3 More Days

Well, in 3 days Evan Brian Castrucci will be here. I’m full of a lot of different emotions but am basically focusing on what needs to get done: putting together his room (furniture finally came yesterday), laundry, getting ready for guests, cooking so I can have food ready to go in my freezer, and trying to give my cats TONS of love to bide them for a while.

This will be my last post for some time, but I wanted to share one final thing with you: Natural Childbirth.

Even though it’s highly likely my labor will end in a c-section, I’m going to try and give birth vaginally and I will be trying to do this naturally. No, I didn’t just say I’ve been smoking crack the past 6 months (even though that is how people usually react when they hear what I’ll be attempting to do) I simply said that I’m going to try and let my body do what it knows how to do (although it supposedly knew how to get pregnant and I needed medical intervention for that). For this, I wanted to share with you why I chose natural birth as what I wanted to do.

Throughout the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy, I conducted many highly unscientific and unreliable surveys with women who have given birth. Basically, I asked them about their birth stories and I asked them to be as honest as possible (I don’t believe in not telling pregnant women your truth, we should know possible outcomes).

Here is what I remember hearing from women who chose to give birth with an epidural. For them, birth was:

• Something they got through
  
• Not as bad as they had anticipated
  
• Barely a bother since they were high from the epidural
  
• Worth it because they got a baby at the end
  

Here is what I remember hearing from women who chose to give birth naturally. For them, birth was:

• An amazing moment where their bodies worked in conjunction with the baby to give birth
  
• Uncomfortable, but being able to be in the moment, to feel their child emerge into the world was indescribable
  
• A moment filled with love and awe

So, from my poorly planned and epidemiologically flawed survey, what I gleaned was that the women who gave birth naturally had an experience with their baby (they first crew only ever mentioned the baby as an after item) that they remembered as wonderful, not as a trial. Having this information and already being someone who leans towards the non-medical, I felt there was no other choice for me, I would like to be there with my child when he enters the world.

For me, it’s that simple. I don’t necessarily believe that naturally birthed children are smarter or less traumatized, or any of that. I simply believe the experience is something than can transcend.

But… remember those clichés I had at the bottom of my “Intermission” post from August 13? You don’t? Well… take a second, scroll down and look at it. I’ll wait for you.
Welcome back, now let’s see how those play into this situation (mostly the one about God’s bizarre sense of humor).

Once we decided on natural birth, we enrolled in a class and started planning… can you hear God laughing in the background? I, who hate planning, needed to plan to be prepared for my choice. Well, here we are now, 10 weeks later, and my baby is so big that I’m sure my birth will be about medical intervention – not natural in any way. This is the main reason I hate planning, the let down when things out of your control mess with your plan.

And yes, I know that however Evan comes in to this world is the best way… but that thought process doesn’t follow my plans.

Anyway, when I get back with a baby and find some time to write, I have no doubt there will be entertaining stories from the hospital. It just doesn’t seem possible for Brian and I to do anything without it turning into a sitcom… hmm – is this reality or our perception – perhaps something to explore later.

Wish me luck and thanks for reading!

Third Trimester: Almost There

I’ve been in the 3rd trimester for the past 10 weeks. To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…” and all the other stuff. That pretty much sums up the third trimester.

Here is what was/is good about the third trimester:

• Fetal movement: I don’t care what anyone says I will never bore of feeling Evan. And I know that once he is no longer in there, I’m going to feel a little empty.
  
• Looking pregnant: It really wasn’t until the third trimester that I finally went over the “is she fat or pregnant” hump. Looking pregnant is nice because it is an immediate excuse for why you are a little more cranky than usual, you are sweating more, or why you fall asleep in a meeting. You really don’t have to say anything, just point to your belly.
  
• Viability: Basically, by the third trimester, the question becomes when you are going to have a baby and not “if.”
  
• Baby Showers: What isn’t fun about having people give you gifts? I’m not the biggest fan of being the center of attention at showers, but I do love the gifts.
  
• Husband perks: foot rubs, belly lotion, pedicures and all the other pampering things your husband is all the sudden ready to do for you.

