Rory was born on 23rd December, 7.02 pm, weighing 7lb, 7oz. Full head of the most gorgeous golden-brown hair, and blue eyes that will almost certainly stay that way. The Badeggs Daughter has made it her sole aim in life to make sure that his little baby buttocks never rest on anything other than a lap.
Mr B and I are overjoyed and under-rested.
Full delivery story to follow. It was a doosey, but I think he's worth it...
We've decided to go to hospital after all. Throughout most of my pregnancy, the idea of a home birth has felt absolutely right. I could picture it in my mind and was really looking forward to it. But now it doesn't feel right, and when Mr B and I stopped to think carefully about it, we realised it's just not that important to us. My main reason for wanting to have the baby at home was to be in my own bed shortly after delivery. The OB assures me that if all goes well with the delivery in hospital, I can discharge myself after 6 hours, so I could be back home quite quickly anyway. That was enough to sway me, and once I allowed myself to make that decision, I felt a hundred times better.
Of course, I had hoped to use a birthing pool in early labour as pain relief, and since there is only one in the hospital maternity unit, it's unlikely that I'll get to use one. But even that's just not important enough. My losses have primed me to expect the worst and be grateful if it doesn't happen. I need, for my own sanity, to be near to high tech medicine for that 0.001% chance of something going wrong. After all, I've been in that tiny percentage before.
The OB confirmed that Bad Boy has started to engage (1/5th apparently) and she predicts that I will deliver at 38 weeks as I did with Badeggs Daughter. That would be next week! God I hope so. It would be bliss to spend Christmas without the world's biggest bauble (that's ornament in Amerispeak) poking out in front of me!
Things to remember about 37 weeks:
Bad Boy is fractious. And restless. He moves. A lot. His favourite time appears to be after dinner when I sprawl in beached-whale fashion recline in a ladylike manner on the sofa, when my stomach starts to look like that scene from Alien. Even Mr B can see it from across the room (he doesn't come too close these days; I wield irritability like a weapon).
About a week ago, I'm sure I felt a small baby head protruding on my left side. And two nights ago, I actually grabbed a foot.
I remember when I was pregnant with the Badeggs Daughter, I commented that I was carrying either a future ballerina or a future footballer. So she must have been active, too, though I don't remember any such roilings as the post-prandial ones I've described above. I do recall once being able distinctly to make out an elbow, but that was at 36 weeks or so. (Incidentally, with the Badeggs Daughter, I got neither Fontayne nor Rooney. What I have instead is quite the most surly teenager on the face of the planet, who if she moves her legs at all does not so so to attempt a grand jete or hammer home a goal but instead to carry her to and from the fridge so she can decimate my stash of diet coke before resuming her MTV vigil. And I am doing this again because...?)
In other news, the nursery is now pretty much done. We are collecting the cot/crib on Sunday, and already have the matching dresser full of cute little jammies, blankets, booties and hats. (This is where I start watching for lighting bolts or other signs that Fate is a bitch and has it in for me.) It is a tiny room, but Mr B has done an amazing job on it. It has wainscoting panels up to a height of about 4 feet, and these are painted in Antique Satin, a lovely biscuity colour, while the top part is painted light blue. Mr B laid some oatmeal coloured carpet that is lovely and warm. And the whole thing goes perfectly with the bedding that I bought in the States this Summer. It's really brought it home for us that we are, on balance, fairly likely to have an actual living infant this winter. Real lump in the throat stuff for us. Next step is to buy some baskets and accessories to really make it cozy and tidy.
I shall also be equipping the nursery with a CD player so that I can play the Classical Baby CD that was given to me yesterday by...wait for it...the person I had to fire last month. If I say so myself, I think it says a lot about me that I handled it in such a way that not only does she not hold a grudge against me but actually bought a present for my bump. It says a hell of a lot about her, too.
So, until next time... a bientot!
I had my 25 week check-up by my GP and everything is fine. Blood pressure is good and growth is right on target. And the UFO wriggles around so much that I think I'm ready to send back the rented foetal doppler. I haven't used it for 5 weeks now, and I believe I can finally put down that particular £20 per month crutch.
I was bemused by my GP's attitude during the check-up. She gave me a big hello and said "Well, you finally got there in the end!". I laughed and told her we'd waited quite a while to try again and wondered whether that helped. But she reckoned it was just the luck of the draw, and then went on to treat me like any other normal pregnant woman. Yet somehow, I still feel like anything but. I didn't necessarily want anything different from her; it just still surprises me when I'm reminded that my recurrent losses were in all likelihood just shit luck. I still feel like I must be under some curse that everyone can see.
*Gack!* I'm not making any sense.
Anyway, Badeggs Boy (or Bad Boy, as I like to call him) is fine. And, no, I'm not pretending to keep the gender a secret anymore; you've all figured it out anyway being the observant lot that you are!
By the way, thanks to those of you who left comments on my last commentable post or who e-mailed about my decision to switch comments off. I wanted to say that I'm not upset with anybody about single digit comments; what I was trying to get across is that my feeble and sometimes fragile id or ego or whatever was trying desperately to convince me to take it personally. In switching off the comments, I switched off that particular self-applied pressure. In other words: it's not you, it's me. I hope that make sense, because it's been great not to be worrying about checking comments!
