After 5 days of depression for having lost all of our baby's ultrasound pictures, they were rescued today from Chaotic Woman at my doctor's office. Turns out I didn't lose them! On our appointment last Friday, Chaotic Woman took them out of my Mutterpass (a small booklet containing the medical history of my pregnancy) and didn't put them back in before giving it back to us. I even went to my office on Sunday just to look for the pictures!
My father-in-law, since he lives closer to my doctor, rescued the pictures today. We'll be picking them up on the weekend, and then I can finally scan and post them. Woohooo!
(Just so you know why I call her Chaotic Woman: She substitutes for the regular assistant when the latter is on vacation. The first time I had to deal with her, she forgot all about me, misplaced my file, and after taking an afternoon off from work and two hours of waiting she had the gall to ask me if I could just come back the next day. Ha!)
Enough bad thoughts. Baby's healthy. Baby's healthy. Baby's healthy. .... Oh, and pictures have been found! Wooohooo!
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
92 cm and growing
My waist now measures 92cm (36in). I plan to measure it weekly now. Should be fun to observe it growing.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Halfway there!
We've got two wonderful things to celebrate this week!
First: on Saturday we saw a small bump suddenly appear on my tummy. It was the baby kicking! Since then we've been watching for it every evening. Sometimes we even see the bump even though the kick (or punch) was very mild, the kind I would hardly even have noticed. I'm so happy that now the Papa can "feel" the baby too.
Second: today is the official end of the first half of the pregnancy. Twenty more weeks to go! In one week, we'll be having our second and last appointment with the ultrasound specialist. We can't waaaaaaaaaait ...
First: on Saturday we saw a small bump suddenly appear on my tummy. It was the baby kicking! Since then we've been watching for it every evening. Sometimes we even see the bump even though the kick (or punch) was very mild, the kind I would hardly even have noticed. I'm so happy that now the Papa can "feel" the baby too.
Second: today is the official end of the first half of the pregnancy. Twenty more weeks to go! In one week, we'll be having our second and last appointment with the ultrasound specialist. We can't waaaaaaaaaait ...
Friday, November 03, 2006
Update!
+ We've just ended a 2.5 week vacation spent at home. M. was pretty sick with some virus for 2 of those weeks. Oh, well. At least the baby and I were spared.
+ I've been too lazy to scan our last ultrasound from our regular doctor. After getting spoiled by those detailed pictures from our other doctor (the ultrasound diagnostics specialist), one gets a little disappointed by the images from a regular ultrasound machine. But I'll post it soon!
+ I can feel the baby moving! It's rather hard for me to say when it started, though. On the 17th week, I thought I could feel something. By the 18th week, I just decided it must be the baby I'm feeling. And now, my 19th week, I'm almost sure it really is the baby. Especially last night, while we were at the ballet, I swear the baby was kicking when the music was happy and lively, and stopped when the music was dark and tense. Oh dear, I think we have a music lover here, and the mother's a music-ignoramus ...
+ I bought my first pair of maternity pants from H&M last week. Gee, it's been a really long time since I paid regular price for a piece of clothing. But hey, there's no way this pregnant belly's waiting for a sale! Anyway, I saved 20 euros by sewing the pants myself to make it shorter. I knew those 10 years of sewing and embroidery at school would some day come in handy!
+ P.S. This post's for you, Miss D.! Sorry I haven't posted anything in a month!
+ I've been too lazy to scan our last ultrasound from our regular doctor. After getting spoiled by those detailed pictures from our other doctor (the ultrasound diagnostics specialist), one gets a little disappointed by the images from a regular ultrasound machine. But I'll post it soon!
+ I can feel the baby moving! It's rather hard for me to say when it started, though. On the 17th week, I thought I could feel something. By the 18th week, I just decided it must be the baby I'm feeling. And now, my 19th week, I'm almost sure it really is the baby. Especially last night, while we were at the ballet, I swear the baby was kicking when the music was happy and lively, and stopped when the music was dark and tense. Oh dear, I think we have a music lover here, and the mother's a music-ignoramus ...
