13 weeks

I had an excellent doctor appointment. Let's see if I can remember everything! Lol

- All the previous testing came back inconclusive or negative. That means all my weirdness was almost certainly just a mix of PCOS and pregnancy. I gave blood for the standard run of pregnancy testing.

- We brought the kids with. They heard the heart beat. He had trouble finding it with the doplar. So, they even saw the baby wiggling around a bit on the very low end ultrasound they have at the clinic. It's far too low end to see gender. That will wait for the real ultrasound.

- Even though there isn't a real medical need for another ultrasound, I'll be scheduled for one around 20 weeks. Dr feels it can't hurt to have the extra info (though I got the feeling he might not have suggested it if I hadn't brought it up), and we're anxious to find out who's room needs remodeling before I hit my inevitably third trimester uselessness.

- I love love love my Dr. I can talk openly to him about things that would normally get me kicked from practice just for mentioning. Best example ever:  He's totally comfortable with the idea of my having an unassisted home birth. The fact of the matter is that I'm giving birth wherever my water breaks. If I'm at home, I'd give birth in the car if we tried to get me into town. If I'm in town, the kid will still probably be half out by the time I get to the ER. The thing I love though is how he was totally comfortable with it all. I told him flat out that if there were no major red flags, I was more comfortable with an unassisted home birth than a hospital birth...and that baby and I would come in for a post natal visit "when I felt up to it". He didn't get antsy. He didn't try to control whether that meant hours or days. He just said that it was a good idea to be prepared for any circumstance (as an agreement, not warning) and " sounds good " when I gave him a run down of what the basic game plan was on my end. He even thought it was really cool that I was going to have the kids read doula/midwife reference books so they were prepared to help out or even for the chance I go into hard labor while Jason is at work.

- Also, he laughed and told me it was "perfectly reasonable" when I told him he could have all the blood and urine he wanted, but I wouldn't be drinking glucose or having anyone poking around at my cervix while I was pregnant without a damned good reason. I'm fully aware that there are far safer and gentler ways to carefully monitor a pregnancy than the standard methods...assuming you are inclined to carefully monitor. It's nice to finally meet a doctor that does too! Lol. He doesn't seem inclined towards carefully monitoring unless there is an unusual risk factor though.

- I'm taking the maximum dose of my raw foods probiotic instead of a normal prenatal. At the maximum dose, it meets the minimums suggested for pregnancy... Plus I'm not suffering from constipation even at 13weeks. That alone is all the endorsement it needs! :D

- Normally, I would be having monthly appointments right now but we're a little behind schedule so my next appointment is in just a couple weeks. Friday, June 6th. I'll update again for sure after that appointment. Maybe in between. I was going to update before today but cell service has been really choppy out here the last week or so.

Here we go again

Well I've certainly had a roller coaster ride lately. Things have been going absolutely haywire with my body. I tried adjusting my diet and exercise levels. I tried every home remedy I could think of. I finally broke down and went to the doctor. We began running tests. Each round ruled out less and less preferable issues. Before I knew it, I was scheduled for an ultrasound to look at my ovaries. I won't go into much detail but with my symptoms and testosterone levels (117. Healthy can range from 2-45), ovarian cancer was looking pretty likely. It wasn't my first cancer scare but we really ruled everything out first this time. I was going in pretty sure of the outcome.

All of one second into the ultrasound, the world was tipped on it's side. That's how long it took to find the baby...because it's pretty decent sized. At twelve weeks, it's a little over 2 inches long. The tech really took her time and thoroughly checked out the baby and both ovaries from every possible angle. Everything is incredibly healthy and well developed. We still have a few tests to run just to be sure, but with this added information it looks likely that all the weird symptoms and such are just a result of my hormone disorder interacting with the pregnancy. I haven't had a baby survive past 7 weeks in over a decade. And frankly we weren't monitoring my systems at all until about three years ago. Add to that, I didn't suspect I was pregnant with my first until I was showing... And the Dr insisted I wasn't pregnant with my second until I was around 12 - 18 weeks. Clearly I don't have any idea what's really normal for me in the first trimester. Lol.

What I do know is that I am well past my personal miscarriage zone, and still have a healthy and very active baby in me. And it seems that the pregnancies that are easy to detect are the ones that self terminate, with me. The healthy ones throw off all the wrong signs in the first trimester. Since I'm clearly not incapable of having more kids without fertility treatments, as previously thought, I'll have to keep that in mind in the future!

As for pregnancy updates...
- I can't drink anything but bottled water without getting nauseous. That includes our awesome well water at home. I'm going to give my favorite soda a try tonight though. Fentimens rose lemonade. It's pricey so it's a rare treat. I'm hoping the touch of ginger in it will allow me to still enjoy it.
- I crave raspberries and raw goats milk cheese. I know raw dairy can be a crap shoot during pregnancy but it's soft cheeses and milks that are the real issue. With harder, drier cheeses the risks aren't any worse than eating pasteurized. So I found myself a nice hard goat cheddar (tastes almost like string cheese though, with a texture almost like fresh Parmesan). It comes from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company and is available for a nearly reasonable price at the discount grocer in the nearest big town. I'm eating like 12+ oz of raspberries and 8+ oz of cheese per day and not much else right now.
- Weight gain. I'm like 70lbs above my personal healthy weight range to begin with. At 5' 8" that's not quite as bad as it sounds, but it's still a serious issue. I really shouldn't need to gain much weight to support this pregnancy. I gained about 5 lbs the first month. Then, plateaued. Around week 10, I gained almost 10 lbs. I was bloated with water weight at first. Then, it all just kind of absorbed into my body. My comfy jeans are now snug. :( I haven't gained anything since then, though. So, I am figuring that was just my body increasing blood volume. The body increases blood volume significantly during pregnancy. Not normally so fast, but my body tended to handle changes in sudden shifts with my first two kids. So it's not a red flag.
- Although the baby doesn't have a gender yet, I am beginning to suspect it might be a boy. I'm having truly insane pregnancy dreams, and the one constant is that I'm always a man in them. That's very weird for me. My dreams are usually third person. Occasionally I might be myself or even someone I know for part of one. I'm never just some random guy my mind makes up though. I might share some of the dreams with you, but I'm not sure how well received they would be. They are increasingly disturbing and graphic. The consistent theme is that the guy I dream I am is witness to or the sole survivor of some kind of weird tragedy where he loses whoever he cares most for. They were almost comic at first but are getting to be more and more twisted and intense. The only upshot is that I wake up feeling like I just read a thriller novel, instead of like I just lived through it. The story lingers with me, but without any kind of emotional attachment.
- My next Dr appointment is Tuesday. My last batch of test results will all be in by then. I'll update you once I process whatever I learn then.