Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to everyone out there.

I was looking back at photos from Christmas last year and I had my husband take a picture of my waist because I was convinced that it was the last month we were going to see it.  Well it wasn't quite the last month, but we made it 6 months later.

May all your dreams come true in 2012.

100 days left! (hopefully)

I am officially 100 days from my due date.

I am feeling pretty proud of myself and pretty optimistic.  Contractions are more manageable (although I have my good and bad days).  Work is more sane manageable because with the holidays nobody wants surgery this week and several of my patients decided they don't want to come to clinic.  (Who wants a pap 4 days before christmas?  If it was me and I still had shopping to do I would skip the appointment too!)  And I have a whole 4 days coming up over the next 2 weeks to sit around and enjoy the company of others.

This christmas is going to be a little sparse.  I couldn't stand up to bake too much so everyone gets a couple cookies instead of a plate.  Almost all holiday shopping was conducted with my feet up from amazon.com. I never finished putting up my decorations. Wrapping - does an amazon.com cardboard box count?  I guess I could put a bow on it.  But I will say its going to be a very merry christmas anyway.

Its our last christmas as a couple - although really this little one pound peanut is the complete center of our lives already.  So 100 days to the fully cooked date - I'm becoming a better baker/incubator and I think my uterus appreciates the reduced activity.  I can sooo do this for 100 more days.

Christmas presents

My family keeps asking me what I want for christmas.

The answer - not much.

Seriously I just want kiddo to be healthy and keep cookin'.  Material things just really don't matter to me right now.  I have no interest in clothes, electronics, vacations or jewelry.  I asked from some nursing tanks because that will probably be helpful but otherwise I cant think of anything I want or need.  The material things that I wanted before  - I've moved on.  There has been an amazing priority shift in life and I just feel content.

I am a lucky girl and I wish all of you out there the gifts of family and health in the upcoming year.  They are the best presents anyone could get.

Hello Viability!

Well . . . I can officially start calling her a baby.  She is officially in survivability age and is still where she should be.  My cervix, is still hanging on at its slightly stumpy measurement, and my contractions - well they are still there too but many less of the take-your-breath-away type.

I have been a good girl too.  When you are in training for any type of surgical speciality its all about how many hours you can go without peeing/eating/or doing anything but concentrating on your task at hand.  Residency is not only a training for the speciality - it is a training of the body and mind that can make you focus so hard on something that 6 hours can pass without noticing.  This is the first time I am breaking that - I get up 30 minutes early to hydrate before I get out of bed.  I get to work early so I can walk slowly to my clinic so I wont contract.  I snack and hydrate and pee between patients, and I keep my feet up secretly under the desk.  Overall this seems to keep my uterus and my "baby" (still sounds weird to me) happy.

I am on a vacation day right now baking some cookies and relaxing.  I was supposed to join my best friend in a trip to disney with her 2 and 5 year old girls, but I thought better of it.  I can really think of nothing more fun than going with them, but fortunately when I backed out from contractions, my friend was the most understanding person.  She herself had very similar contractions - very bad when she was working but without cervical change - and she ppromed at 34 wk.  Its nice to have her to talk to about it, and nice that there is someone who is reassuring but at the same time doesn't try to tell me that everything is going to be perfect which is the response that I get from everyone in my specialty.

And can I just say thank goodness for online christmas shopping.  Holy cow the internet is saving me.  I went to the grocery store last night because I ran out of flour and carrying 5 lb of flour in 2 bags back to the car was really pushing it.  I cant imagine going to a mall at this point - let alone lugging gifts.

So things are great here so far.  Despite the issues and the worry, I am really loving this and really excited that I can admit that I am going to actually have a baby.

the duggars

Just was looking on yahoo and the top story is that Michelle Duggar had a miscarriage - and a second trimester miscarriage at that.

I got really teary when I read that.  While it is partially my hormones going, I feel that it is so sad for her and her family. No matter how many kids you have it is still a big loss and to have to go through it so publicly must be torture.

