We be Parents

On Tuesday afternoon around 5 o’clock, Yenari was getting ready for her work holiday party and started having some piercing pain whenever she sat down, stood up, or did just about anything that involved movement.  She felt like her tailbone was falling off and that it had broken off.  Nurses measure pain on a scale of zero to ten, ten being the most painful thing you can imagine, and yup – she was rating this pain as a ten out of ten.  Now, of course we realized that this pain scale will likely be recalibrated after she experiences labor pain, but for now, this is as bad as pain gets.

She survived the holiday party, but as the night went on it got worse and worse.  Even a simple thing like getting in and out of the car turned into a painfully complex and slow process.  When we got home, we did some searching about tailbone pain and pregnancy and found numerous reports about people having problems – most of them as a result of childbirth when the tailbone actually breaks, but some people were complaining about pain during pregnancy that lasted until they gave birth!

She got into bed and actually did get some sleep, but she woke up several times in the middle of the night yelling out in pain.  Yesterday morning she woke up early and called the doctor, and they said that there isn’t much that they can do, but that if we were worried about the health of the baby that we could come in and they’d make time between the other appointments.  We went to the OB doctor and she examined Yenari – she did a full exam and confirmed that the tailbone was the problem and that there isn’t really any treatment except for Tylenol – Yenari isn’t really down with taking medicine while pregnant, so she’s bearing the pain without any help.

The doctor then did a  quick ultrasound – maybe only a minute or so – to make sure that everything was ok.  The baby was moving around, the heart was beating, and the doctor said that everything looked perfect – we were both very relieved.  Sadly they didn’t give us a picture of this ultrasound, so there’s nothing to share (come on, even Alden got a photo from his ultrasound).  The doctor said that hopefully the tailbone was injured and if so, it is likely to heal in a few days or weeks, but in the worst case it could last for a lot longer.

Yenari called in sick to work yesterday and was off today anyway, so she’s been taking it easy and learning some tricks on how to get out of bed, sit down (though she tries to avoid sitting whenever possible), sew while standing up (yup, there’s no stopping the sewing sweatshop in this house), and how to get into a car without screaming.   Last night, as we were driving from store to store trying to find a cushion that would help her sit more comfortably (no luck in finding one, however) she started in the front seat leaning forward to shift her weight off her butt, but after a stop or two decided that it was better to lie down in the back seat of the car.

Her tailbone still feels bad now, but it feels better than it did yesterday, so we’re hoping that she’ll be in the ‘lucky’ crowd that only suffers through this for a few days.  Wish her luck!

On Wednesday, just before flying out to Connecticut for Thanksgiving, we stopped at the Stanford Children’s Hospital for genetic testing.  We went a week earlier to learn about the process and for them to take some blood from Yenari’s fingertip.  This time we went for an ultrasound.  They do ultrasounds to measure the neck fold to gauge the likelihood of the baby having Down Syndrome.  Because they’re trying to measure something so small (just a couple of millimeters) they need the baby to be in a very specific position – a perfect profile shot.

Our baby wasn’t quite cooperating with the profile shot.  The technician started by trying from different angles, but quickly progressed to shaking Yenari’s belly, asking her to cough, and finally asking her to roll side to side really quickly in order to shake the baby into a new position.  Yenari had to drink a ton of water before the ultrasound to make sure that it was clear, so the the shaking and rocking and rolling wasn’t very fun for her.  On the plus side, however, we got to watch the ultrasound for about ten or fifteen minutes which was really exciting.  Here’s a shot:

Third Ultrasound

In both pictures, but especially visible in the rightmost image, you can see the baby’s five fingers (yes! five fingers!) are waving (high five!) next to the baby’s head.  When the ultrasound was starting the baby was either jumping around or having some serious hiccups, so there was quite a bit of movement.  After all the trying, the technician couldn’t get the right position, so the doctor came in, and with her, she brought a new technique: shaking Yenari’s belly with the probe and making sound effects – it worked immediately.  We were all pretty sure it was the sound effects that did it.

The final measurement was just 1.4mm – anything less that 3mm is good, so we were happy.  The doctor took the measurements and the results from Yenari’s earlier blood test and gave us the good news that we’re in the lowest range of risk, with less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of Down Syndrome.  We still need to go back once more so that they can do a more detailed blood test in the second trimester, but the early indications are looking good!

We went for our follow-up ultrasound on October 21st to make sure that the fetus was developing properly.  This time we met with another doctor – the doctor was male, not female like the last, so Yenari was a little uncomfortable at first, but he was great and was so enthusiastic about everything.  Here’s a picture of the ultrasound:

Again, the baby is marked off with plus sign here.  In the 11 days since the first ultrasound, the baby grew from 0.46 cm up to 1.4 cm.  The doctor said that everything looked perfect and that the baby grew the right amount in the 11 days and that it was probably younger than we thought because Yenari probably ovulated later in her cycle than we thought (too much information for you internet?). In the picture, the baby’s head is at the bottom facing right and the ‘tail’ is at the top.  The doctor pointed out that the baby’s spine was formed and the location of the yolk sack.

The other thing that was awesome was that he let us listen to the heartbeat.  He turned on the microphone (yeah, internal ultrasound!) and a super-fast heart beat filled the room – a beat of 150 beats a minute.

We were very relieved and super excited after this visit – we learned that everything was going as expected, got a new ultrasound picture to obsess over, and learned that a male OBGYN is A-OK.

We went for the first appointment with the doctor on October 10th – Yenari was supposed to be at about 7 and a half weeks, and she was scheduled for her first ultrasound.  Here it is (click for a larger version):

In the image on top, the plus sign shows where the fetus is.  They made the plus marks to measure the size of the fetus.  Going into the appointment, we thought that Yenari was seven and half weeks pregnant, but the ultrasound showed that she was only six weeks and one day pregnant.  The doctor said that we needed to have a follow-up ultrasound in ten days to make sure that the fetus is growing and that the small size didn’t indicate a problem.  Despite the worry of the smaller size, it was so exciting to see the baby on the monitor and to see its little heart flickering on the screen.

The first time we went to the doctor’s office for Yenari’s pregnancy we went to meet with the OB nurse so that she could give us information about pregnancy in general and also review how Palo Alto Medical Foundation plans doctor’s visits, labs, and all of the other fun medical stuff.

The nurse was very friendly and happy – she is also preggers too (we be preggers together) – and she said that the first doctors visit, only a week and a half away, would include an ultrasound…here’s how the conversation went….

OB Nurse: On your first visit with the doctor, we’ll do the first ultrasound

Us: Great!

OB Nurse: Because you’ll only be 7 weeks the normal ultrasound can’t detect the baby, so this ultrasound will be internal

Yenari: (starting to look concerned)

OB Nurse: If we do that we can see how the fetus is doing and make sure that everything is going ok.

Yenari: (still thinking about the internal ultrasound, not paying attention)

OB Nurse: It’s great that you can get a photo of the ultrasound so early in your pregnancy

Yenari: How big is it? (still thinking about that internal ultrasound probe)

OB Nurse: (enthusiastically) We can make it as big as you want!

Yenari: (shocked, mouth wide open, thinking ‘Who would want a big probe?!?!?!?’)

Greg: Umm…I think she was asking about how big the internal probe is

OB Nurse: (turning beet red in a matter of a second) Oh my goodness – I’m so sorry, I was talking about the photo! Don’t worry – the probe is really small!

All three of us: (cracking up)

Yenari: (relieved…)

So, we learned early on, pregnancy is a tricky thing and you’ve got to have a sense of humor about it…