Week Five

Still here, still pregnant. Well, as far as I know. I’ve been feeling good and trying to eat healthy and do a little low-impact exercise and all that. I’m going crazy wondering what’s going on in there. It will be about 2 more weeks before I get a peek. I have my first ultrasound appointment on 6/6, at a local Japanese OBGYN. (Supposedly the docs speak excellent English.)

That means it will be sooner than the 10 weeks as suggested (hooray!); the 10 week appointment that the paperwork was referring to is the first prenatal visit at the base clinic, which happens after the typically 8-week-ish ultrasound out in town.

Other than getting the gears turning for setting up appointments, my return trip to base medical last Friday was pretty uninteresting. They did another urine test and yep, still pregnant. Generally there was a bunch of confusion getting the lab to talk to the nurses and then the nurse coming back late from lunch but, hey, that’s how the clinic seems to work. I filled out depressing paperwork about my pregnancy history, and then they took 6 vials of my blood. I don’t even know what all they are screening for, and I don’t know how long it will be before I hear anything about results. My understanding is that these things can take a while here. I still foresee great irritation to be had as far as base medical goes, but, for now I just am anxiously awaiting the ultrasound. Oh, except that reminds me, I have to swing by there and pick up my packet from the translator’s office to take with me to the Japanese doc.

Last night I nearly drove myself insane over a little bit of brown gunk, thinking doom was probably impending. But it went away and there was never any hint of red or any pain, and I know it’s really quite common, so – yeah. It was just a couple hours of paranoia, and now I’m relaxed again because surely everything is fine. It’s just that it makes me that much more anxious for the ultrasound appointment… I need a reassuring mantra or something. The anxiety is brutal.

Symptoms: First Round

Since Zoe asked how I’m feeling, and I like to have records of such things, yes I am experiencing some early pregnancy symptoms at approximately 4 weeks. The boobs are the most noticeable – sensitive nipples in particular. I have also been having lower abdominal pressure that’s more similar to a full bladder than menstrual cramps. Last week these two signs triggered a “Hey, that’s awfully familiar” feeling, and prompted me to test even before missing my period.

I had been dieting (low-carb and restricted calories) for about a week before I found out, and so I immediately quit that and have been eating as much as I want – keeping the foods healthy, of course. (Er, healthy except for the couple of predominantly white-flour and jarred-sauce meals that my well-meaning friend S has fed me…) Anyway, since quitting the diet I’ve lost 2 pounds. No puking, but I have had some tummy issues, which I assume to be the culprit. Also, I’ve about doubled my water consumption, so I can’t say whether the constant peeing is just a habit change thing or is directly pregnancy related. It hasn’t gotten me up in the middle of the night yet, but it is starting to beat my alarm clock in the mornings.

What else? I had a couple of days even before the first test where I was way overly emotional. I cried over the stress of deciding whether or not I’m going to fly to California next month (I’m not), which is bad enough, but then I also cried during a sitcom I watched on Hulu. I’m choosing to blame all of that on hormones rather than just generally being a fragile mess.

I think that’s everything. And I don’t mean to complain about any of the above, which are at worst minor nuisances. Except the weight loss, which makes the narcissist in me rather pleased. (At the moment I’m at 155#, for the record, for when I start tallying up pregnancy weight gain. Which, by the way, is five pounds less than the starting point with my triplets.) I honestly feel great, at least for the time being – I just want to make note of the little quirks.

Base Medical Makes Me Grumpy

On Friday (it’s Sunday right now in Japan), I went to the base medical clinic like I said I would. I did the urine test – positive! yay! But they wouldn’t do a blood test, because apparently it’s too early. And yes, it is very, very early; lots of things can go wrong. So I’m waiting a week and then going back for urine test #2 and THEN we’ll proceed into betas and getting the next string of appointments set up. Well, assuming I don’t get my “period” (as the corpsman said), and it’s not a “false positive.” A false positive? Really? After five (ok, I have a sickness) strong positive tests? Perhaps the corpsman doesn’t know about/understand/acknowledge the term chemical pregnancy. It felt pretty dismissive, particularly since he didn’t tell me to, like, come back if I did start bleeding so I could get checked out.

Whatever. I mean, either way I know it’s going to be a while before the first official prenatal checkup, and this is totally not a chemical pregnancy (optimism!) – so it’s no big deal to wait a week, right? The paperwork I filled out at the clinic actually said appointment number one would be scheduled at about 10 weeks, which seems way late for anybody. Of course with my history and my anxiety, and my likely need for hypertension medication, I’ll insist on earlier.

