Appointments, Appointments

I truly can’t put into words how tired I am. In a perfect world, I would sleep all day. Except sleeping comes with dreaming and my dreams have been all over the place. From hot and heavy to downright scary. Eeep!

Friday (March 20)

I’m not sure exactly how pregnant I am, but I will know for sure on Tuesday when I have my next ultrasound for the nuchal translucency (NT) scan. I’m more concerned with a heartbeat than I am with the results of the NT scan.

So Thursday (yesterday), I met with the internist who is going to monitor me for gestational diabetes and put a preventive treatment plan in place. I think we will call him Dr Sugar (my blog, my rules!). He explained that the lovely display of acanthosis nigricans on my chest is because all the estrogen in my system because of the pregnancy are causing me to be insulin resistant. I will follow up with him in two weeks. He did say that it’s perfectly safe to stay on metformin for my entire pregnancy and so that will be something that I do.

I’m doing blood work today (Friday) to check my A1c levels and I’m doing the glucose tolerance test. The orange drink they make you drink isn’t THAT bad. It tastes like that McDonald’s orange bowl. I have an hour to kill before I meet with the nutritionist. Hopefully she will know something about something… I wish they had beds in the waiting room. I’m tired.

…

I met with the nutritionist and can admit that I left overwhelmed and near tears. I don’t have gestational diabetes (yet), but the meal plan I have to follow was just so overwhelming. That, coupled with the constant blood sugar testing? It was all too much for me. I know it isn’t the end of the world, but it was still overwhelming.

Tuesday (March 25)

I had my NT scan this morning. I went in absolutely terrified. One of my close friends found out that she miscarried yesterday. It’s really hard to be relaxed when you’re surrounded by loss. More on this later.

The hospital was surprisingly on time. I went in, lowered my pants and the first tech (student) checked my cervix. I honestly wanted to see the heartbeat, but I could be patient. When I saw the heartbeat, I was so relieved and felt so blessed to see my little one alive and well. The second tech was a bit rougher and maybe she was pressing too hard, but it was obvious that my Little Bean was not happy because s/he kept jumping and moving around. Ultimately, the tech took the measurement and it was 1.2, which is really good! The CRL was 5.7cm, which goes with being 12w1d and a due date of October 6th.

I had an appointment with the Quebec OB, where she made some recommendations. She suggested that some of my recurring blood results could be a sign that I’m a carrier of the sickle cell trait. I will ask Dr. Sugar to look into this. There were some other things, but I can’t remember them. I will have them for my next appointment with Dr. Sugar on the 3rd. She did my pap and said she would call me if there were any abnormalities. She suspects that I have BV because of the amount of discharge, but apparently that’s very common in pregnancy. I’ve had BV before and it usually comes with the funkiest of smells, which I don’t have right now. I’ll wait for the culture results before moving forward with treatment. I don’t want to expose Little Bean to anything unnecessarily, especially since this isn’t my typical experience with it.

I got to hear Little Bean’s heartbeat and it was so lovely. I’d seen the heartbeat earlier, but this was definitely lovely. 🙂

---