Bah head cold!

I've been sick the past couple of days. Went to bed Monday feeling a bit blah and slept about 4 hours I think... My sinuses started going nuts, and then had the worst sinus headache all Tuesday and a chunk of Wednesday, so took Tuesday and Wednesday off work. I've barely slept all week, and still feel rather congested, but at least I'm getting a few hours of sleep at a time now - this is obviously preparing me for impending motherhood ;)

Another earthquake

We felt our first earthquake back in early March and were quite excited as it was the first quake in the 18 months we'd been in the Bay Area.

Well we just felt our second. Details from USGS Earthquake Centre are:

Magnitude - 3.4
Date-Time - Sunday, May 20, 2007 at 4:10:19 PM
Location - 37.363°N, 121.729°W
Depth - 6.3 km (3.9 miles)
Region - SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
Distances- 9 km (5 miles) E (94°) from Alum Rock, CA
13 km (8 miles) NE (49°) from Seven Trees, CA
15 km (9 miles) E (80°) from San Jose City Hall, CA

This one was a lot closer than last time (about 35k from us), but smaller. So it was louder, and more sudden, but didn't last long.

It's a boy!!!!

We had the ultrasound tonight and it's a boy!!!! It was very cool to watch, and so much fun to see him bouncing around :)

Here's a couple of pics! It's late now so will post more tomorrow.

Kickity kick kick!

I've had a lot of false alarms when it comes to baby movement - I made Andrew feel my belly when I thought it was moving and it was very exciting until my belly gurgled - turns out it was my digestive tract.... oops!

But in the last week or so I've felt a little movement a couple of inches below my belly button, and it was different feeling to the false alarms I've been having. Today it was stronger and more regular, and there was no gurgling or anything like that so I'm PRETTY confident it's junior kicking away :)

The spot where I'm feeling it makes sense. At my last 2 ultrasounds, the baby's been lying sideways with its head at my right hand side, and it's about 12 cm long from head to bum, so where I'm feeling the movement seems about the right spot.

It was pretty cool, the little one was kicking on and off all day! Hopefully junior does it some time soon when Andrew will be able to feel it!

3 days until we find out the sex!

Belly photos

Belly at 9 weeks - just as it first started popping out a wee bit




And now at 17 weeks! Our neighbour Christina lent me a pair of maternity pants she doesn't need at the moment, and they go over the belly. They're so much more comfy with no waistband digging into the belly, but boy do they make me look pregnant!!! :)

Ho hum

Trying to keep up with the study (got 91.5/100 for my last assignment - woohooo!!!!), work is happening, and the baby is growing. My belly's definitely getting pointier, and despite still being nearly 5 kg under my pre-pregnancy weight, my pants are getting tighter around the belly.

Andrew's parents are here for 3 weeks, but are off exploring the US and Canada for most of it, but it means we have to keep the house clean, and the fridge stocked with real food (since The Company feeds us 3 meals a day). They seem to be having fun so far though.

Nothing else terribly exciting happening. We're booked in on May 10 to get a funky 3D/4D ultrasound where we'll find out the sex of the baby, so that'll be cool. I reckon it's a girl (which means it's probably a boy), anyone want to put their bets in for the sex? :)

Aortic aneurysm and being pregnant

I s’pose it’s about time I talked about the health issues for me associated with having a baby. I have an aortic aneurysm, which is a ballooning of the aorta. Mine is in the aortic root (which is where the aorta connects to the heart), and is currently around 4.4cm. The upper range of “normal” is 3.8cm. My dad and aunt died of aortic aneurysms when they were 28 and 24 respectively, and their aneurysms were both in their aortic root, so it’s definitely genetic and not just a coincidence.

The cardiologist over here I see is David Liang at the “Stanford University Center for Marfan Syndrome and Related Aortic Disorders” who is fantastic. I was seeing a cardiologist back in Australia, but they were nowhere near as knowledgeable as the guys over here in the US.

Anyway, so Dr Liang said if we wanted kids we should do so sooner rather than later because if my aneurysm got any bigger, it would be too risky to go through pregnancy. So my Depo Provera injections finally started to be wearing off a year after my last injection, and Andrew and I were deciding whether we should wait a bit longer, or start trying to have kids. Next thing we knew, I was pregnant. How ‘bout that? Decision made!

So I booked in for the high risk obstetrician, and she ended up bringing our first appointment forward a week to recommend termination to us. Apparently they see young people with aneurysms who get pregnant as very risky because of the lack of data. The most common sex and age group for non-genetic aneurysms are older males who funnily enough don’t often get pregnant :)

There was so way we’d get a termination, I was grinning like an idiot the entire time she was telling me she didn’t agree with us being pregnant – I didn’t care, I had a little baby growing in me and was pretty bloody excited!

We’ve since had another OB appointment, and I’ve spoken to someone else who has genetic aortic aneurysms in their family. I now have more information and understand the consequences a lot better and fully realise the risks of me being pregnant.

So during pregnancy the body’s hormones make things like connective tissue stretchy to let the child grow. This is bad for things like aortas that are already bigger than they should be. The heart is pumping a lot harder to support the little life form, which is why a lot of pregnant people get high blood pressure. For me it means the blood is pumping harder through the weakened, stretchy aneurysm. So things could go wrong at any point.

The risk is my aneurysm could dissect (split). When this happens, it is generally rather painful - it was described to me by this girl who has aneurysms in her family and had a dissection 3 years ago at age 28 as “like someone had ripped my chest open with a chainsaw and someone was blowing a blow torch inside”. It requires open heart surgery to replace the damaged aorta, and is a long surgery with a very long recovery time.

I previously wasn’t too worried about the risks as I know they’re pretty low, and I didn’t really understand how the body changes during pregnancy (except for the obvious changes), and what it means.

Now I have a much better idea of the risks involved, why it could change all of a sudden, and the girl I’ve been talking to about genetic aneurysms said that in her family they seem to be getting dissections at between 4.2-4.6cm (mine’s 4.4). I had no idea they COULD dissect that small. So it’s a massive reality check for me, and the risks are all of sudden a lot more real, and it’s all sunk in.

Understanding this a lot better now, if I could go back in time and have the choice again of getting pregnant again, I probably still would... I am confident that if I do end up having a dissection (which is a very slim chance, but still a chance), that I am near the best cardiologists and surgeons in the world, and will be well taken care of.

It all hit me on Wednesday, and was still sinking in yesterday and I was very shaken up about it all, and quite scared of the consequences, but I got it all out of my system, and feel much better for it today. I hate the fact that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, and there’s nothing else the doctors can do about it - they won’t operate unless it grows suddenly, or reaches the 5/5.5cm mark over time. I’m on beta blockers to keep my heart rate and blood pressure down, and I just have to be very careful – they recommended easy walking as the maximum amount of exercise, and to do nothing to get my blood pressure or heart rate up.

We’d also planned a trip to Dublin in June to renew our US work visas since Andrew will already be in Edinburgh for a conference, but they won’t let me fly because I’ll be 6 months pregnant then and my heart is working very hard at that point, and the risks are too high. As well as that, if anything goes wrong, I’m a long way away from my doctors.

So hopefully Andrew can renew his work visa, and mine is dependent on his, so the lawyers should be able to sort something out so I can just go to Canada to renew, or even better, do it from the US (apparently you can’t reapply from inside the US...)

So that’s the latest on the health dramas for those of you who have been wondering.