Anyway, if you really need to tell me something, you can still e-mail me. I'm still here, I promise.
I tried, I really did try. I wanted to upload these onto one of those photo sharing websites, but on Flickr the image kept coming out black, and on Snapfish I didn't have the right file format. So then I tried just uploading them directly into the blog. Again, I have the wrong file type. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE?!!! Is it too much to ask for there to be one standard type of file that even Luddites like myself can use? You are all SERIOUSLY pissing me off.
I've now tried just uploading it as a PDF file, but it probably won't work. Nevertheless, if you don't want to see scan photos, don't click on the link.
Download Scanpdf_150197_20060831_122256.pdf
Perhaps more tomorrow, or the next time I'm not feeling cranky, which will probably be never.
PS. The bottom image is Baby Badeggs' feet. Very cute, if the fracking technology lets you see it.
Did you miss me? (What do you mean was I gone?!)
Had an excellent vacation (with huge apologies to those of you with whom I had tentative plans to meet up; it just didn't happen for various reasons including em being sick with a cold the entire first week!). It threatened to start out badly, as Mr B and I had to tell the Badeggs Daughter that her father had been arrested.
We knew it was coming. He has harassed me for 9 years now with awful, upsetting letters and the occasional phone calls, and Mr B has been on the receiving end for the past 4 years. It has got much worse in the past couple of years, culminating in police involvement during 2004, when our wedding was preceded by several letters commenting on everything from our choice of wedding day (11th September) to whether I was entitled to a church wedding seeing as I am a liar and a cheat. More recently his parents started sending things to me, and his letters became increasingly upsetting, and that's when we decided to involve the police again. He was asked by them to stop writing; his response was to start writing letters to the police! He was asked to stop again; final warning. He wrote a letter to me that actually threatened me (smart guy, eh?). So on 23 July at 11 pm he was taken into custody and interviewed for a few hours. His parents bailed him out, apparently, and his mother telephoned mine to tell her how depraved I am. Yeah, cry me a river.
Anyway, you can imagine how difficult it was to tell my daughter. We decided to do it ourselves, rather than risk having her hear it from her father or grandparents, who would of course skew everything so that it was all my fault (because the police are always arresting people on my say so, don't you know). It's hard for her because she hears her father say that he's only trying to start a dialog with me about her. She can't understand that his letters are nothing to do with creating a dialog or building bridges but are simply a vehicle for abuse. And of course she wants to believe her father is a decent person. Mind you, deep down I think she knows that he has problems. About a week before we left, she came down and spoke to both Mr B and myself (unusual; it's usually just me) and spoke of how her father is always talking to her like she is a stand-in for me. "I am worried he's going to end up in the loony bin," she said, "He's so paranoid."
Daughter cried when we explained about the arrest (hell, even I cried; I never wanted it to end up like this) and I told her it was OK to feel angry and upset with me and with the situation and even with her dad. She went to spend some time on her own, but within hours she was talking to me and acting normally. She had a lot of heart-to-hearts with my younger sister who has the gift of being able to temper bluntness with humour, and my daughter shared the content of those talks with me (or at least some of it). By the end, she was happy to simply let it be the grown-ups' problem. In fact, when her grandmother called towards the end of our trip (yes, they can never let the child just enjoy her time in America) she took the call in full earshot of my sister and mother and was heard to tell her grandmother: "I don't want to hear it, Grandma. it's not my problem." What a kid!
She's now in France for 10 days on a school water-sports trip. By the time she's back, we should know whether her father will actually be charged with harassment or just given an official caution.
Arrgh! Enough about the exes; now for the Oh!s. Yesterday was my 20-week scan (and I am officially 20 weeks' pregnant tomorrow). I've made it to the halfway point and baby has all his/her fingers and toes and everything else it needs. And the kid yawned, I kid you not! RIght there on the monitor. I guess we were boring it. (Ha! Just wait 'til you're born, kid; we're the most boring people on the planet.) We did have the gender 'confirmed' (they never give you 100% certainty, but they were fairly confident in what they saw/didn't see) but we're not telling. Only my sister and best friend know! I will try to get the photos scanned so that I can post them via a link, but our scanner's shot, so I have to find someone at work to do it for me. Don't hold your breath! (But I do have the cutest shot of his/her little feet!)
It was all very emotional. I didn't cry, but I kept thinking about all the babies we had to lose to get to this place. And though I know that they simply weren't 'compatible with life', as they say, that something in their genetic make-up had gone wrong and they simply couldn't have lived, it still makes me sad to think what might have been for those sons and daughters of ours. And it just kills me that there are mothers and fathers going through the agony of repeated loss or inability to conceive right now. I just wish so much that I could fix it for everyone.
It's good to be back. Work is busy and the broadband at home is down, so I may not be able to post very much for the time being. But you know where to find me.
