteal muscles, another weapon in our arsenal to fight against the path of the past.
So, here we are. I feel as though everything we have been through so far has been leading to these next three weeks. Of course, we need to make it much father than the next three weeks, but I feel the true battle begins now, the battle to change the course, to not repeat history. If we make it through the next three weeks without my going into labor, without my cervix opening, then I think we will have achieved a major step forward and an immense morale boost for the troupes.
So, here we are. And I, for one, am excited and even hopeful about what happens next.
.jpg)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
