Week 14: Moving (Us, not the baby)

We had our last check-up with our family doctor in Toronto this week. She's seen us through a lot - way more than I thought she'd need to when we first got our health cards two years ago. I'm so happy we were in a country where sirens on ambulances mean something when we had an emergency last year. I'm happy I was proactively offered pap smears & breast cancer screenings. I'm elated to have seen our baby more often, already, than the clinics in India would have let us (and all for free). The OHIP system in Ontario is legendary. I'm going to miss it beyond belief.

That little ode aside, Santra (orange) is doing well. The last time we had a scan, Santra was measuring about a week behind - but he's now back on track and measuring nicely. I, on the other hand, haven't put on any weight in the last four weeks. This really surprised me because I feel a lot bigger. In certain clothes, you can see a blump - still more bloat than bump. Needless to say, I'm getting rid of those clothes :) 

We're packing to move to India at the moment. Despite all of R's protestations to the contrary, our luggage still fits in the bags we carried over when we came here - two suitcases and a carry on item + laptop bag each. I helped by giving away the bulk of my wardrobe. Hey, it's not like any of it will fit me for long anyway.

The doctor said most people don't put on much weight in their first trimester anyway, and that I'd gone from a respectable 48 last year to 51 so far, so she wasn't concerned. I don't think I weighed 48 for very long, but I can confidently say I went from juuust touching 50 to solidly 51 in the last 14 weeks. She also reassured me that I probably wouldn't feel uncomfortable on my front for a while yet because of my general size - which is great news as it's one of the few positions I can sleep in.

In pregnancy symptoms this week: 

* more ridiculous exhaustion - I sleep for 9 hours and wake up feeling like I just fell asleep

* a complete lack of appetite - but we were in a certain city where even the Subway didn't have spinach/olives, so it's not like there was anything to eat

* a couple of mild headaches - possibly because I haven't drunk enough water, which in turn is because I know it's the one thing guaranteed to make me throw up. I don't want to look at a glass of water before noon.
* an inability to get out of bed, which baffles me because I'm usually a morning person
* broken sleep and weird dreams; again, quite unusual
* continuing ditziness, ie: I need to really focus to remember things, and I've lost the ability to multi-task (but I still beat A at our first ever round of Scrabble)

In short, nothing worth complaining about, but quite a bit to be amused at. On the bright side, we've now started telling people the news, woot! I was super thrilled to tell my bestest over Hangouts.

[Tune: Here's what V bought me for Valentine's last year. 

Me: Aww! Ooh, ooh, here's what R's getting me for Valentine's next year!]

R doesn't do that kind of build-up, so he just told his friends outright. Sharing happiness really is the best feeling. 

Week 13: The NT Scan

This hasn't been a good week. R's paternal grandmother, the one who's been urging us to have children since the first time we met her three years ago, passed away. We feel lost, too far away, and so guilty about holding off from sharing the pregnancy news so far.

Pregnancy-wise as well, I think my body's keen to show me what the first trimester could have been like - nausea, throwing up, dizziness, crippling tiredness, major food aversion, back aches, restless sleep, frequent restroom visits and an even ditzier pregnancy brain than usual ('What's that? Oh, the stuff which connects to makes things be louder.' [I so wish that wasn't a direct quote. Also, the word I was looking for was 'speakers.'])

On the bright side, we're now officially in that range where only 2% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. 1 out of 50 aren't super-great odds, but compared to 1 out of 4, which was the case for much of the pregnancy, they sound fantastic. We confirmed this at an ultrasound on the last day of the 12th week - it was a NT scan, done to assess the probability of the baby having certain chromosomal irregularities, based on the thickness of the fluid at the back of its neck. 

As usual, I was told to drink 2 glasses of water an hour before my appointment, and as usual, I ignored this and drank 1 glass 20 minutes before the appointment. I won. There was a 45 minute wait at the clinic (!!!!) before I finally gave up doing the need-a-loo-need-a-loo dance and stormed off to the washroom. Of course, they were ready for me as soon as I came back with what I thought was an empty-ish bladder. Turns out there was still enough to get a clear shot of the baby. Ha. Pregnancy.

I was so glad I took that restroom break, because after fifteen minutes of prodding, belly dancing, fake-coughing and doing the hokey-pokey (no, really), the sonographer said, "Is it ok if I shake a little hard now?" Cue lots of fierce prodding which would have had me in a very embarrassing position if I hadn't just been to the restroom.

"Is there still a heartbeat?" I asked, heart in my mouth, thinking of all the travelling and hiking I'd been doing.

"Oh yeah yeah, 170bpm, all perfect. This baby's just sleeping," she said. Through all that?! Talk about an eerie resemblance to its father!