But, as Dickens points out, the third trimester is also the worst of times (at least I think that is what he was referring to in the first line of A Tale of Two Cities. And so now let’s take a look at some of my not so favorite things about the third trimester.


Sleeping


Yes, I was told sleeping would be difficult but was assured that as long as I stayed on my side and bought a body pillow, everything would be okay. Well, they lied. There has been nothing “okay” about sleeping since week 28. Yes, I bought the body pillow, yes, I tried to sleep on my side, but I couldn’t last for more than 45 minutes at the most. So, I finally gave up and decided to sleep on my leopard print chaise lounge. I can get 2-3 hours straight on the chaise lounge, then I go to the bed for a few hours, then I return to the chaise and back and forth all night. The one thing I can’t do on the chaise is stretch out. I really miss stretching out.

So, everyone says that this not sleeping thing is God’s way of getting me prepared for when the baby comes. Okay, fine… but did He need to prep me for 10 weeks? Couldn’t I have learned the same lesson in like 3 weeks at the most?


Carpal Tunnel / Tingly Sensation



I don’t know if you are aware of this… but apparently carpal tunnel syndrome is a common side effect of pregnancy and it is no joke! I have to admit that in the past, when people would complain about carpal tunnel, I thought they were over-reacting. I’m here to tell you now, THEY ARE NOT KIDDING! I am a pretty independent woman and so far, Brian has had to cut up my food twice out in public (and more than that in private). I choose meals to cook based on how much cutting there is in the prep, I wear a brace as often as possible, and I spend a lot of time resting my wrist. It really really hurts.

In addition to the carpal tunnel, my hands are so swollen (which causes carpal tunnel) that my fingers are constantly tingling. I have to often stop what I’m doing, make and unmake a fist, let the hands hang and let the blood flow. More of an inconvenience than the pain of carpal tunnel.


Ankles (or lack thereof)

Yes, I’ve heard the rumors of swelling – that it happens to some women. But I don’t know that I really understood what it would look / feel like. It started slowly, I was able to wear my normal shoes for a while, it just looked like I was baking bread over the tops of them. At night the swelling would go down and my feet would look normal by morning. And then one day my normal shoes felt very uncomfortable and I accepted that I had to move on to flip-flops (this was about 5 weeks ago).

Once I started to wear the flip flops, I noticed some other changes. My ankles completely disappeared – I have a stump that meets my foot at a right angle. In fact, they now swell so much that there is a permanent crease where my left and foot meet. The swelling no longer goes down and it’s been weeks since I’ve seen my ankles.

The scariest part? I put on my flip flops the other day and I can barely wear them anymore. I have to think that at some point my feet will just have had it and boycott. I don’t know what that will look like, but let’s hope it doesn’t happen before the 25th.


Glucose



At 24 weeks, back in the second trimester, I, like every other pregnant woman, went and got my glucose test for Gestational Diabetes (GD). Since I had been diagnosed with PCOS and since I was overweight before I got pregnant we (at least my medical practitioners and myself) were all in shock when it came back that I didn’t have GD. So I continued with my normal diet into the third trimester.

Then, giant baby came on the scene. I had been measuring big throughout my entire pregnancy. This is no surprise considering the fact that I’m almost 5’ tall and the average woman has about 5 inches on me where she can put the baby. But then, over the last few weeks, I’ve ballooned. Last Friday, at 37 weeks, I was measuring 44 weeks (3 more centimeters than the previous week). My doctor thought that maybe I do have GD which would contribute to his size (either that or I just grow giant babies).

Since I’m giving birth in a week, it’s important to know if I have GD so that they can address the baby’s blood sugar levels once he is born. So, since Saturday, I’ve been pricking my fingers 4 times a day to test my glucose levels (fasting, 2 hours after breakfast, 2 hours after lunch, 2 hours after dinner) and will be doing this until at least Friday when I have the next appointment. Just to add fun to my medical prognosis, the last 4 days I’ve been well within the normal range. Today, my fasting and my after breakfast levels were high. I swear I’ve done nothing different. But, I mean come one, why not throw a curve ball… juts for fun?


