Anxiety and an Update

Written on February 11, 2011:

I've been putting off writing this because I'm trying not to think about it.  I really want to enjoy this pregnancy and take in every precious moment.  I know that worrying won't make anything better and that what's best for me and baby is to just relax.

Here's what has gotten my head a-swirlin'.   As I wrote a few days ago, my blood was drawn to confirm pregnancy and I had to wait 24 hours for the result.  Well, I waited and waited all the next day (Tuesday - 2/8/11) and did not get the phone call.  Bob kept telling me to just call them, but I didn't want to make myself an imposition and my outlook is that I will be spending (hopefully) the next nine months with the people in the midwives' office so I don't want to start on the wrong foot and be deemed "that annoying patient."

Fast forward to the next day.  By mid afternoon, I just couldn't take it anymore and called them up.  The secretary put one of our midwives on the phone and she was able to tell me the results.

The tests came back that I am, in fact, pregnant, but that it appears to be very early on.  My hCG was only 35 and my progesterone was low (10.9, I think).  The low hCG can be explained by the fact that I ovulate late in my cycle and that I probably was only about 12 days post ovulation.  My progesterone was also low with my pregnancy with Evelyn and I was supplemented with Prometrium for the first trimester.

My midwife offered to put my on the Prometrium again immediately if I wanted but did say that a healthy pregnancy is a healthy pregnancy and no amount of progesterone is going to save one if it's not.  She recommended that I get my blood redrawn to check that my hCG levels are steadily rising and that at that point, if my progesterone was still low, we would talk about supplementing.

That is the plan we decided to go with and I had my blood drawn again (from the same exact bruised spot on my arm, might I add) and I am anxiously awaiting the results anytime now.  I do take (a little) solace in the fact that a pregnancy test that I took on Tuesday night came back very positive with a nice dark line (as compared to the light line that showed up yesterday).

I haven't slept well for the past 3 nights and probably won't until everything is confirmed to be ok (read - when our baby is in our arms!).  My symptoms come and go and I find myself wishing I had more of them to confirm that everything is going well.  I know what some of you are probably thinking:  be careful what you wish for, but at this point, I'll take anything that comes as long as the pregnancy is a healthy one for baby.  I had almost no early symptoms with Evelyn aside from some lower backache, so I know that that just might be the way that my body reacts to pregnancy.  So far I've inconsistently had:  frequent urination, lower backache, and  frequent hunger pangs.

I guess time will tell with what happens.  For now, I'm trying to remind myself to breath and take this all in.  This anxiety will subside sometime.... right?