Back! (and pregnant)

I just ate a turkey burger in, like, 20 seconds. I'm not kidding. I fucking INHALED it. Why? Because I'm pregnant, that's why, and I've reached that stage where I'm no longer in the driver's seat w/r/t food intake. This phase should last about another 6 months, then I'll be in charge again.

That's right, I said "pregnant". I'm in my 13th week, which means that horrible 1st trimester sleepiness should abate soon (at least until it comes back in the 3rd). We finally decided last November to try again, after many months of:

"Should we?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"Well, I guess I kinda feel like we're not done yet, what do you think?"
"Yeah, me too, but are we ready for it?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"I'm sleepy."
"Me too."

Repeat.

We started trying to get pregnant that December, until I realized that would mean no drinking over the Christmas holiday with family coming to visit. I put the kibosh on that right quick. Tried in January. Nothing. This caused me to immediately assume we'd waited too long and we'd never get pregnant as I was clearly no longer ovulating. I proceeded to pull a bunch of papers about pregnancy and insemination rates and what not. I know. It's what I do, ok?

Did you know that even in healthy couples trying to get pregnant (that is having daily sex at the right time) there's only a 37% probability of conceiving, and a 25% probability of having a live birth. That means that even if absolutely everything goes right, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting viably pregnant on any given month. (I'm getting this from Wilcox, et al. 1995, "The timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation" N Engl J Med 1995;333:1517-21) Most of the difference between conception rates and live birth rates happens before you even know you're pregnant. Essentially they had 221 healthy women who were trying to get pregnant pee into a cup every morning and record every time they had sex. This way they knew exactly when they ovulated, conceived, miscarried, etc.

This kind of blew my mind at first. Only 37% of women conceive even when the stars are aligned, and only 2/3 of those conceptions end in live births? Doesn't that figure seem low to you? And this was in healthy women trying to get pregnant, not any ol' women. Now I get why you have to be trying unsuccessfully for at least 6 months before the medical community will even begin to think you may have a fertility problem. Even though it is a low probability in any given month, another way to look at it is, even given that low conception rate, the probability of you not conceiving a viable pregnancy after 6 months of trying if you and your partner are healthy is only 18%. So, once I read all this I calmed down a little bit. February, we got pregnant.

Ok, enough statistics (for now). I'm due November 12th. Like my pregnancy with Linus, I feel good about this one. But given our history, I'm not going to relax or fully embrace it until I see that everything's ok. I did get to hear a heartbeat last week, and that was good, but I'm really waiting for today. Today we go in for a nuchal translucency ultrasound. This is a non-invasive, 1st/early 2nd trimester screening proceedure that they've recently started doing in this country (they've been doing it in the UK for quite awhile now). They take some blood and then measure the fetal nuchal translucency (fluid at the nape of the neck) via ultrasound. Really, anything above 2mm or so for the nt measure is associated with higher rates of some chromosomal anomalies (including trisomy 21 - Down's Syndrome) and/or some congenital heart defects depending on gestational and maternal age, and some blood chemistry markers. Blah, blah, blah, I want a nt <2mm. AND I want to see everything else looking good and that nice butterfly shaped higher brain development. That's what I'm looking for.

I'm not really worried about chromosomal anomolies, even given my "advanced maternal age" (all of 38) (mofos!), but fears about a repeat of pregnancy #1 lurk, especially given that we never found out what went wrong exactly.

And I'm not leaving that examination room without knowing the crown-to-rump length and nuchal translucency. I hope the ultrasound tech doesn't try to get all cagey about it. I get that he can't diagnose, but he can give me the friggin' numbers. There will be trouble if he tries to deny me.