Someone PLEASE, knock me up!

So much time has passed and I have lots to tell.  First, after my last post I was touched very deeply by your comments.  It is here in blogland where I come and know my fears will be understood and not scoffed at.  I am really happy to report that I have not had many fears over the past few weeks.  Apparently, I have come to rely on the kindness of bloggers.  From my last post two bloggers have stepped up in an unbelievable way.  First, Nica formerly of Life as a Sandwich and now of The After Life offered me her doppler.  We met for coffee (my first blogger meeting) and she just handed over her high-end doppler to an almost perfect stranger.  I cannot say how much that doppler changed my life for a few weeks.  I was listening to the baby every-other-night and feeling so happy just hearing the sound of a galloping horse in my ute.  It has been lovely.  Secondly, Keri over at Mothering My Miracle Multiples has just sent  me a HUGE box of maternity clothes.  WOW, WOW, and WOW!  How lucky am I?  Seriously!  These clothes have arrived just in the nick of time.  I’m a little over 20 weeks and it is beginning to show pretty pronouncedly.  I have still been in regular clothes but my tummy has been protesting.  I honestly am so thankful for the support I’ve been given here.

I have a lot of updating to do so I’m just going to jump in.

Movement:  Went to the OB a week ago yesterday.  I was concerned b/c I couldn’t get the HB on the doppler for two nights in a row.  I was able to hear the placenta and I knew from the last time I was at the OBs that the placenta was anterior.  I really was able to talk myself off the ledge b/c I reasoned (and then researched) that when the placenta is anterior it is much harder to get the HB on the doppler.  Anyway, as soon as I saw Dr. C I asked her for a scan.  She started the scan and said “Well we aren’t going to be able to capture the heartbeat b/c AS YOU CAN SEE this kid is moving like crazy.”  And, it was true — it was moving like there was no tomorrow.  More than that though the baby is measuring almost 2 weeks ahead for size.  Dr. C said if we didn’t know my exact dates of conception they would be tempted to move my due date up two weeks.  I didn’t know they could do that.  She was surprised I hadn’t felt it moving yet as it was so large for gestational age and moved so much.  I really hadn’t felt anything but that night as I was sitting on the sofa I felt it - tap, tap, tapping.  Very light it took me a moment to realize what was happening.  Then over the next two days the tapping continued but was joined by a slight flopping feeling.  Un-freaking-believable my people.  This is the coolest (freaking coolest) thing ever to happen to me in my life.  That feeling of movement inside of you is surreal.  I can’t believe it is a baby but I know it is.  I find myself laying around really quietly just waiting for it to happen.  As I type this I am feeling it — slight rolling and little flops.  Freaks me the F*CK out but in a really good way.  This is the best thing EVER — did I say that already?  I know eventually the movement will be a pain in the neck.  It’ll keep me up at night and I won’t be able to sleep from having a foot in my diaphragm but OMG the feeling right now!  The reality is so strong once this happens.  I’ve only slowly been accepting and connecting to this baby (still hard to say that word) but this past week has seen a sea change in my feelings towards it.  It is real.  It is really real.  It is mine and it might really actually be born healthy and be my child.

Anatomy scan:  Had it this morning.  SB and I were the first appt and that was good b/c I could not sleep at all last night from nerves.  This is the last big hurdle the baby itself had to get through (besides birth).  This test marks a point in the pg where there isn’t anything more to be waiting for to see if the baby is developing correctly.  The things that go wrong now are mostly things that will happen to me like ge.station dia.betes or pre.term labor.  I know I’m simplifying this a bit but it seems like this was the final big (holding my breath until it was over) mile marker I have been waiting for.  The baby’s only job now is to grow and live.  We know it has a brain and all the appropriate parts, the kidneys, the stomach, the bloodflow in and out, the heart and it’s chambers everything is there just the way it is expected to be.  The sense of relief I have felt all day has been unbelievable.  I’ve just burst out crying over and over today.  The relief just comes out of me that way. 

Boy or Girl?  Ah, the age old question.  As I mentioned before, I have been saying I want the surprise of finding out at the birth if we have a boy or a girl.  Poor SB has been dying to know NOW what we are having.  I liked the going back and forth about names — he hasn’t enjoyed it.  He wants to focus on one set of names either boy or girl especially since we have not been able to find any common ground on boy names.   I kept putting off finding out, he kept pushing.  We came to a compromise.  The agreement was this, if at the anatomy scan when the technician went to the boy or girl bit section we would tell her not to tell us the s.ex but that we would look and if we could tell then we could know.  Poor SB, he figured it would be easy — suckah!!!  I know what to look for b/c I’ve seen tons of u/s photos of these bits for boys and girls.  I know girls are much harder and you have to look for 3 white lines that run parallel and it looks a bit like a little bitty bear claw.  SB just figured the tech would say here are the geni.tals and he would be able to see what he needed to see.  Anyway, the tech asked if we wanted to know and I was looking at the screen and said oh I can see it — those three lines right.  She said yep.  I asked SB if he could see it — he had no clue what he was even looking at, it could have been the hear for all he knew.  I asked him if he wanted me to tell him.  He did — so I did.  Now I will tell you, it was a LITTLE BITTY BEAR CLAW people.  Yes, it is a FIRL.  And boy howdy she was not even a little bit modest about showing it.  We saw everything we needed to see and then some.  We’re going to have to work on that once she’s outside in the land of boys.

Both SB and I were surprised.  We really thought it was a boy.  I thought it b/c his family seems to really have a lot of boys.  I also thought is b/c we had I.CSI as part of our IVF and I was told by my RE that stastically speaking there are more boys born to I.CSI I.VFs than girls.  I cannot tell you though how happy I am it is a girl — I know I mentioned it before but SB and I have such an easy time agreeing on girl names and up until last night we still didn’t have ONE SINGLE BOY NAME we agreed on.  That, my friends, is the only reason I cared about what s.ex it turned out to be.  Now that I know what it is and she is moving all over the place I have TOTALLY fallen in love.  Come what may my life will never be the same.  I love SB and my sisters an unbelievable amount but this is different and it happened in split second.

Later in the day SB put all the pix up on her website (we’re making her a website for our families) and he came in the living room from his office and said something about finalizing it for “his daughter” blah blah blah — I didn’t hear a single word after that because I just burst out in tears and deep soul-racking sobs.  I was standing in the kitchen with a knife full of chocolate frosting b/c I was in the middle of frosting a cake and I was bent over double just bawling my eyes out, trying to catch my breath, laughing all at the same time.  I just couldn’t stop — laughing and sobbing at the same time also makes it very difficult to breath.  This went on for a few minutes and SB just smiled at me with tears in his eyes too.  There was nothing to do but let it happen.  I felt much better afterwards and only just got teary off and on the rest of the day. 

My daughter — who knew those two words could be  so powerful!