My kid is very modest.  Or stubborn.  Or both.

I moved the 20-week anatomy scan up from the 29th to today because yesterday I had a rough day.  With hindsight, it was the beer-cheese soup (it is a Midwestern thing — it sounds gross but really is very good) I had for lunch, but I spent most of the afternoon doubled over in the bathroom with horrible diarrhea and even more horrible cramps.  Thanks to having ulcerative colitis for years, I was pretty sure the cramps were all lower GI (which is why I moved the scan up instead of driving to the hospital), but it is still really scary to cramp that much and be 20 weeks pregnant.  No bleeding, no fluid, but I still wanted to see wee-beastie with my own eyes.   

I called my OB’s office and they got me in today, just for the reassurance. 

I had horrible nightmares all night about sick babies and dead babies and how somehow I had done something to cause a sick/dead baby, so by the time we got to the hospital this morning, I was emotionally spent.  Pregnancy dreams are more vivid, but all the more horrifying when they are about sad or terrifying things.   

After two miscarriages, all I want is a healthy baby.  I was just really, really hoping to find out the sex today to help make this whole thing feel a bit more real.  I am still not able to grasp the fact that I AM HAVING A BABY.  Intellectually, I get it.  Emotionally, I just feel a disconnect with the fact that I could be holding my child in July.  Knowing the sex would allow me to better able to see wee-beastie as a future person, at least that was the plan.         

The measurements, at least the ones the technician could get, are all good: brain, heart, femur, head, etc….  Wee-beastie, however, was having none of this “looking at my bits” part.  S/he sat, cross-legged, tushie down, and refused to budge.  Judging from the heartrate of 140, which is usually around 160 when s/he moves around at night, I think we interrupted a nap — a cross-legged, butt-wedged-into-the-bottom-of-my-uterus nap.  How very rude of us!! 

They need some more measurements for some organs/appendages they missed and, obviously, we want to know they sex.  The nurse said the standard protocol is to reschedule in 6 to 8 weeks.  6 to 8 weeks???  I am going to beg my midwife for something earlier.  Then I am going to have a long chat with wee-beastie about how usually in life it is rather inappropriate to show your genitals to anyone who wants to look, but this is a notable exception and that mommy, daddy, and the utltrasound tech just want a quick little peak, and then s/he can go back to perfecting his/her omlette recipes.     

My colitis is flaring. For real. I just took my Prednisone and I am not happy. Prednisone is actually recommended for some cases of recurrent miscarriage and is not really an issue in the first trimester (use in the third trimester can result in the birth of a Baby Huey), so there is no risk to the pregnancy. Still, I hate the stuff. It gives me insomnia, makes me puff up like Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (without, unfortunately, her lovely shade of blue), completely destroys my metabolism, and then makes me constantly hungry, especially for eggs. It has saved my life many times over, however, so I really should stop complaining. I will, I promise, just as soon as I finish this two-week taper of the blessed stuff.

If you have colitis, you get these fantastic odds regarding pregnancy: 1/3 women will go into remission, 1/3 women will have a flare, and 1/3 of women will remain unchanged. The statistics do not help much, do they? In fact, why not just say “We have no clue what will happen?” That would be more satisfying for me, at least.

Both of my previous pregnancies threw me right into a state of complete remission. It was awesome, right up until the miscarriage/hemorrhage/complete emotional meltdown part. I arrogantly thought that this pregnancy would do the same thing for my colitis. It has not. Perhaps this is a good thing as I am all in favor of everything with this pregnancy being radically different from the last two.

The Plan is working quite well. The little sticks are getting darker every day, and now the test line is even darker than the control line. I only have two tests left and one week until my ultrasound, so it is back to the Dollar Tree I go. (I tried to go to a different store but the ghetto Dollar Store ran out of pregnancy tests –!?!?) For the sake of not introducing another variable into my experiment, I feel obliged to stick to the same brand.

Christmas Eve.

New Year’s Eve.

Here at my house it is Fertility Eve.

I am on CD11. Let the games begin.

I refreshed my stock of OPKs, so I have plenty o’ pee sticks for the near future. I am all stocked up on Preseed. I have been religiously taking my 7AM temperature for the past seven days, and I am actively not worrying about the fact that it looks like Zorro’s signature instead of a nice, subtle decline into the low 97.somethings.

The colitis flare is — for the moment — under control. I came off of a 6-day steroid taper Friday and so far, so good.

Perhaps the most important part of the equation is breathing on his own, out of the hospital, and back to work.