27 weeks

I was late publishing my 23 week post, it is hidden here

For every check/appointment/scan during work hours I put something in DP's office calendar.
However, for the 27 weeks appointment (one that would actually be with a real gynaecologist) DP declined, saying he had something important at work.
I stomped off to HB, needing to blow off some steam about this (and to avoid saying anything to DP I would regret later). Before I even finished my sentence HB  had already blocked his own calendar. I didn't even have to ask.
So Tuesday we were in the hospital. I'm always early, don't want to have to rush.
But typically doctors are always late. We were told that thanks to one no-show our wait would only be 15 minutes. Turned 25, then 35 minutes. I know it doesn't mean anything, but it still makes me nervous. So I forgot to introduce HB to the doctor.
Doctor was happy with my latest blood test results, my thyroid levels have stabilised and she thought it was nonsense to test every month or even two weeks. Every trimester was fine with her, but if I preferred 6 weeks that was OK too.
Blood pressure still normal (120/70)
Then she decided to do a belly exam, I think mostly for the trainee doctor (young lady, gentle, with the longest hair) Trainee couldn't find the head of the baby, but she did determine baby was vertical. Doctor did a quick feel too and said baby was bum down, back to my left side, curving the head to the right again. Leaving hand and feet to make fun at my right side.
Then came one of the quickest scans ever. Look, upper leg, wait it is too short, must be an arm, moving down, big bundle of lower and upper legs all folded over. 5,3 cm. Then belly and head circumference, I think she mumbled something of 243 which could very well be millimetres and would correspond roughly with 8cm across for a circle. Heartbeat was fine, and lovely to hear again. We could also see a little stomach, quite black, so I think the amniotic fluid must be tasty. And there was loads of it too.
After the scan she quickly went over the numbers with me, remarking that baby's legs are long, just like mine and HB's. I was quite embarrassed to admit that neither one of us has a genetic relationship to this baby. But later it dawned on me that I don't have to keep denying any resemblance. Because a resemblance is just that, no one even said there was a genetic reason for that.
So from Tuesday on I have been answering that baby is fine, growing well, long legs, big belly and small head, Just Like Me.
The only concern I have is the hard belly I've been getting, basically since returning from Riga. It comes and goes, especially when I get up from a chair or try to run up stairs. I know that bit is normal and usually fades (1 minute or so), but sometimes it lasts much longer (15 minutes?) and I can hardly stand up straight anymore.
Doctor advised to make an appointment with the Occupational Health Doctor of my company, and suggested that doctor could advise on working less hours per day. I'll see how that goes, Monday.
And straight after that I'll have to join 3 colleagues for a Tuesday in the Stockholm office. Crazy.

So many bellies

A few weeks ago I got a yoga book from the library, for exercises safe during pregnancy. I looked at the pictures for the first part and thought: haha, look at that model, she's got a little belly!
(duh, so do I.) I looked at the second and third part, with big bellies and baby bumps for the yoga models, and was impressed you can still do so much. Then I looked at part four: exercises with baby.
WHAAATTTT? how is that part of pregnancy?! And then it dawned on me again that IF changes our view of what is normal, what is to be expected.

Like a colleague asked me if I wasn't afraid of the pain of giving birth. No not really{if I get that far that is pretty much a given}, I'm afraid of embryos/foetus/baby not surviving...

Tuesday was my first belly-yoga class.
I signed up together with the DE-IVF friend from the party, so I knew I wouldn't be the only older one there. ( and knowing that in my country the average age for first time pregnancies is 31, I wasn't really worried we'd be surrounded by 16-year-olds, but still)

 What I hadn't realised is that the due dates of the other ladies were all earlier than mine. In other words: my belly was just that, a belly, and they all had real baby bumps. And suddenly I felt panicky, like I was an imposter who didn't belong....

Riga

 Quite unexpectedly I found myself on a business trip to Riga, with my boss, our russian-latvian colleague and Lily, who had lived there in 2006.
This is sunrise from my hotel room. Big halls? to park your Zeppelin of course!

 We had some time before heading to the office, and Lily gave me a quick tour of the old city center. Even the commercial mural was pretty.

