Boy? Girl? Girl? Boy? I'm Not Telling.

Yesterday was our 18-week ultrasound and OB appointment. Uneventful, routine stuff for me; so much so that I forget sometimes how much it means to Mum and Dad. I hope that my old-hat way of going about things helps to put them at ease rather than making them feel that their experience is being minimized. Maybe I’ll ask.

My cravings this trimester have gone from jalapeno poppers (with no heartburn, believe it or not) to bananas. So of course Mum made me a huge batch of banana bread. She and Dad brought it to our appointment yesterday, and I’m not going to say I didn’t devour a healthy portion of it on my way home afterward. I shared a little bit with Hubs and Pooka, but it’s MINE!

Our nurse weighed me and brought us to our exam room where I chattered right through her taking my blood pressure and she very politely told me to shut up so she could get an accurate reading. The first one was kind of scary high. The second was actually a little below my usual, but still within the healthy range. While we waited for the doctor to come in and chat with us, Mum divulged that our previous visit turned out nicely, but that the doctor’s repeated references to friends of his who had undergone IVF and had twins was not well-received.

Dr. Firstname attended us this time and was just that – attentive. He’s more laid-back than most of the doctors with whom I’ve dealt at The Big Hospital except for perhaps Dr. Badass. He had no trouble finding Nugget’s heart beat with the Doppler, which seemed to please Mum greatly. He said my weight gain looks good, fundal height looks good, and Nugget’s heart rate was 144 beats per minute: well into the normal range. The normal range, for those of you who want to know, is 110-160 beats per minute. He told us that one of the next two visits was going to need to be two weeks from another, rather than four between each. We waffled a bit and decided to visit again two weeks from yesterday. Of course, we forgot to set up the appointment when we checked out, but I called this morning.

We got shuffled back out to the waiting room to cool our heels until we were called in for our ultrasound. We had a pleasant chat about my nerding habits, and discovered that we all share a fondness for the Game of Thrones TV show.  Mum made some comment about not letting me ask the ultrasound tech about the baby’s gender, and I couldn’t help myself. Dr. Goggles had VERY surreptitiously snuck it into our last visit, so I told her I know. I also told her that I wasn’t going to give it away. She started trying to reason it out but Dad and I both had to stop her, because her logic was moving in weird directions that weren’t making sense to us. So until Nugget is born, I’ll be dangling “he’s” and “she’s” and the occasional “it’s” in conversations, just to be a pain in the butt and make them laugh. Did I mention that I love their sense of humor? I think I may have, but I do.

According to the ultrasound Nugget is measuring a day ahead of her/his gestational age, and all of his/her bits look perfectly healthy. Mum and Dad got some great pictures AND a DVD of the whole shebang to take home with them. The ultrasound doctor came out to double check on the membranous septum in Nugget’s heart to make sure there weren’t any holes in it, and to check her/his upper lip to make sure it wasn’t cleft. Given that the last time this doctor came in to chat after an ultrasound it was to tell I.F. that Tempest had a slight abnormality in his brain, this visit was much more welcome.

We weren’t able to go grab lunch this visit because Mum had some work due for her job yesterday afternoon and it wasn’t stuff that could be done remotely. This worked out pretty well for me, as I had to pop off at Best Buy to pick up a Playstation 4 for Hubs’ birthday (which is today, by the way! Happy Birthday, Precious!). I dropped it off to him on my way back to the office, since he has to work through tomorrow and I wanted him to have some play time on it this week.

Except that there was a hardware fault with the power source. Hubs got this information after the PS4 crapped out and he called Sony support. They were able to diagnose the problem pretty quickly I guess, and Best Buy was marvelous about exchanging the bad unit for a new one. The guy at the customer service desk even tested it out for me to make sure that he didn’t send me home with another busted console.

And I got to have dinner with Pooka and an old friend of mine. We parted company quickly at the end of the night; my friend having decided to buy himself a Playstation 3 at the very, very last minute before Best Buy closed. Ha! Boys and their toys.

A Real Hair-Puller

Today started out as a real hair-puller. No joke. I woke up and had to remind Hubs that I needed him to drive me to work, then come back and pick up Pooka and drop her off at school (she broke the growth plate in her right ankle, having been instructed by the director of “Willy Wonka Junior” to jump off a five-foot-high stage in HEELS), then drive himself to a medical appointment at 8:30. After that, he had to pick me up at work for 12:30 so that I could drop him off at home and make it to the Big Hospital for a 2:00 OB appointment.