So the two things I take away from this visit: One, dealing with the medical setup over here may take a good bit of initiative and insistence. Two, outside confirmation of a positive test! Let’s not forget about that part!  Yay!

Gratuitous Photo Of Things I’ve Peed On

 

If the FRER says it, it must be true. Top two are from today, the bottom is yesterday’s. They really are dark lines, aren’t they? Considering that by LMP dating, I’m 3w6d; I’m not even “late” yet by a normal 28-day standard (which my uterus never adheres to anyway). I’m heading to the base medical clinic in a few for the *official* test.

Surprise

This morning:

First of all: OH MY GOD I am beside-myself-thrilled. Stunned. Excited.

Nervous and a little extra paranoid all that other crap, too, and there are some obstacles, but -YAY. I had wondered if I’d ever see this again.

This is rather unexpected. Ok, granted, Hubs and I had marital relations and did not use any contraceptives, so, obviously we can’t claim to be caught totally off guard. I do know the mechanics of procreation. But I wasn’t charting – my thermometer was stuffed in a drawer! – and we weren’t trying to time intercourse or anything. I don’t even know my O day. (I am pretty sure I know the implantation day, though, because I did have some red spotting and a hormone-type headache last Thursday, and that timeline works out for a positive test today..)

In fact, we had talked about using preventative measures this month but in the end decided “Meh, whatever.” It didn’t seem very likely anyway. The reason it was up for discussion? As it turns out, the current ship schedule has Hubs gone for the due date, and off and on for a lot of next year. So, that sucks kind of a lot, and at this moment feels like the biggest of those obstacles I was mentioning. But you know what? We’ll take it. After what we’ve gone through since we started trying, I suppose it’s a relatively minor problem.

In a ‘circle of life’ type way, there’s one interesting tidbit: CD1 of this cycle was the triplet’s birthday.

First Birthday

Unbelievably, it was a year ago tonight that our triplets were born and we were a family of five. Unbelievable because it feels like so long ago. Unbelievable because it feels like no time has passed at all. Unbelievable because of how different I thought our life was going to be today, a year and a week ago. It turns out our life looks just the same as it did before, or at least how we’d been planning for it to look before I got pregnant.

The same, except for us being so sharply incomplete.

I feel obligated to post something amazing and meaningful tonight. A poem I’ve written. A painting I’ve done. An account of dreams I’ve had where my children have visited me. Maybe even a photo of the world’s saddest birthday cake. But I don’t have any of those things to share. I just have this permanent hole in my heart. The edges aren’t as ragged as they used to be.

Ceremonially I lit the triplets’ candles this evening, and I read through old blog posts and looked at the photos. It almost feels like it happened to somebody else. I don’t have their footprint cards or the tiny hats they wore or the blanket I made or any of the stuff we’d bought for them, all in a box packed neatly with all the other boxes that still are somewhere in between our house in Rhode Island and our house in Japan. We do have them here with us, their urns, and the candle holders.

I still don’t know how much I would do differently if I could. All of it. None of it. Somewhere in between… Not that it makes any difference.

Happy birthday little ones. We love you always.

What Time Is It There?

Welllll…… I’m in Japan! Hanging out in the Navy Lodge, by myself. Okay, okay, I’ve already met several of the ship wives (and CO’s husband – yes, that’s right), who are all terrific so far, and I have another friend here attached to a different ship, and I’m not actually by myself at all. But Hubs is gone, and the ship is sailing around out in the Pacific for, well, until around the triplets’ birthday.

That new blog I have been promising? It’s here: http://everydaygaijin.wordpress.com. Come visit me there! You’ll hear a lot more from me there than you will here…

In fact I’m back to unsure of this blog’s immediate future. This cycle, we had to make it count or else we were out of luck. My body refused to cooperate. In fact, I have no idea what my uterus has been up to lately and I can’t seem to find the energy to care. Erratic temperatures – but, I mean, with our road trip, we slept in at least 10 different beds in the month of January, which certainly didn’t help the charting. Then starting on CD26, after no discernible ovulation, I had 13 straight days of bleeding. It was right on the border between just spotting and a light period. What’s that about? Really? I mean, fortunately it finally quit. I don’t know what to make of it, if I should consider it a new cycle or what; but at this point it sort of doesn’t matter. After all, no fertilization is going to be happening any time soon… I’ll keep taking my temps to see if things straighten out or stay wonky, but, wow that will be boring to write about! So, yeah, go over to the other one and see about my Japanese adventures, and I’ll think about this one a little bit and see what I come up with.