Doctor’s Appointments

Read my post from yesterday. Now think about the fact that in the third trimester, I’ve seen a midwife or physician EVERY WEEK. Nothing has changed about what happens in the appointments, just how often it happens.



And it might seem like the bad outweighs the good, but that really isn’t true. It’s just that there is always more to say about the bad. This is why Dickens didn’t write : “It was the best of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the epoch of belief …” No one would have read it.

I have loved being pregnant – all parts except for the anxiety, carpal tunnel, and sleeping – but I’m ready for the baby. I think the gestational period works very well and I know that this is as good as it gets.

Second Trimester

Medically speaking, the second trimester was of no consequence for me. My thyroid was under control and there were no new drugs to take. However, for the pregnancy, the greatest things happen in the second trimester.

Once we hit week 14, Brian and I had accepted that I had a viable pregnancy and we began to tell people. We knew we wanted to find out the sex (we are two extremely impatient people) but we had to wait until the 20 week ultrasound. So, from week 14 to week 20 we waited. The only thing that happened in those weeks is that I started to go to the doctor twice a month and the exhaustion of the first trimester disappeared. From the outside view, I didn’t look pregnant at all.

Brian had more anxiety around the pregnancy than I did. Probably because 1) the pregnancy was physically happening to me, and 2) he is a worst-case scenario man. Because of this, our lives settled into a nice pattern of anxiety in between visits as shown by the picture below.

We would go to an OB visit, Brian would hear the heartbeat and his anxiety level would be extremely low. Then, over the next 2 weeks, his anxiety would spike until the next visit when it plummeted back down when he heard the heartbeat again. He talked about getting a home Doppler but I adamantly was against this because I knew he would want to do it every 5 minutes and I had other things to do, and I knew that if we couldn’t find it right away, we would be at the ER – me so they could find the heartbeat, and him so they could give him some anti-anxiety medication and get him breathing normally.

The 20th week came and we were ready to find out the sex. Loopy ultrasound lady was showing us all the different parts of the baby (to this day is she hadn’t labeled the pictures I would have no idea what I was looking at) and she was telling us about the DVD she as making (yes, we have a DVD, that is pretty cool). All the sudden she said she couldn’t want anymore because she is sure we saw that it is definitely a boy. Brian claims that he did see but I had to take her word for it. At this point Whoosha Pupo became Evan Brian.

We had already picked out names for either sex. We couldn’t decide on any family names (because let’s face it, “Tom” and “Joe” were all played out on my side and even though we had thought about “Ydolo” from his side, it didn’t seem to play as well in Texas) so Brian recommended we look at the pregnancy. He mentioned that the earliest sign of the pregnancy was on Christmas Eve so if it was a girl it would be “Eve.” The only male equivalent we could think of was “Evan.” It felt weird to start calling him Evan, but we did immediately.

There was one thing left for the second trimester that hadn’t happened – feeling fetal movement. I was often on the boards on babycenter.com reading about how and when people felt fetal movement and on Google.com to learn it was “normal” to feel it anywhere from week 18 – 22 for a first pregnancy. Everyone kept trying to explain to me what the first flutters felt like but no on really could be specific. This was the one time I started to get anxious and couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t feeling him. Then, one night as we were watching TV, my stomach felt like it had been on a roller coaster… there was a light fluttering and I knew it was Evan. I was 22 weeks – he was pushing it to the very end. And soon after the first movement, he was moving all the time – bouncing around in there. I’ve been told that fetal movement is not an indicator for the activity level of the baby once he is born… but if there is even a small correlation, I’m in trouble. The boy has not stopped moving since week 22.

The rest of the second trimester came and went quickly. We bought baby furniture, registered at Babies-R-Us for anything that seemed remotely necessary (after we had our panic attack about an entire wall of bottle choices), and I continued to get blood taken monthly for the endocrinologist, go and see the nurse at the endocrinologist every other month, and saw my OB ever 2 weeks. And before I end this blog, I would like to take a minute to discuss these doctor’s appointments.

