Nerve cracking
Well, today I gave in and arranged some ultrasounds. 5w6d today, and my symptoms are so variable that I don't know what to think. On Sunday morning, I felt so un-pregnant that I expected to see blood every time I went for a pee. On Sunday evening, John came back from a weekend sailing and said, "Oh, your breasts look pregnant." All Monday, my breasts felt pregnant - huge and tender, they felt, and I think they even looked bigger through clothes. Today, they are still tender but less so; I woke early needing to pee (hooray!) but haven't felt particularly in need of it since (boo!) and, most worryingly of all, I still feel almost no nausea (although coffee is definitely still well off the agenda). Yesterday, I'd have put money on having an establishing pregnancy; today, I have no idea. I don't know if this waxing and waning of symptoms is normal, because I have no idea what happened with the girls - it's too long ago, and I just wasn't as obsessed then, being young and feckless and confident and so forth.
So I rang the local NHS early pregnancy unit, which was so helpful when I had the miscarriage last year, and (greatly to my surprise) got the lovely nurse I dealt with last time, who made no bones about booking me in for a scan without having to go through the GP first. But they won't do it before 7 weeks - fair enough - which is next week, in the middle of half term; and I don't want to tell the children before I know what's happening (if then). So that's arranged for rising 8 weeks, after half term.
I brooded about whether I could wait another 2 whole weeks, and eventually decided to go for a private scan this week - there's a place over in Kent that I found via Google, which does them for quite a reasonable cost. I know it may not be conclusive, but I reckon one of three things will happen:
a) embryo doing fine and on target - in which case it'll still be nice to see what the NHS scan shows 12 days later
b) embryo alive but unhealthy - in which case I'm prewarned and can feed into the NHS in due course
c) embryo already dead (or never existed), in which case, really, the sooner I know, the better. If it's like last time, my body may stop holding onto it and start getting rid of it once I know it's died, and the sooner that happens, the less unpleasant it will be. Equally, if there's some creepy rare complication or abnormality, the sooner I know, the better.
On the whole, I am fairly calm about all this. I want this baby very much, but I am almost sure that, if it's all gone wrong, I am done trying. Already I would be 60 when this one reached 18, if it exists, and I think that's quite enough of an age gap.
But still: no blood, no pain, so maybe things are fine. But that was true of this stage last time, too, so who knows?
Update on Thursday.
So I rang the local NHS early pregnancy unit, which was so helpful when I had the miscarriage last year, and (greatly to my surprise) got the lovely nurse I dealt with last time, who made no bones about booking me in for a scan without having to go through the GP first. But they won't do it before 7 weeks - fair enough - which is next week, in the middle of half term; and I don't want to tell the children before I know what's happening (if then). So that's arranged for rising 8 weeks, after half term.
I brooded about whether I could wait another 2 whole weeks, and eventually decided to go for a private scan this week - there's a place over in Kent that I found via Google, which does them for quite a reasonable cost. I know it may not be conclusive, but I reckon one of three things will happen:
a) embryo doing fine and on target - in which case it'll still be nice to see what the NHS scan shows 12 days later
b) embryo alive but unhealthy - in which case I'm prewarned and can feed into the NHS in due course
c) embryo already dead (or never existed), in which case, really, the sooner I know, the better. If it's like last time, my body may stop holding onto it and start getting rid of it once I know it's died, and the sooner that happens, the less unpleasant it will be. Equally, if there's some creepy rare complication or abnormality, the sooner I know, the better.
On the whole, I am fairly calm about all this. I want this baby very much, but I am almost sure that, if it's all gone wrong, I am done trying. Already I would be 60 when this one reached 18, if it exists, and I think that's quite enough of an age gap.
But still: no blood, no pain, so maybe things are fine. But that was true of this stage last time, too, so who knows?
Update on Thursday.
posted by Alison at
7:05 AM
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