Today I am 12 Weeks!

I am out of the Highway to the Danger Zone/Kenny Loggins-type area of the pregnancy! Wheeee! I mean, things might still turn into all-out fuckery and badness, but still, this is a good milestone! Yay for baby and yay for me and Peter!

Yesterday at prenatal pilates Kristin said, "You've popped!" Peter has also noted this, when, upon checking me for leeches after swimming in Wisconsin, he said, "You look pregnant." Basically, this means I have a potbelly. Also, my boobs are big. Jenny has kindly offered me some bras in a bigger cup size and I am really needing them. Only two of my bras currently fit me, and I've been resorting to the Patagonia mono-boob sports top (I love them, but they are not so hot, sigh). I've already collected two bags of clothes that are too tight for my chest or my potbelly protrusion. They need to go in the garage until after baby is here, and then *hopefully*, with breastfeeding and exercise, I can fit back into them, and maybe even better. Mom told me not to count on breastfeeding making my boobs shrink, but it is a fever wish of mine. Smaller boobs, please!

I've discovered that two lovely friends are about 5 1/2 months on, and two other friends are about where I am in the process. Yay for baby-making friends! I also, sadly, found out recently that two friends-of-friends miscarried in the first seven weeks or so. As I've noted, I am kind of crazily afraid of miscarrying. But what will be will be, and I am going to carry on positively through this and hope for the best.

I had to call Medtronic today to harass them about sending my infusion sets for my insulin pump. I am down to two and that is getting skeerily low. They will be here on Monday. I will probably also have to rearrange the scheduling of pump sets when I have to start changing out sets every one to two days, as my doctor and care team recommend.

Wisconsin Vacay

I just got back from 10 days in my homeland, and I have a few observations to make, I suppose about the trip and being in my first trimester and traveling and whatnot.
*Grace, my little sis, is great at yoga, and has amazing concentration and attention span. I love her to pieces.
* It is hard to take naps when you're staying at 5 different places over 9 nights. When I got the chance to take a nap one afternoon, I napped for four hours. Oy.
*Exercise is often a good substitute for naps. Though at one point I was in such a sleepy haze that I felt as if walking around Bayfield was going to destroy me. Ha ha. I was so tired I didn't even go to friend Kent's t-shirt shop to check out his fabulous '80s Keith Haring-esque style makeover (as described by Phyllis) thanks to his cradlerobber-aged boyfriend. That really means I'm tired.
*It's hard to be a diabetic, and plan for insulin pump random weirdness (two reservoirs were effed up and wouldn't work, ugh!) and still try to be a balanced pregnant lady.
*If you're low on insulin pump supplies, and cry in front of the Southwest gate, and tell them you are pregnant and a type 1 diabetic running out of supplies, they will buy you a ticket on another flight. Even if that flight takes 13 hours to get to San Francisco. Which is better than waiting another 24 hours to get home.


So, another thing I noted was that I want to try really hard, when we are lucky enough (if we are lucky enough) to be gifted with a healthy wee one, to be a United Parenting Team. I just realized that the good cop/bad cop routine is utterly ineffectual, and that we both need to be both lenient and disciplinary, but as a Borg-like entity. I also realized, again, how important it is to practice positive reinforcement. And to not say "sucks" in front of seven-year-old siblings. I've cut out the fucks, shits, etc., but the "sucks" and "craps" still pop out.

It's also really great to have a mom who's a prenatal nurse. She's basically on speed dial to answer any and all questions concerning number of times you pee in the day (uterus is pushing on bladder right now, apparently, but will lift soon and relieve the peeing needs temporarily), good baby name choices, pitocin concerns, natural births after being induced, etc. So, thanks Mom!

As Promised, Ultrasound Pictures

So, here they are. I have labeled them with appropriate body parts. The 8 weeks one is super clear because it was a Doppler one (I think) that Nurse Ginsberg (who I love, she is funny and crass and cool) took. The amazing thing about this was that I could hear the baby's heartbeat! It made me tear up, and you all know that I am not very sentimental.

And here's the second one, taken yesterday. This one was taken with the regular ultrasound, which means a wand on my belly, instead of going up the vag, which I am thankful for (which is how they did the first one). But also, that's why it looks so blurry. Just in case you are wondering, an unacceptable response to the presentation of this photo is, "So, we're having a pile of crap?" Not that anyone said that. Ahem.

What's crazy is that I could already see the leg and arm buds a lot more developed than they were a week and a half ago. The little wriggler is growing soooo fast! And she wriggled all over while Dr. Maier had the ultrasound on my belly, which was awesome cool. Sharon, the prenatal diabetes nurse/counselor, who I think is almost as baby crazy as my prenatal nurse mom, cooed and clucked and said, "Isn't that AMAZING!!!!" Yes, it was pretty darn cool. Things seem to be progressing well. Let's just all cross our fingers and say our prayers that we get through the first trimester healthfully.

The baby is now about an inch long!

As for me, I feel more energetic than a few weeks ago, and not as nauseous. Either that, or I am just getting very used to feeling this tired/nauseous. I can't really tell right now which it is. What's interesting is that when I get hungry, I get ravenously hungry immediately and feel all crampy in the stomach and nauseous. I've never had such acute hunger pangs before. Other than that, so far I love my care team, and I love being active right now; it's helping a lot with my bloodsugars, energy levels, and mood in general.