Sorry to have been AWOL; I honestly don't know where the time goes. That's good, in a way: the busier I am, the less time I have to worry about the insidious and evil ways fate might divest me of my pregnancy. According to the medical notes, I'm 14w1d. And even if you go by my apparently less believable knowledge of precisely when I ovulated, I'm definitely in the second trimester. And it all kind of happened while I wasn't looking.
Last week, I spent three days in The Netherlands for work. Long, heavy-duty senior management stuff (I still feel like a gatecrasher...I'm sitting there wondering when they're going to realise they've asked a 9-year-old to contribute to long-term strategy...). I took along my Doppler, so I could hear the baby's heartbeat every day, as I do while I'm at home. It still seems strong, though it was slower than usual today. Anyone know if that's normal?
I'm pleased to say there has been no more bleeding, not even after we threw caution to the wind (twice) this weekend. I have a definite bump and have had to turn to maternity trousers and elasticated waist skirts for comfort. We're in the middle of a heatwave, too, which in Britain (land of no AC) means you wear as little as you can possibly get away with. And that's good, seeing that none of my clothes fit anymore. I'm also pleased to report that the morning sickness has all but disappeared, to be replaced by haemorrhoids. Doubtless the heartburn will start soon, too. Not that I'm complaining.
In the next few weeks, we should be moving house, and then heading off on our annual jaunt to my hometown to watch the Cardinals' limp-armed pitching lineup lose a couple of games for us. Until then, I'm just slogging away, enjoying, momentarily anyway, the feeling of time rushing by. I know I should be enjoying every second of pregnancy and not wishing it away, but let's face it: that's for women for whom miscarriage is only ever followed by the words 'of justice'.
Let me know how YOU"RE doing!!
Twelve week scan yesterday showed everything progressing just fine. In fact, the UFO is measuring an entire week ahead. I find that highly amusing, because having inched my way forward week by excruciating week towards the hallowed 12-week 'things might just be OK' point, I ended up speeding right by it to 13 weeks! Of course, I know when I ovulated, so I know I am only 12 weeks in reality, but all the medical notes now say 13. And you can't argue with medical notes.
I'm not quite sure what to do now. I've relaxed a little bit more, to the point where I am now starting to feel survivor's guilt. I am keenly aware of all the women who are still trying to conceive or who have just experienced yet another miscarriage. Or those who have experienced their first, but know too much from the infertile sisterhood about recurrent loss, and wonder if they will be the next to be placed in that category. I worry about the women who are about to discover a missed miscarriage, who will have to go through the agony of knowing they carried their dead child within them for a week, perhaps two or three. I grieve already for that 1% of women who have had one miscarriage and have convinced themselves that next time it will be OK, but who will go on to experience recurrent loss. I feel the desperation of those who have just had a second loss yet know they will not receive help until they have had a third. And most of all I feel guilty that I seem somehow to have come out the other side on this one.
Of course, nothing is ever certain in this reproduction thing. I could still find myself the mother of another dead child. The hospital will scan my cervix at 16 weeks to ensure that repeated D&Cs have not left me with a potential second trimester time bomb. I also insisted that they swab me for bacterial vaginosis, another cause of late miscarriage. I found an article online that said that late miscarriages "are almost always the result of a rare catastrophic incident or an ever rarer genetic mishap". That means the likelihood is very low. Of course, so was the likelihood of three recurrent losses. So was the likelihood of a miscarriage after having seen foetal heart activity at 6 weeks. But they happened. I'm not counting chickens too soon.
Yet, I still find myself burdened by this sense that somehow I am betraying those women who are still suffering. No, burdened is not the right word, because it is not a burden. It is a memorial. A not-so-gentle reminder that babies die in their mothers' wombs; that sometimes our bodies betray us by consistently failing to conceive; that human reproduction is ruled by nature, and nature can be cruel in its emotionless, efficient disposal of less-than-perfect embryos.
To my sisters who are still struggling: I cannot forget, nor do I wish to.
Q: What has two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, a stomach, a brain, a bladder, a spine and was sucking its thumb at about 4.15 pm BST yesterday?
A: Ohmyfuckinggod I think I'm gonna have a baby.
Crown rump length: 53 mm (that actually measures at 11w5d, even though I should only have been 11w1d yesterday)
Heart rate: 170 bpm
Down Syndrome risk: 1 in 17,000 (and 1 in 400 is considered an acceptable risk!)
Edward's Syndrome risk: 1 in 50,000
The UFO was moving around quite happily, though possibly he/she was a little cheesed off at the probing with the ultrasound thingie.
Mr B and I are over the moon, as is soon-to-be-sister Badeggs Daughter. We're actually starting to talk about names and which room in the new house should be the nursery. I can't quite get my head around being in the normal part of the statistical curve, you know?
Maybe I'm inviting doom by tempting fate, but I think I may actually have a baby come 3rd Janaury 2007.
Thank you ALL for your constant good wishes and (for those who believe) prayers. I am sincerely hoping that this blog is going to become incredibly boring now! But don't stop visiting. I'd miss you.
PS. I will endeavour to scan and post one of the scan picutres, but let me know in the comments if you would rather I didn't. I know a lot of you are having a hard time getting pregnant or are grieving recent losses (or even not so recent ones). I don't want to upset anyone.