+ I bought my first pair of maternity pants from H&M last week. Gee, it's been a really long time since I paid regular price for a piece of clothing. But hey, there's no way this pregnant belly's waiting for a sale! Anyway, I saved 20 euros by sewing the pants myself to make it shorter. I knew those 10 years of sewing and embroidery at school would some day come in handy!
+ P.S. This post's for you, Miss D.! Sorry I haven't posted anything in a month!
Friday, October 06, 2006
Milk Matters (or what happens when a pregnant woman has too much time on her hands)
(This happened about two weeks ago.)
I did it almost everyday. I bought some cream cheese, bread, and half a liter of milk to take as a snack at around 9 am. They only sell "haltbare Milch" (the kind in sold at room temperature in tetrapacks and last several months), and I only drink chocolate milk, so that's what I bought. I started reading the daily company newsletter on my computer, put the straw into the tetrapack, and took a sip of milk.
Hmmm, it tasted a little funny. I figured I had forgotten to shake the carton before starting to drink, so I shook it carefully, turned the straw a few times to try to mix the chocolate and the milk better, and took a small sip again. Tasted awful.
I don't know what a normal pregnant woman would have done. Perhaps just throw away the carton (since the snack shop was already closed) and then continue on with her day. But to an absolutely bored pregnant woman who still had to stay 8 more hours at work with close to nothing to do, this was an invitation for trouble.
I started out by reading about milk on Wikipedia. Here's what it says under "Milk > Spoilage": "Pasteurized cow's milk, on the other hand, spoils in a way that makes it unsuitable for consumption. This causes it to assume an unpleasant odor and pose a high danger of food poisoning if ingested." (Yellow warning light goes off in brain.)
Uh-oh. Hmmm ... Now to find out what happens when a pregnant woman gets food poisoning ... Wikipedia says: "... foodborne illness can result in permanent health problems or even death, especially in babies, pregnant women (and their fetuses), ..." (Yellow warning light now replaced by 10 large, bright red "DANGER" lights accompanied by loud honking.)
Almost every page I looked at in the internet which had "food poisoning" and "pregnancy" and "fetus" in the same sentence also had "death" in it, and therefore set off more panic lights in my head. Time to call the husband.
He tried to calm me down, telling me "But you only drank two tiny sips!" to which I said "It doesn't matter how much I drank, we don't know how many awful germs were in those two sips!" At some point I snapped; "You don't believe me! The baby might DIE!" Well, what else could he have said to THAT! He promised to call the doctor immediately.
The doctor told him that if I don't have any symptoms in the next two days, then I and the baby are fine. TWO DAYS! I insisted on taking the carton of spoiled milk home and keeping it the next two days, just in case they had to do tests to find out just what awful germs were in there.
Ok, I had no symptoms (although my husband insists I started complaining about every twitch in my body), and the baby was perfectly fine during our ultrasound test a week later. And from the moment we knew that the baby was ok, my husband has laughed at that story. At least until we told one of our friends --- a mother of twins --- whom we both regard as being one tough lady. SHE didn't laugh (well, maybe she smiled a little), said she was exactly the same when she was pregnant, and went on to tell a funny story about a cat, an apple, and toxoplasmosis.
(Note: If you are pregnant and have no pet cats anyway, I suggest you don't start reading now about toxoplasmosis and what it does to fetuses. Otherwise you may start carrying around a gun to shoot at every cat and cat owner that comes within 10 meters of you.)
I did it almost everyday. I bought some cream cheese, bread, and half a liter of milk to take as a snack at around 9 am. They only sell "haltbare Milch" (the kind in sold at room temperature in tetrapacks and last several months), and I only drink chocolate milk, so that's what I bought. I started reading the daily company newsletter on my computer, put the straw into the tetrapack, and took a sip of milk.