 Guild houses.

 And pretty towers. Shame that someone ran into my elbow here, it made me drop my phone on the cobble stones. Glass is a bit broken now. But it still works.
No pictures in the office, but to my West-European eyes people there look different. Most women on stiletto heels, most guys the straightest short strange mouse coloured hair.
After work the russian and the boss wanted to go drinking, but I had other plans.

At 6:45 PM I asked the kind lady at the hotel reception if she could tell me something about the ballet. She typed a little, and told us that if we left immediately we could just make it to the National Ballet around the corner. Kopelija. Tickets unbelievably cheap, and even just the theatre itself was worth it:

 

It is impossible to take proper pictures in the dark, but this may give you an idea:

You can even see a glimpse of the live orchestra below the stage!
We had a lovely ladies night out.
(and I was thinking of the famous 'Bolshoi do not tremble'. They were not the Bolshoi, but they were real people who managed not to look ridiculous in their costumes, which I can't say of the Bolshoi in this video. And they didn't need fake moustaches to look Russian!

In the plane on the way back there were babies both the row in front of me, and behind me. The one behind was so small it slept the whole way. The one in front only made a sound when his next bite of mushed banana wasn't coming fast enough. He enjoyed the banana so much he was waving/flapping his little arms and legs. And I felt an answer coming from my belly. I'm ever so slowly starting to believe it might become a take home baby next year.
Another new (to me) thing my bump told me loud and clear is to make sure I get enough sleep. After the return flight I tried to work the rest of the day in the Amsterdam office, but I could hardly stand upright with the bump getting tight and hard. Sleeping 12 hours in my own bed did a world of good.
Better get to that now!

TMI on a pregnant body

maybe you read this over at Stirrup Queens.
This line struck me:

You fit into the You-sized space you always fit into.
The one only you can fill.

My own Me-sized space. Even though my size changes every week, sometimes faster than I can comprehend.
So time for me to take note (and probably time for you to stop reading and continue to my Riga post with pretty pictures)
My belly is growing. I know, kind of obvious and logical for everyone else, but it keeps surprising me. It is real. And sometimes it moves.
My areolae are darker now. In summer they were as tan as my arms. Now my arms are lighter again. But while my tan will keep changing with the seasons, my areola will forever mark me as someone who was more than 20 weeks pregnant.
Gingival recession. sounds prettier than receding gums but is the same non-pretty thing. Wiki doesn't mention hormones at all, but pregnancy hormones make the gums weaker, less tight around my teeth, more sensitive to 'agressive' brushing, giving room to plaque bacteria. Not good for foetus, not good for teeth. While I can stop the local infections with proper and gentle brushing, tooth picking plus flossing, I'm not sure the recession can be reversed. Booh.
Linea nigra. linea light for now. never mind, will fade somewhere next year.
Vulva bla bla bigger. I couldn't hear the proper word for it, and googling it is sort of gross. But will return to normal eventually.
And while I'm down there, no sneezing, because it's just not staying dry anymore.
oh, and I cry from reading sad stories. sleepless even from the violence in shawshank redemption (didn't even make it to the end).
And out of breath trying to run up four flights of stairs.

mhm, and if I drink a full glass after I've eaten I have to be careful it stays down. Find it hard to get used to. But not drinking enough might invite the cramps back in (although I've had them only twice)

'Pret-echo'

23 weeks, October 23rd

In Dutch it is called a pret-echo, an ultrasound scan just for fun.
On Tuesday I took my mother along to a small clinic, so she could see the miracle for herself. I always think the blurry grainy scan pictures are only cute as a reminder of a scan, not necessarily cute by themselves.
My mother did enjoy the scan very much, enjoyed sharing the experience and the oh-s and ahh-s. 
I asked my friend Lily to come along as well, hoping she could take some little movies with my mom's camera. What I didn't realise was I would get more than just 6 pictures of our 15 minute appointment (like the website said), we actually got the whole scan on DVD. Including the sound of the heartbeat for about 10 seconds.


