What a day!

4/29/08

Today we were scheduled for another follow up ultrasound. Our nanny watched Owen all day since I had to work, so we decided to take him with us to the appointment. The ultrasound went great, we were able to see our little embryo!!!! It had a strong beating heart, of 140 times/minute. The ultrasound tech said that the baby was measuring 7 weeks old. She also said that everything looked great, and the cysts were also decreasing in size. George showed Owen the pictures of the baby, and said, "Owen meet your sibling." Owen just tried to grab the pictures, and I sure he would have put them in his mouth like he does everything else. Our new due date is December 16, 2008. Owen will be a little over 18 months old when baby #2 is born. Who would have thought after everything we have been through, that I would be pregnant again this fast? I guess we are going to have to invest in a double stroller, huh! : )

As we were leaving the doctor's office, George said, "we better start thinking of a boy name." We had such a hard time coming up with a boy name for Owen. We had decided on a girl name right off the bat.... Adyline Claire Shultz. I am sure George wants another boy, but I really want a little girl. Since we have only boys on both sides of our family, I am sure everyone wants a frilly dress wearing, pink loving, little girl. We could not be more excited!

Now that we have seen the heartbeat, and everything looks good, I think we are going to start telling everyone the great news!!

These are 2 pictures from the ultrasound. You can see the yolk sac on the left, and the embryo on the right.

Another ultrasound

4/14/08

I was so nervous when I arrived at the doctor's office today. I knew that some of the wondering would come to an end. During the ultrasound, we would either see an intrauterine pregnancy, an ectopic pregnancy, or no pregnancy at all. I was literally shaking waiting to go into the room. I also thought I was going to throw up. (Was this because I was pregnant, or due to nerves. I guess I will find out soon.) Once the ultrasound started, I could not believe my eyes.....a gestational sac found in the uterus. WHHHOOOHHHOOO! The ultrasound tech was also able to find a yolk sac within the gestational sac. She said based upon the size of the sac, and my hcg levels, it looks like I am 4 weeks, and 2 days pregnant. I must have ovulated very late in my cycle, thus the reason they didn't see anything on the last ultrasound. After the ultrasound, George and I spoke with the doctor. She said everything looked great. She wanted me to have another ultrasound in 2 weeks to make sure we could then see an embryo and a heartbeat. So, that gives me an estimated due date of December 20th. What a great Christmas gift!!
FYI-The ovarian cyst was about the same size.

That round black blob is the gestational sac. You yolk sac is so small, you cannot see it in this picture.

Could it be a viable pregnancy??

4/11/08

I was so anxious to find out if my hcg was rising, I got up early, and left the house as soon as Owen got out of bed. I arrived at the hospital around 8:30am. The lab technician said the results would be called to my doctor within 2 hours. Of course, I was on the phone calling my doctor exactly 2 hours later. She said my hcg level looked great, it had more than doubled in less than 48 hours. She said she thought we just didn't see anything on the ultrasound because I was not far enough along in the pregnancy. She wanted me to have another ultrasound on Monday to follow up on the ovarian cysts, and to look for a gestational sac. This has been such a waiting game, and I am not good at waiting!!!

Ohh noooo!

4/9/08

I didn't sleep very well last night. I kept waking up to pain in my left lower abdomen. I only had pain for a short time, would fall back asleep, only to wake up again later as a result of the pain. I got up at 4:00am to get ready for work. In the shower, the pain continued, and I was thinking in the back of my head, "ohh no, not again!" After having an ectopic pregnancy in 2005, anytime I have sharp pain in the lower side of my abdomen, I worry about about a possible recurrence. After having one ectopic, you are at a higher risk to have another. I woke up George, told him about the pain, and called into work. I called my OBGYN's office as soon as they opened. I told them about the pain, and with my crazy past, they wanted me in right away for an ultrasound.


Let me rewind a bit....my period was about 5 days late. I contributed this slightly delayed period to the fact that I am still breastfeeding Owen. During these 5 days, I kept having thoughts of being pregnant. Every time these thoughts would come up, I would say to myself, "there is no way, it can't be." I was saying this even though my periods had been pretty regular since starting back up after giving birth to Owen. I guess I just didn't want to get my hopes up.


After I called the office to get an appointment, George decided to go to work. About 30 minutes later, George is back home with a present......a pregnancy test. I took the test about an hour later, and guess what it was positive!!! I have taken so many tests over the past couple of years, and they are almost always negative. I had to look at the instructions 3 times, just to make sure I was reading the results correctly. I was so excited to see the positive result, but then became very scared. I called George crying, because I knew that with the positive test, and the sharp pain in my side that this most certainly meant one thing, another ectopic pregnancy.

(Yes, this is the acutal pregnancy test I took. The plus sign means pregnant!)

George took off early from work to go with me to the doctor. We were both pretty quiet during the 30 minute drive to the office. I had the ultrasound done first, and the technician did not talk much. I was excited to see that I did not have an ectopic, but when she moved down to the uterus, there was no sign of a pregnancy there either. I started crying. We then talked to the nurse practitioner, and she was basically saying that it looked like the pregnancy was not going to be viable. She sent me to the lab, to get a baseline hcg level. I got the results about 5 hours later, and my hcg was 282. The doctor wanted me to come back in 2 days for repeat hcg test. In normal pregnancies, hcg levels will double every 48 hours. I guess I will have to wait until Friday to see what is going on.

By the way, the pain was coming from 2 large ovarian cysts. One looked like it had already ruptured, and the other encompassed almost my entire left ovary, and part of my left tube. This is exactly what happened when I found out I was pregnant with Owen. How crazy!