Hmmm, it tasted a little funny. I figured I had forgotten to shake the carton before starting to drink, so I shook it carefully, turned the straw a few times to try to mix the chocolate and the milk better, and took a small sip again. Tasted awful.
I don't know what a normal pregnant woman would have done. Perhaps just throw away the carton (since the snack shop was already closed) and then continue on with her day. But to an absolutely bored pregnant woman who still had to stay 8 more hours at work with close to nothing to do, this was an invitation for trouble.
I started out by reading about milk on Wikipedia. Here's what it says under "Milk > Spoilage": "Pasteurized cow's milk, on the other hand, spoils in a way that makes it unsuitable for consumption. This causes it to assume an unpleasant odor and pose a high danger of food poisoning if ingested." (Yellow warning light goes off in brain.)
Uh-oh. Hmmm ... Now to find out what happens when a pregnant woman gets food poisoning ... Wikipedia says: "... foodborne illness can result in permanent health problems or even death, especially in babies, pregnant women (and their fetuses), ..." (Yellow warning light now replaced by 10 large, bright red "DANGER" lights accompanied by loud honking.)
Almost every page I looked at in the internet which had "food poisoning" and "pregnancy" and "fetus" in the same sentence also had "death" in it, and therefore set off more panic lights in my head. Time to call the husband.
He tried to calm me down, telling me "But you only drank two tiny sips!" to which I said "It doesn't matter how much I drank, we don't know how many awful germs were in those two sips!" At some point I snapped; "You don't believe me! The baby might DIE!" Well, what else could he have said to THAT! He promised to call the doctor immediately.
The doctor told him that if I don't have any symptoms in the next two days, then I and the baby are fine. TWO DAYS! I insisted on taking the carton of spoiled milk home and keeping it the next two days, just in case they had to do tests to find out just what awful germs were in there.
Ok, I had no symptoms (although my husband insists I started complaining about every twitch in my body), and the baby was perfectly fine during our ultrasound test a week later. And from the moment we knew that the baby was ok, my husband has laughed at that story. At least until we told one of our friends --- a mother of twins --- whom we both regard as being one tough lady. SHE didn't laugh (well, maybe she smiled a little), said she was exactly the same when she was pregnant, and went on to tell a funny story about a cat, an apple, and toxoplasmosis.
(Note: If you are pregnant and have no pet cats anyway, I suggest you don't start reading now about toxoplasmosis and what it does to fetuses. Otherwise you may start carrying around a gun to shoot at every cat and cat owner that comes within 10 meters of you.)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Temperamental Mom, "temperamentvolles" Baby
Aaah, what better time to finish my post than when I'm home with a cold.
Okay, about our doctor's appointment last Tuesday ...
It started off as always: with me, not being able to decide if I was nervous or excited, and Martin, pretending he wasn't at all concerned that everything would be ok just so I can feel better, even though I know he's just as nervous (and excited) as I am. Good thing he does that, because it actually works :-) There were other reasons to be happy: it was exactly the last day of our thirteenth week, the end of our first trimester, the day we "officially" have much less risk of having a miscarriage.
This time we were off to a different doctor --- a specialist in ultrasound diagnostics. Between the 12th and 13th week, they can take measurements of the "neck-transparency" (more on this later), and from these measurements calculate an adjusted risk factor for Down syndrome (Trisomie 21), Edwards-Syndrom (Trisomie 18), and Pätau-Syndrom (Trisomie 13). Down syndrome is the most common, but the other two are even more dangerous --- possibly lethal --- for the baby. The test is by far not as conclusive as amniocentesis, but there was no way we were going to let anyone unnecessarily come near our baby with a needle. And anyway, we can't quite get enough of these ultrasounds.
