IVF 2: A quick update (11.5 weeks)

Wow, I haven’t been good at updating lately. I do have an excuse, which is the new job / new house / pregnancy triple whammy! But we had our first NHS scan today so I thought I should update quickly. 

Long story short, baby is apparently fine! He/she is a complete wriggler. It was great to see. Baby was measuring around 5cm which is on track (11 weeks 4 days) and had a good heartbeat. Excitingly it was my first non-internal ultrasound, which I have to tell you is way more pleasant an experience!

It’s hard to believe this is the time most “normal” people would see baby for the first time. I feel like we have seen him/her a few times and been super scared that we won’t make it to the next scan (me, not T) and so I’m amazed that others blithely experience this and don’t worry at all. I do feel I am relaxing a tiny bit. Like I think we are moving forward into the second trimester, almost. But not yet. 

Our 12 week private scan is on Wednesday. It will be when we have the Nuchal stuff. Although we also had that today. The sonographer said that our baby didn’t have any of the warning signs for Down syndrome, etc but I also had a blood test taken. If it’s bad news and we need further tests, they’ll contact us within 3 working days and if it’s clear then they’ll send us a letter within two weeks. So basically we don’t want to hear from them!

We also heard back from our harmony test from last week. It was inconclusive, which apparently happens to 35% of people. The midwife said not to worry about it. They redid it last Friday so hopefully we should get the results by next Friday. If we are those “rare” people where they don’t get results then we would get the test refunded. (It was expensive so I suppose that’s one bit of good news!)

Obviously the main hope is that nothing is “wrong” with our baby. T is adamant that if he/she had Down syndrome he would want to have the baby. His sibling works with special needs and I have experience of that too, though not DS. I think it’s really hard to say what you would do, and I’m hoping that we don’t have to make that decision. 

We are excited (probably me more than T) to find out the gender, which happens with the harmony test. Otherwise you wait till 20 weeks. We discussed it, and whilst we both just want a healthy baby, I have a preference for a boy (I just always thought I’d have a boy) and T has a preference for a girl, so either way we will be happy! I really just want to know so I can get my head around it. I know I would be over the moon with either, so whilst I have a preference I think the sooner I can start thinking of the baby as a son or daughter, the more I will become excited at whatever they are. 

We have moved house finally! Which was really quite a big job… for the removals guys! Poor guys. I mean we paid them a lot of money but I think the 8ish flights of stairs at the new place probably did them in. It’s been a few days settling in – we can barely move for boxes – but I absolutely love it. It will take a while to unpack but I just love the area. It’s in a big development, right next to the river, and although we have no garden or balcony, there is plenty of outdoor space to take Dog. Including a dog friendly park literally across the street – I already met some nice dog owners – and if you go the other way, long walks by the river. Bliss!

On the pregnancy side I have felt sooooo tired. I’m afraid I’ve been really lazy and let T do most of the clearing out of the new place (not to mention my complete desire to avoid the crazy b**** neighbour). It got a little bit stressful – we were getting rid of our furniture and T posted it on the FB group and she claimed it. In the end we gave it to her (without her knowing that T is with me). I was quite upset about it but his point was it saved us money having to get rid of it, which is true. I said just not to talk to me about it. The other meddling neighbour who caused this whole s*** (detailed in my last post) also got stuff so I was just upset and didn’t want to think about it. I’m hoping karma bites them both in the ass. 

Anyway the tiredness means I haven’t unpacked much. I have done bits but then just get hit with tiredness. It’s nuts. I mean I’m lazy at the best of times but this is ridiculous! T says it’s because I’m growing a baby. We have sort of laughed at all the stairs and how I’m going to cope with those – we even have stairs inside the flat. But I figure it’s a good problem to have! And will keep me to a minimum level of fitness!

New job still seems to be enjoyable. Having a few issues with the guy who works for me but I don’t think that’s exclusive to me. My boss seems to be on my side. So my guy is going to have to figure out how to work with / for me, or he’ll be moving on. Generally I’m enjoying stuff fine although it’s always a bit frustrating trying to find stuff out when you first join a place. Everyone seems really nice, which is great. And got my new pay packet at the end of the month, which was awesome – plus my unspent holiday pay from the last job, so I felt very in the money! Until I promptly transferred it to the joint account! It’s nice not to worry too much about money through as I have doctor’s bills to pay. 

A few fun things planned for the next couple of weeks. I have a catch up with my two friends from school next Saturday. My BFF who lived overseas is one of them so I’m super excited. She usually spends quite a lot of summer here so we catch up. I’m also going to go and see her for a long weekend once we have some dates sorted out. The other friend is my oldest friend from school. She drives me crazy at times but she is still a great friend! We are going to meet up with another guy from school who lived overseas who’s in town that day, which is cool as I haven’t seen him in years. Then we are going to go window shopping and dinner and just have a nice girly time. 

The weekend after that is one on one BFF spa day on the Saturday. I’m very excited as we are going to a brand new spa plus we have afternoon tea! Although I need to find a swimsuit that fits! Also T is away on holiday that week so it will be good to have something to do. I am increasingly happy to spend time just with Dog pottering about the place though! On Saturday T went to the old place to sort stuff out and Dog and I had a lovely day, out for breakfast at our new local dog friendly cafe, where instead of glaring at him (as we are used to), everyone smiled and petted him! Any friend of Dog’s is a friend of mine!

I’m really hoping that we continue to jump these hurdles and that this is our year. (Well, baby would be born in January so I guess this is our prep year.) It really feels as though everything is going our way for once, after the horrible last year where everything was different. I am 11.5 weeks, 12 on Wednesday and I know that isn’t out of the danger zone but the chances of miscarriage start to drop. I keep thinking that normal couples do this every day without a second thought… I just hope one day we can join them.