I remember when my brother was over the moon happy showing 3d scan pictures of my unborn nephew that my father was withdrawing, it was too much technology for him. (or so I thought)
So when the next day I dropped by my parent's to leave a copy of the DVD on my mothers apple computer I was a bit surprised he offered his own windows laptop after about 1 second of me trying in vain to work with hers.
It took some effort to get the file to play, and then the settings needed some tinkering. But we ended up watching the DVD about three times overall, with me explaining what I could about what we saw. And at last my father said it was beautiful...

The nice thing of the scan on my request was that I could also ask if the scan lady could still find the twin. She did. There is still a small sac visible, 1.5 cm across now. This little universe, built from the twins dna, dissolving, shrinking like a tiny private black hole now.

For a month now (Nov 23rd) I've been thinking of how to make this into some kind of goodbye. And ~surprise~ I can't really. It seems never enough or right. May made a final point (second half of that post) I can agree with. I'm not that angry at the moment, but sad.
I find myself dreaming of how to put it on the birth announcement, even if only for a few people. So hard to find the right words.
I don't allow myself much time for sadness, but this blog feels like the natural place to come back to it.
 

it's very pastelly yellow

Very pastelly yellow was my first thought when I saw it standing in my parents living room. I like the iron work, the curly feet, the wavy side. It looks, mhm, quite modern in a way. I will give it some time to see if I can get used to the fabric. Our current house is quite full already, and there are a lot of green little stars on the outside. Plus you can't see much of the iron this way. The inside is yellow with tiny white dots, much quieter.
On the other hand: I'm quite clumsy when it comes to fabric and sewing and such. Taking off the fabric  I could easily do, but getting something else back on? I have no idea how old or new this fabric is though, last baby in the crib was born 2006, the 3 before him late 90s, so probably less than 20 years...
Oh, when we arrived home there was one tiny detail: the top (bed) half didn't fit through the front door. (I wasn't kidding when I said the front door is smaller than your fridge door) The widest point of the crib-handles is only 69 cm, but it wouldn't fit. Luckily the neighbours arrived soon after us and were kind enough to let us use their front door / staircase / balcony. (and then on to our balcony)

{update: After one night I can say it is still so surreal to have this in our house. Like it is a prop for a play maybe}

Drama with stepteen refusing to see me and/or come to Amsterdam continues (It's been two months now). DP spent two male-only days with the boys for their autumn break at his parents place and the contact was perfectly normal. (But the topic was avoided) Now the Amsterdam kid weekends are only filled with his youngest son.

When DP was getting ready to drive the crib filled car from my parents' to our house his boy was suddenly keen to cycle back with me. He was fine in traffic and kept talking all the while.
Did I know what was strange? In fairy tales the stepmothers are always evil, but there are also some very lovely stepmothers. Oh, there is our bridge, here we turn right!

I think he was right on all accounts... (the thing is, we never refer to me as stepmother, we just use my name, so I'm slightly puzzled if this came out of the blue)

1880

It was the year 1880 and my great-great-grandmother unexpectedly gave birth to a baby. My great-great-grandfather was overjoyed and ordered a crib from a blacksmith for this occasion. This crib must have been reasonably solid, as it was passed down the generations. Can't remember if my mother slept in that crib as a newborn, but she could tell me that my brother and I did, as did some of her nephews and nieces. the youngest of whom is 27 now. In the mean time this crib has been in a different branch of the family, which my mother got in contact with. Next week the crib will be delivered back to her. She reckons she probably kept the sheets for the crib. For more than 40 years? 'Well, they are only small' she said.
I will not be passing down any dna, but I'm so very happy and grateful to hopefully have a chance to pass down this tradition. And the most amazing thing? my favourite baby name that I've been savouring for years, was also given to this baby in 1880...