Several hiccups made themselves apparent very quickly. When I went in to kiss Pooka, as I do every day before I leave for work, she informed me that she had been selected to perform in the State Middle School Music Festival.  Today. This meant that she would be in rehearsals all day, rather than school, and that Hubs would have to drop her off at the high school, and be sure to acquire lunch for her and drop it off in time for her to eat it before coming to pick me up at 12:30. It also meant that I had to cancel the late lunch I was planning to have with Mum and Dad after our appointment, so that I could make sure that Hubs got to work on time and that Pooka had dinner delivered before the performance.

I had also planned to have tea with my local Sister-Surrogate (mentioned previously) at 6:30, which would have been scuppered, except that the choral portion of the Music Festival wasn’t to begin until close to 7:30.

Halfway through the day Miss Pooka contacted me to inform me that she couldn’t keep standing all day, with her broken ankle (understandably) and that she was feeling sick. At my instruction she went and spoke to the choral director who excused her, thus negating the possibility of her being excluded from future opportunities. Thankfully her besty’s mom was willing to pick her up early and give her a ride home.

 It also turned out that my Microsoft Outlook (work) calendar is syncing with my phone/Google calendars so that all of my appointments in the work calendar are showing the times an hour earlier than the events are actually scheduled to happen. So what I thought was a 2:00 appointment was actually 3:00. This particular hiccup worked out to my advantage, as it allowed me to escape an exceptionally frustrating work day early, and gave me the better part of an hour to snuggle with Hubs before taking off to the Big Hospital.

I arrived at the hospital, I thought, ahead of Mum and Dad. Turned out they had gone to wait in the GYN waiting room rather than the OB reception area. Big hugs were exchanged (I love that) and a few amusing anecdotes were shared until My Favorite Nurse came out to get us. Not much happened; she took my blood pressure and asked how I was feeling, and Dr. Goggles came in. We chatted for a few minutes – nothing major – and I told him that Mum and Dad were particularly anxious to hear Nugget’s heartbeat.

Much to everyone’s chagrin, Nugget would not make him/herself known via Doppler, so Dr. Goggles generously suggested an ultrasound. Poor Mum had been waiting on baited breath for this one appointment, and he was not about to let her down. I cannot say how much I appreciated this. Not only did he offer an ultrasound, but when the nurses told him it would be at least half an hour’s wait, he ordered us into an empty ultrasound room and did the scan right there, himself.

Mum was beside herself to finally see her baby moving, with a solid, healthy heartbeat. I’m not gonna lie: it was wholly satisfying to be able to be the method by which she’s really going to be a Mommy. So Nugget is healthy and growing and all is well.

I managed to get back into town and pick Hubs up in time to bring him to work, then hit the local co-op for healthy dinner things for Pooka, and rushed off to the local créperie to get tea with Surro-Sister. She’s a marvelous, intelligent, strong woman who I must admit I admire to no end, and am so excited for her to begin her first surrogacy journey! We shared birthing stories, of course, and hers were some of the most interesting I’ve heard!

If you remember, dear reader: I posted that Surro-Sister’s Intended Father #1 had accidentally called me, meaning to call her instead, and then I wound up sitting behind them at the same créperie, listening to them talk about how sweet and helpful I am.

Well.

Further to that story, it turns out that Surro-Sister’s Intended Parents had viewed my profile back when I was being matched two-and-a-half years ago, and were the couple who had decided I lived too far away. How weird is that? Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if we SHOULD all sit down and have lunch or something. Too funny.

I’m home now, trying to relax after several grueling weeks. I’ve taken four teenagers to an anime convention in Boston; cared for a poor Pooka with a broken ankle; made a hell of a stink to Pooka’s principal and the irresponsible director who instructed her to jump off the stage and didn’t think that perhaps doing so in heels might cause problems; attended Pooka’s play and was as ever, impressed by her prowess on stage, even in a wheelchair; finished an audit at work in just over a week; accompanied Desert Rose to a late night OB appointment to make sure that her contractions were not actually causing her baby to come out yet; consulted with the best glamour consultant I’ve ever met about a portrait session, and attended an OB appointment that made Mum happier than she’s been since we started this cycle.

Let’s hope the rest goes as smoothly. I don’t have all that much hair to pull.