So how do they actually calculate the risk? If you look at the third ultrasound below, you can see two dark "stripes" in the neck around where the spine is. These regions contain fluid, and studies show that quite a lot of babies who have these chromosomal abnormalities have more liquid in the neck, i.e., a thicker stripe. I can't remember which stripe it was the doctor measured, but it was one of these two. They then take the test results from about 100,000 patients of the Fetal Medicine Foundation in London, and (I guess) calculate how many of these patients (taking into account my age, the baby's age, and the neck transparency measurement) ended up having these chromosomal abnormalities.
First, the results. Statistically (not considering the neck transparency), 1 in 588 babies born to women my age have Down syndrome, and 1 in 1100 have Edwards or Pätau syndrome. After the ultrasound measurement was taken into account, our adjusted risk is 1:7,841 for Down, and 1:12,853 for Edwards and Pätau. Whew. Good news indeed.
In addition, the doctor also measured the length of the baby from head to butt, the diameter of the head, the length of the femur, the circumference of the abdomen. She observed the kidneys, the flow of blood through the heart, the flow through the umbilical cord, the heartbeat, and probably a few others I can't remember. Everything was normal! The doctor was apparently saying some more words of praise for the baby (something about it being a "schoenes Exemplar" or a "beautiful example"), but I was too busy watching everything on the screen to try to make out what she was saying in German. Anyway, the daddy was there, and I left it to him to listen to the doctor ;-) (And try telling any parent that their baby is "beautiful", and they'll probably look at you as if to say "Well, we already knew THAT". Hehe, we're no different.)
At one point during the test, though, the baby was moving around so much that the doctor was having trouble doing the measurements. She was having such a hard time that we had to ask if it was bad that the baby was doing that. She smiled and said, "Well, it's like with adults. If you're healthy, you're very agile. If you're sick, you hardly move. It's a good sign. I just have to be very fast as a doctor to make any measurements on this dear child." And the baby just didn't stop dancing and turning, that she said "Wer von Ihnen ist temperamentvoll?" meaning "Which one of you is lively/bubbly". The daddy immediately pointed to me and said "Sie ist temperamentvoll." I, thinking the "temperamentvoll" means "temperamentAL", immediately defended myself and said "Ich bin NICHT temperamentvoll!" (I am NOT ...). I found out later in the car what it actually meant :-).
So, we have a healthy, lively, beautiful little baby, who in the last two ultrasound tests insists on showing us how well it can drink amniotic fluid, suck its thumb, and dance around. Quite a lot to be thankful for.
Enjoy the pictures!
(In case you are wondering where the legs and arms are, they can hardly be seen in this picture. A 2-dimensional ultrasound picture only shows a cross-section, and this one is right in the middle. So imagine drawing a line along your center, and you'll see why the limbs are not shown.)
(Here's one of the baby sucking its thumb!)
Okay, about our doctor's appointment last Tuesday ...
It started off as always: with me, not being able to decide if I was nervous or excited, and Martin, pretending he wasn't at all concerned that everything would be ok just so I can feel better, even though I know he's just as nervous (and excited) as I am. Good thing he does that, because it actually works :-) There were other reasons to be happy: it was exactly the last day of our thirteenth week, the end of our first trimester, the day we "officially" have much less risk of having a miscarriage.
This time we were off to a different doctor --- a specialist in ultrasound diagnostics. Between the 12th and 13th week, they can take measurements of the "neck-transparency" (more on this later), and from these measurements calculate an adjusted risk factor for Down syndrome (Trisomie 21), Edwards-Syndrom (Trisomie 18), and Pätau-Syndrom (Trisomie 13). Down syndrome is the most common, but the other two are even more dangerous --- possibly lethal --- for the baby. The test is by far not as conclusive as amniocentesis, but there was no way we were going to let anyone unnecessarily come near our baby with a needle. And anyway, we can't quite get enough of these ultrasounds.