Shopping

My mother told me that as a kid I always dragged her into the Mothercare store so I could push around the prams (but I can't remember).
As a student I loved to browse through baby aisles of warehouses, and my favourite gift was to pick out baby socks, just because they were so small.
As an infertile it became a nightmare to be in a shop surrounded by baby items.
Last week I decided I really couldn't put it off any longer to buy a flexible bra. I'd done some research online to find a shop that should carry the size I needed. I went in (in a baby/mother shop), but by the time I reached the back wall with the bras (had to pass multiple aisles with baby clothes) I was already in a mild panic. Bought two as quickly as I could without trying them on.
At home I saw I bought nursing bras. Can hardly express how embarrassed I was. Or how much I dreaded going back. (yes, in my mind it is still impossible to buy things only needed in a certain kind of future) In the end my colleague Lily decided we could go together during lunch break, as it would probably be quieter than on the weekend. She was right, the store was deserted, and she calmly helped me pick not only the right size but the right item as well. (Plus riding with her on the tandem was both great fun and a nice distraction)

On Saturday I asked my mother to go shopping with me for pants I can keep wearing to work. I wanted black pants that say 'nothing to see here, move right along'
Normally she is very good at being pleasant with the sales people while giving me little nods of approval or tiny shakes of no. This time she kept encouraging me to try more things on and in the end she liked almost everything, so I ended up with 6 items that all mix and match and will get me through winter.
I think my mother enjoyed it very much, being surrounded by maternity clothes and talking with the sales lady. (she may even have toned down her outward enthusiasm for me)
22 weeks today and I still find it weird and hard to believe. It's only 5 kilo's difference and so far only 1 person has come up to me to ask if I was just getting a little belly or pregnant.

Growing just fine

Big scan was all OK.
It was quite a difference being scanned by a ultrasound technician instead of a midwife. This lady wasn't interested at all in any waving of arms or legs! (or me for that matter)
All kinds of organs were looked at, brains, skin, bones. Nothing out of the ordinary, so yippee.
It was lovely to see DP glued to the screen, his face shining. Even though most of the time we had no real idea what we were seeing, (e.g. I couldn't tell the difference between the inside of the belly and the inside of the head) half of the time the little one was moving and that is something we understand.

At the end I asked if she could find the other sac, but she said she saw nothing. didn't really give the impression she even wanted to look for it, was running late even at 10 AM. I was a bit sad to not have a somewhat final goodbye. Or maybe just the feeling that the other one doesn't matter at all anymore is what hurts.

DP was eager to get back to the office, but once we got there (11:40 AM) I just couldn't bring myself to go inside. My boss had informed the team, my colleague Lily had texted that reactions were quiet and happy, but I needed some more time. I got HB to join me outside for lunch. Oh we found out the gender, but DP wants to keep that private. The thing is that HB sees right through me, so while I only said that everything is OK HB already knew. ah well, he will keep it to himself. He just might have to be the godfather of this little one.

What else?
Loads of things happening.
On Mondays yoga and orchestra rehearsal.
Wednesdays an evening course of 10 evenings (work, mandatory) to learn about Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchies, Wavelength Division Multiplexing and other things I never wanted to know about.
Thursdays bootcamp.
And some stepkid drama going on. I'm thinking it's his age, 13, he is thinking it's me (and my sarcasm).
I find it hard to blog about it, and equally hard not to. I suppose the good news is that DP is quite rational about it and not blaming me but standing by my side, but as long as the stepteen isn't rational and refuses to come for the weekend DP misses out on his son (and son on his father) It makes for rather silent evenings around here.

HB left today for another diving trip in Egypt. I feel guilty for not going (no mixing scuba and grasshoppers), for not being there as his buddy. More in the emotional sense than actual practical scuba. Thinking he might need me. A shoulder to cry on when/if he finally allows himself to miss his parents. Although I'm afraid I need him more (and his shoulder). Scared of not being on the same wavelength.
ah, phone beeps, my text messages are finally getting delivered to HB, so this means that at least his phone got safely off the plane.
Always so reassuring to get a sign of life. Whether it is small beeps or little blubs from below.

Take care.

Dear Aunty Lizzie

She answered!

And of course her answer is both wise and funny.
Good news only then.
I agreed with my boss he would tell the team while I'm away to get my big scan this Wednesday.
Such simple solutions.

(I think I can still hide my belly for a little while though. Plus people see me eating candy all the time, so might not be surprised to see me grow ;-)

updated: Apparently I'm not the only one who doesn't want to tell coworkers. And judging by the sheer number of reactions and the post itself it's a hot topic. I guess much depends on what kind of reaction and support you can expect from colleagues...