I have heard people say, mostly people in public health, that pre-natal care is important as a concept but not from a doctor’s visit point of view. There is a huge push right now for group pre-natal care. Before I got pregnant, I was against this concept. Now, I would actually go so far as to advocate virtual care.

Here is what happens every other week in the second trimester at the doctor’s office:

1. I drive 20 minutes to the office.
2. If I’m seeing the midwife, I’m called back pretty quickly. If it’s one of the physicians I could wait up to 25 minutes.
3. I get called back. The nurse takes my weight and blood pressure. I pee on a stick to check my sugars and proteins.
4. I get put in a room to wait for the midwife / doctor.
5. The midwife / doctor come in, listen to the heartbeat, measure my uterus (the measurements didn’t even start until after week 20).
6. The midwife / doctor asks if we have any questions.
7. I make another appointment for 2 weeks.
8. Drive back to wherever I need to go (work or home).

As long as the pregnancy is “normal”, here is what I would like to see:

1. At home, I pee on a stick, take my weight and blood pressure and either call in or fax in the results.
2. If there are concerns, I make an appointment ASAP.
3. Otherwise, I attend monthly (or even less often) appointments in a group to learn about something in pregnancy and ask any questions – also hear the heartbeat here.

Look at the efficiency of my way and the time savings. And, I might actually learn something. Because, even though my practitioners are amazing, being new at this, I don’t always know what to ask so having other people ask questions around me will definitely help. But, it’s healthcare, and by necessity (due to insurance companies and malpractice suits) it’s become a racket.

Beyond the constant and useless appointments, the second trimester was blissful – this definitely had to be as good as it gets.

First Trimester (or Minimum Clinical Girl)

So, on January 5, we went to the doctor’s office and we were immediately sent to get blood done. I got blood work done to test my hCG levels, progesterone, and my thyroid. Thankfully, and probably due to the obvious anxiety of my husband and our previous miscarriage, the tests were rushed and back within one day. I was definitely pregnant. My hCG levels were good, but my thyroid was high and my progesterone was low (still within range, but low). I made an appointment with the endocrinologist, was prescribed progesterone suppositories, had to go back to get blood drawn again to check my hCG levels, and scheduled an ultrasound to see what was going on. So begins my stress-free, all-natural, not medicated pregnancy.

And here is why Brian started to call me Minimum Clinical Girl:

1. My progesterone levels stayed consistently at the low end of the range, even with all the lovely suppositories. While I was still within range, being low made everyone nervous due to my previous miscarriage.
2. My hCG levels also didn’t act “normal.” Typically, with a viable pregnancy, your hCG levels will double (go up 100%) every other day. The acceptable range is anything between a 75% and a 100% increase. In 2 subsequent blood tests, my hCG levels went up 77% and 79%. Again, still within range, but nothing that made anyone comfortable.

So, we went in for our ultrasound hoping this would answer all of our questions and concerns. I was 5 weeks pregnant and there was a possibility, although not strong, that they would be able to see/hear a heartbeat. Instead, what we saw is the below picture (this is taken directly from my medical notebook, started once I realized my pregnancy would be medical).

As you can see from Brian’s handwriting (he is in charge of the book because he has the best handwriting out of the two of us and because it gives him something to do) we had a good yoke sack, good crown rump, good boundaries, and a fetal pole, but no heartbeat. Out of all of those things, the only thing I understood was “no heartbeat.” We scheduled another ultrasound for 2 weeks.

At this point, no one was sure what was going on. Yes, I was pregnant, but as my OB said, we should all be “cautiously reserved” about the viability of this pregnancy. Brian and I decided to tell only our parents about what was going on and I followed that agreement. I found out later that Brian had also told about 6 other people at work. Never ever tell him a secret, he just doesn’t keep them very well.

To make it seem even more unrealistic, the only symptom I had was exhaustion – a type of exhaustion I’ve never experienced before. I was going to bed at 7:00 PM and barely waking up the next day. But that was it – no nausea, no nuclear nose, no cravings, nothing.