R was called in, and we both watched Pataani's (pea pod) butterfly brain, and yoga poses. Its fists curl up and out now. I asked if the sonographer had a best gender guess, with the caveat that I knew she couldn't actually tell at this point. She zoomed into a potty shot, since the baby wasn't cooperating with a nice side profile, and R's convinced it's a girl ever since. ("But it has a boy's head!" he adds.) This time, we got a nice shot of the baby's head, despite its unwillingness to pose for too long.

I snuck a peek at the lab technician's notes, saw 1.5mm, and combined with my age + family medical history, figured we're probably in the clear for the NT results (I estimate a 1 out of at least 50,000 risk, which is pretty good. I clearly read too many pregnancy forums given I know this stuff cold). Still, I had to go give a vial of blood for the IPS1 portion of the test. There was a mess-up with my paperwork; the clinic had lost the requisition forms we'd dropped off earlier, and they had to re-draw them. I think they messed up this part, actually, because they asked for a urine sample as well as blood. I'd been so sure only blood was required that I'd blissfully been to the restroom a couple more times by this time. The clinic and I just can't seem to get our bathroom breaks synced correctly!

I went down to the lab, sat down for the extraction, and was not particularly reassured by the technician saying, "Aiyi, your nerve is the size of the needle! Such thin veins, eh? Now we pray to God." To be fair, it made me clench my fist harder, and she didn't have any trouble putting the injection in. We got a couple of phone calls from the clinic & lab over the next couple of days - everything's in the clear. I've to appreciate their diligence calling people up to let them know so quickly, I know it must be really nerve wracking for couples with dicey family history/age. I took back some of the swearing I'd been doing over the bungled paperwork + long wait time.

R was planning to tell his brother our news on the last day of the 12th week... but we heard about their avva's hospitalization the same day, and it just doesn't feel right any more. I'd planned to tell my bestie the news today, but I'm not sure yet if I will. Either way, we're going to Newfoundland next week, so that gives everyone a couple of weeks to process all this.

Weeks 11 & 12: He, she, it

This isn't really a pregnancy update, because we're travelling at the moment - it's just a scheduled post about things we're thinking about.

After years of telling me how he wanted to be surprised post-delivery, R's first question when we found out I was pregnant was, "How soon can they tell if it's a boy or a girl?" So much for waiting to be surprised.

I've always wanted a daughter - blame it on Gilmore Girls, and the fact that I know R will absolutely be on tenterhooks for the rest of his life if we had a daughter. But throughout this pregnancy, I've had a feeling I'm carrying a boy, and ever since, I've really wanted one. I've been doodling little monsters and dinosaurs, and re-reading Tom Sawyer. Of course, now R wants a girl just as much. 

Let's be clear - even if this is a girl, she's going to be given an equal dose of Mark Twain and mythical creatures. I'm all for gender neutrality. I counted out the male & female characters in our nursery prints (I plan ahead, clearly) to make sure they were evenly balanced. Boy or girl, he or she will be wearing/looking at all the colours of the rainbow, not endless variations of pink or blue.

And yet, I've been pouring over the forums that say you can predict a baby's sex based on the angle of the dangle/skull shape and so on. Why is it suddenly important? Well, a couple of reasons. One, we're moving back to India, where it's illegal to find out, and that makes this a classic case of wanting what you can't have the minute you find out you can't have it. Two, gender neutrality can only be taken so far. What am I supposed to do, read 'She rocked *it* back & forth' instead of 'She rocked him back & forth' when I'm reading out Robert Munsch's Love You Forever? Obviously, it's a moot question, because we're leaving Canada at the end of week 15, which is still too soon to tell conclusively, but that doesn't stop me from wondering. 

I'm also considering Bump's first lullabies and books. R accuses me of trying to sneak in 'all that Tamil culture,' in vitro. Won't deny it, heh. We've discussed theism a fair bit - neither of us is particularly religious, but I think it's idyllic to imagine we can bring the baby up in a bubble. For one, we're not really in bubbles ourselves, being from fairly orthodox families. We always have a puja room in our house, and invariably head over there before we do anything important or leave on a journey. We know all the rituals and mythology, and I think it'd be a shame not to at least talk about all of that, particularly for the 'story' value of it all. We are not bringing our child up on Aesop's Fables & Mother Goose alone. And finally, Carnatic music! There's no way I'm not occasionally playing M.S., and I can't help it if she's invariably singing about God. 

I suspect we'll be having lovely hypothetical discussions like this while we're travelling. When we get back, it'll be time for the Nuchal Scan at 13 weeks, to check for Down's and a few other genetic deviations. That'll be our official go-ahead to tell the world - except that we still won't, because we want to do it in person when we go to India next month! Ah, the wait. Too much.