12w3d and meeting our gynae for the first time

Today was the big day when we met the doctor who will deliver our baby and we had the NT scan. I had been feeling very anxious prior to this appointment. In fact I have been in a weird space….anxious, slightly down and depressed, emotionally flat and very tired. I tried to describe it to my therapist and I guess it’s a case of having held myself together for the first trimester reasonably well but as we reached the end suddenly feeling as though my coping resources were wearing pretty thin and just feeling exhausted by the whole thing. You know that pressure cooker feeling when a big cry might be just what you need? That’s been me.

So going into this appointment wasn’t easy. I slept badly and woke up at 4.30am with a headache. Fortunately I fell asleep for another hour later on and so felt a bit better by the time we left the house. Unfortunately when we got to the appointment we were told that there had been an unexpected delivery (2…as it turns out…sisters!!!!), and the doc was running an hour late. So we waited and waited and waited some more….isn’t that one of the defining experiences of infertility though? The endless wait. Eventually we were called in and of course there was a lot of information that she needed to gather. The doctor seems nice…a slightly quirky sense of humour that I didn’t always get, but an essentially nice person who seems to know what she’s doing. She also seemed familiar with my protocol and was quite happy for me to stay on clexane for the rest of the pregnancy, up until 6 weeks post partum. This was a relief as I assumed I’d have some convincing to do. Finally it came time for the scan. The whole time we were talking and planning I wanted to say ‘well of course this is all irrelevant if my baby has died’. Isn’t it awful that, that’s my thought process…but there it is, that’s just the reality.

But my baby hadn’t died! There he or she was in all its splendid glory, snuggled in my womb sucking his or her thumb. The epitome of cuteness. All the measurements were good and we will hopefully get our risk profile by Monday. I’m not too concerned as the donor eggs are 23 years old and so our risk should be reasonably low. 

So that’s the good news for today. It still feels totally and utterly surreal …after 4 years of struggle and pain we may finally take our baby home in 6 short months.