So how do they actually calculate the risk? If you look at the third ultrasound below, you can see two dark "stripes" in the neck around where the spine is. These regions contain fluid, and studies show that quite a lot of babies who have these chromosomal abnormalities have more liquid in the neck, i.e., a thicker stripe. I can't remember which stripe it was the doctor measured, but it was one of these two. They then take the test results from about 100,000 patients of the Fetal Medicine Foundation in London, and (I guess) calculate how many of these patients (taking into account my age, the baby's age, and the neck transparency measurement) ended up having these chromosomal abnormalities.
First, the results. Statistically (not considering the neck transparency), 1 in 588 babies born to women my age have Down syndrome, and 1 in 1100 have Edwards or Pätau syndrome. After the ultrasound measurement was taken into account, our adjusted risk is 1:7,841 for Down, and 1:12,853 for Edwards and Pätau. Whew. Good news indeed.
In addition, the doctor also measured the length of the baby from head to butt, the diameter of the head, the length of the femur, the circumference of the abdomen. She observed the kidneys, the flow of blood through the heart, the flow through the umbilical cord, the heartbeat, and probably a few others I can't remember. Everything was normal! The doctor was apparently saying some more words of praise for the baby (something about it being a "schoenes Exemplar" or a "beautiful example"), but I was too busy watching everything on the screen to try to make out what she was saying in German. Anyway, the daddy was there, and I left it to him to listen to the doctor ;-) (And try telling any parent that their baby is "beautiful", and they'll probably look at you as if to say "Well, we already knew THAT". Hehe, we're no different.)
At one point during the test, though, the baby was moving around so much that the doctor was having trouble doing the measurements. She was having such a hard time that we had to ask if it was bad that the baby was doing that. She smiled and said, "Well, it's like with adults. If you're healthy, you're very agile. If you're sick, you hardly move. It's a good sign. I just have to be very fast as a doctor to make any measurements on this dear child." And the baby just didn't stop dancing and turning, that she said "Wer von Ihnen ist temperamentvoll?" meaning "Which one of you is lively/bubbly". The daddy immediately pointed to me and said "Sie ist temperamentvoll." I, thinking the "temperamentvoll" means "temperamentAL", immediately defended myself and said "Ich bin NICHT temperamentvoll!" (I am NOT ...). I found out later in the car what it actually meant :-).
So, we have a healthy, lively, beautiful little baby, who in the last two ultrasound tests insists on showing us how well it can drink amniotic fluid, suck its thumb, and dance around. Quite a lot to be thankful for.
Enjoy the pictures!
(In case you are wondering where the legs and arms are, they can hardly be seen in this picture. A 2-dimensional ultrasound picture only shows a cross-section, and this one is right in the middle. So imagine drawing a line along your center, and you'll see why the limbs are not shown.)
(Here's one of the baby sucking its thumb!)
Monday, September 04, 2006
Breakdancing
We wish we could have taken a video --- the baby was dancing! While we were doing the ultrasound, it started moving its hands and feet, saying hi to mommy and daddy! At 10 weeks, it's now 28mm long. The doctor says it's "growing beautifully". Those were her words! Ugh, now we have to wait four more weeks for the next one.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Six days after ...
Boy (or girl), have we grown! After a slight scare, I went to the doctor again today. Everything's okay, and we even got another picture. Now even we untrained professionals can see the baby :-) Isn't it amazing how fast they grow?
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Say cheese!
Here it is: our first ultrasound! We were expecting a "pea", but got a 2-3mm "grain of rice" instead. My cycles are not regular, so all it means is that the baby is younger than we thought. The doctor said that if we had done the test one day earlier, we probably wouldn't have been able to see it. Speaking of not seeing anything, we're not quite sure where the baby is in this picture. The daddy says it's right above the "X" on the lower left, but somehow that shape a little farther above looks like the pictures I see in my books. During the test, the doctor showed us where the tiny heart was, and we could really see it beating! And to think it's only 2mm long!
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