This morning the bastard pups and I took a hike at the bulb for 45 minutes or so at 7 am, and played in the surf. Or at least Ozzie and I did. Haiko was afraid to go in. That's my life right now: pregnancy, dogs, fantasizing about the perfect chicken salad sandwich, and wishing I had the energy to sew up all the damn fabric on my ironing board. Pretty mundane, but it feels right.

2nd Doctor's Appointment

Today I had my official second appointment with Dr. Maier, my perinatologist, who, to review, is basically an ob/gyn who works with mommies and babies who have some sort of loser complication or deficiency. In my case it is a) being 35 and b) being a 20-year type 1 diabetic. I am tired of thinking about all of the shit-ass complications that diabetic mommies have, not to mention their gestating wormies (as Elly would say) or wombies (as Magnolia would say), so I am practicing something that doesn't come very naturally to me, the Lutheran-rooted Midwesterner Berkeley transplant: optimism. I try to do as much as I can and think nice thoughts and get on with my life. Lately the nice thought has been "Baby, baby, baby, baby," which will not stop repeating itself in my head. It's like this obsessive stupid mantra. Imagine it being said by a benign Sendak-like monster on the hunt for a chicken salad sandwich, and that is about how it sounds in my head.

Anyway. Second appointment in WC today with Maier, Sharon, the pump specialist who works with diabetic moms, and Kimmy (I think that's her name), who is a dietician. They hrmed and hawed over my logbook and basal and bolus rates and ultimately upped by basal rates by .2 units/hour and reduced by carb/insulin ratio. We shall see. It is so horrible to sit there without any pants on while they go over my books and dicker with my insulin pump. They're very sweet, but it's unnerving. I've always been a bad test taker and this pregnancy feels a lot like a 9-month-long test; at least it does when I'm in the doctor's office.

Then I got to have my first ultrasound, and the wee babe is 9 1/2 weeks right now, about an inch long, and has little visible arm and leg buds. And, I got to see it move. The little wriggler moved and stretched and flexed and that was sure exciting.

I really like Dr. Maier. He has this kind of zen-like office presence; he's a man of few words but he makes me feel calm and taken care of, which is much preferable to chatted up and annoyed. My next appointment is 3 weeks from now. I will be officially at 12 weeks (blessings be, god willing) by then, so hopefully things will all be progressing perfectly and I will still be feeling as good as I do now.

Lots of exercise this past week, too, including my prenatal pilates class with Kristin (she's kicking my ass with a vengeance, and I love it) and several Tilden hikes with the dogs, as well as the normal hill walking and neighborhood strolls with the pups, which, thanks to the staircases, always gets my heart pumping. I need to start a yoga class and add a stretching routine into the morning hours. It's hard to do so, though, without getting mauled by the puppy.

Some Time to Reflect

So, many many things have happened, mostly though it has been days and weeks of feeling cranky, nauseous, bloated, and dog tired. I've told some people, including my father (pictured here), who didn't let me tell him, but instead told me that I was having a little girl. I only mention this because my father is a little bit psychic, as he also dreamed that my cousin Hilde had a baby boy before he was told she was pregnant. And now Hilde has Graham, so . . . I guess more than anything, in these first 12 weeks, while I try not to worry about miscarriage and complications, I can take comfort in my father's psychic-baby-babble.

Mostly, I've been terrified about the Type 1 Diabetic pregnancy thing. Every time my bloodsugar goes up or down, I freak out a little about the baby, whether this bloodsugar wackness is affecting its growth, heartbeat, well being. I spent four hours on Friday at various Kaiser specialists, and it was all very good news. I have the first ultrasound photo, which I'll post soon, and got to hear the baby's heartbeat, which was freaking fantastic. And I also got tons of good news about my Super High Risk Pregnancy. Basically: I'm not so high risk. Why? Because my disease is pretty much under control, and my body is pretty dang healthy.

What does it all mean? A breakdown:

*I am, as of today, 8 weeks 3 days pregnant.
*Thanks to my peeing in a bottle, Kaiser pharm has determined I have A plus kidney function. This is awesome.
*My A1c is 6.8. If you have an a1c of under 7, Kaiser considers you to be only slightly higher risk than the normal population. I've read studies showing that if your A1c is under 6.9, you basically have a normal pregnancy. I'm hoping to get my a1c down even further, hopefully into the 5s, by the end of the pregnancy. (An A1c of 6.0 or less is considered normal for a non-diabetic, according to The Joslin Diabetes Center.)
*I tested negative for cystic fibrosis, HIV, various STDs, Hep something or other . . . basically, all my test results were rocking.
*Dr Maier, the perinatologist (high risk ob/gyn)is pretty great, thus far. He asked me, after checking his notes (we had a pre-consult back in December when he tried to Scare The Crap Out of Me) if I was taking extra folic acid, as my mother suggested. "I always try to do what my mother suggests," I replied. He smiled and replied, "Me too."
*My body is responding like crazy to exercise now. A brisk walk with Oz will drop my bloodsugar by like 80 points! That is nutso. I'm being more careful about taking less insulin when I exercise.
*I'm taking prenatal pilates with Kristin Goldsmith, aka KikiBomb, aka the most awesome sunshine presence in the world. It's great preparation for everything, and is helping me to remain patient and breathe through the pain (I absolutely hate the "frogs," and yes, Kristin, my inner thighs are the weakest part of my legs.)
*I'm pretty sure we're going to do an amnio. There are cardiac and neural tube defect issues for diabetic babies, and I want to make sure that we don't have a Down's baby as well. We're just hoping and praying and working towards having a healthy, beautiful baby.
*I really hope it's a girl. I have the best name for her.