I feel a little guilty because I was the one who ranted when I found out she was pregnant again - but my wishes really were for her to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy child.  Any miscarriage is a tragedy - and despite all my infertility issues - it is one that I have so far been spared.  I am very thankful for that but very sympathetic to pregnancy loss.  I wish her and her family the best.

23 weeks

This is going to be a hard week for me - actually a hard month.

First of all . .. uterus decided it was going to cooperate and relax more today.  A little bit rough initially with lots of contractions this morning when rounding but then I got to clinic - saw patients with my feet up (thank god for gracious patients) and tonight dare I say - I am moving about the house (albeit minimally) with only the non-painful variety.

But 23 weeks is hard.  Its so hard because it is on the cusp of really being a possibility, but also on the border of having very bad outcomes.

Until this time, as much as I am irrevocably in love with this little thing, I have refused to call her a baby.  She is still my little fetus.  Non-viable, full of potential, but not old enough to be on her own.   I have refused to let many thoughts go through my head about what her life will be like or assume that she will even be there for sure.  I know I can loose her at any minute and it terrifies me to know all the possible ways that could happen.

This is going to be a hard week to get through - I need to make it several to feel good, but this is like the last week of near-guaranteed loss if something goes wrong.  Next week (and to a lesser extent the few weeks after) may be even worse because its going to be the week of likely permanent disabilities if she is born early.  There will be nothing but major guilt if I do anything to provoke that.

So I think this could be the most important month in determining the rest of my life and hers.  Whenever I have had those important months in life/career I have busted my butt to do whatever I needed to do to make it work. Now what I have to do is a whole lot of nothing.  I need to keep my feet up, I need to be on the couch hydrating and eating well, and I need to relax.

Hard to tell that to my brain and even harder to demand it from a my defiant womb.  So for now I will just keep crossing my fingers . . . and my legs.

All or Nothing

Its amazing that when you are pregnant and not doing as fabulously as you hoped that there are really very few options.

Its been a rough week - the contractions came back with a vengeance.  Fortunately my cervix is still holding stable.  I wouldn't exactly call it fort knox - it is a little stumpy - but not technically to the point where I am considered real preterm labor.

What I find a little weird is that we as obgyns see it a little as all or nothing.  Either the cervix is changing and its really really bad . . ..  or the cervix is stable and everything is fine.  I can't really tell where I fall into this picture because I am not sure that I am either one of these.  I was to the point yesterday that not only could I not stand through work without huffing and puffing through contractions, but I couldn't sit and stop contracting either.

So I took a trip to my 2nd home on labor and delivery, only this time I was the recipient of care as opposed to the giver.  All things checked out okay and after they made me lay down for a while - of course I did better and stopped contracting. (I am not complaining here because every day she stays in is a day I am thankful for).  Problem with work is I can't just stop everything in the middle of a day and lay down for a while to make myself feel better.

The question is what to do with my life though.  I don't meet technical requirements to stop working and go on bedrest (and believe me thats not what I want and its really never been proven to help), but at the same time I have cut everything else already and the hours I am working are obviously not working for me.

There is no way to say - okay I am ready to work 20-30 hours a week now instead of my 40+.  There are just too many patients to see and too much work to be done - and technically I am not being diagnosed with preterm labor so I don't even have a justifiable medical reason.  The ironic thing is I could probably work longer if I could take it a little easier.  The weekends are going really well because they are mostly spent on the couch - but then I get hit when I go back to work each monday.

There is nothing more important to me than keeping this little one in - if someone knew in their crystal ball and told me that quitting my job would be the only way to have a healthy baby, I would throw out my umpteen years of training in a heartbeat.  But nobody can tell me which way this is going to go.  I myself have seen people contract like this their entire pregnancies and then need to be induced for post-dates.  I have also seen absolute disasters and now that I am almost to the viable stage I am terrified she could be born so premature.

I am thankful for my husband for waiting on me every night after I assume the position on the couch.  I am thankful for my little fetus who doesn't seem to be at all bothered by this.  I will be very thankful if I am still pregnant in a few weeks.

So for now, I just keep going along like everything is normal.  Time will tell.