We went for our second ultrasound and both of us were ready to hear nothing. The ultrasound tech, a little loopy herself, took her time setting up, spreading goo (yes, this is the professional term) on my belly, and then meandering around. She didn’t speak, just moved the arm thingy (another technical term) around my belly until she just stopped and said, “There it is.” And you could see something flickering on the screen – if you looked exactly in the right spot. At first I was convinced that it was a blip in the software program until she turned on the volume, and then we heard it… Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha Whoosha. Over and over again, loud and fast. I think a tear might have escaped my eye and I know Brian sighed in relief.

We were pregnant. The fetus had a heartbeat. I had progesterone supplements, synthetic thyroid, and prenatal vitamins. We had been upgraded to “optimistically cautious.” We named the bean Whoosha PUPO… “whoosha” after the heartbeat, and if you remember from a previous post PUPO means pregnant until proven otherwise. And even though we spent the first 13 weeks holding our breaths, knowing it could all be over within a minute, we did think this was as good as it could get.

Conception: Round 3

On Friday, we found out that Evan Brian is a ginormous baby and will be evicted in August 25. So, I’m going to hurry up and get us caught up to the future.


Disclaimer: If you are of the male persuasion and/or a female squeamish about bodily functions, parts of today’s post might be too much for you. Consider yourself warned.


So, it was back to trying. In the morning I took my synthroid, waited 30 minutes to eat breakfast, and peed on a stick looking for the smiley face. After dinner I took my Metformin and my pre-natal vitamin. I was sufficiently drugged up to conceive.

Our first month of trying was October. It passed and my period came. Our second month was November. Just because God has to get his giggles somewhere (and often my life seems like a likely place) my period was due around Thanksgiving. And, of course, it came. My in-laws were visiting and while I had a mini-meltdown upstairs they were oblivious downstairs (well not oblivious, I’m sure they knew something was wrong but not the specifics). I was just getting tired of continuing to drug myself up with no outcome.

Now it was December. And, as you might have surmised, since I got my period over Thanksgiving in November, it was due over Christmas in December. We were up in New Jersey, visiting my family and I was still taking my pharmacy and abstaining from caffeine and alcohol. We went to my Aunt Susan’s for Christmas Eve dinner, as we do every other year, and at some point during the dinner, I went to the bathroom and saw blood in my underwear. Assuming I had gotten my period… again… I was just done. This had been going on for too long for me (over a year) and I was tired. I told Brian what had happened and we left the dinner. On our way back to my parent’s house, while I was crying in the car, Bubs stopped at a Walgreens and went in and bought me tampons (that is a man secure in himself).

The next day, Christmas, I noticed my period was very light but thought nothing of it. I had coffee with the Christmas strata (sweet wonderful coffee) and then 2 glasses of wine with Christmas dinner (aah…wine, how I miss thee). After dinner, I dutifully went to change my tampon and there was nothing. I mean, it was completely clean. Apparently, my light period has lasted 24 hours… that just didn’t seem possible. I told Brian and we were both completely confused. We were going back to Texas soon so we both decided to wait and see what happened.

And I was able to wait pretty much until right after we landed before I visited my trusty medical consultant – Google.com. I googled my symptoms a few different ways and came to the same answer over and over again… implantation bleeding. This meant that it was possible I was pregnant and I told Brian.

Due to our past experience both of us were skeptical. We decided to wait until after New Year’s to take the test which would also mean I would be more than 1 week late. And we actually made it as far as we said we would and then I took the test. It was a VERY long 5 minutes. We left the test in the bathroom and pretended to give ourselves something else to do. At the end of 5 minutes we walked back in together and saw the words “Pregnant.” All we knew was that one test said I was pregnant… been there, done that.

I took another test a few hours later… still “Pregnant.” I took one the next day and then the next day – all said “Pregnant.” While we weren’t convinced I was definitely pregnant, we were convinced it was time to call the OB. We scheduled an appointment on the next Friday and I took 2 more tests in the meantime, just to be sure.

At this point, we didn’t know what to feel so we just waited.