And until then, it’s nightmares and panicky monitoring of internal temperatures for me!   Not that I think anything could get past the antibiotic they’ve got me on – oh my!  It makes me long for morning sickness, because m/s would be less disruptive to my day.  Still, glad to take it.  Glad to do whatever ups my chances of  everything progressing as it should.

But I’ll have two appointments next week with ultrasounds – which is good! – and likely one appointment with the endocrinologist.  I suspect that when he called on Monday, I may have misunderstood what he was saying.  I’m wondering if I was supposed to see him this week, too, because I thought he was going to call when he got the results, but maybe his vague, “you’ll need to be monitored” was actually a non-confrontational way of saying “Make an appointment for this week so I can monitor you” without raising my blood pressure?

Dunno.  But can I say that juggling work with three different weekly appointments is getting stupid?  Plus, I think I’m going to have to go back to my RE’s and bug them in person about not having sent my medical records on to SuperStarOB.  So make it four doctors’ offices next week.  This from a girl who left her pediatrician at age 15 and didn’t know another doctor by name or sight until she was 38 and signed up for ART.

Sigh.

Nothing much has been happening on the naming front.  I’m still thinking “Thor” is the best bet, but the Boy will not budge.  I think this calls for sneakier tactics.  Waking him up in the middle of the night, perhaps.  Or blackmailing him somehow, til he agrees to the perfect name.

Now all I have to do is THINK of the perfect name…

**

And I’ve been looking at baby boy clothes.  And bedding.  And gear.  (Because heaven forbid we should have to buy a gender-neutral humidifier!)  And you’re right.  There are colorful boy clothes out there, if one searches them out.  And man, oh man, am I searching.  Because what’s up with the “make him look like a little man before he can even hold his head up” thing?  Sheesh.  I don’t want my 2 week old kid in Levis.  Or a blazer.  Or stomper boots.  Or a leather belt.  Or even a brown and gray onesie with cars on it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that people are weird.

I shared our “it’s a boy” news with a couple of friends at work who’ve been super-supportive of me these last few years, even when they didn’t know what to say in the face of my obvious distress, and they were both delighted for me.  One guy, whose wife is expecting their second boy in early May said, “You are so lucky.  Boys are the best.  I love my nieces, but boys?  Boys are FUN.”

Yeah, I think I’m pretty lucky, too.  (Though I know I’d be feeling exactly the same way if we’d learned that Sprog is a girl!)

I’ve finally gained weight, which is odd, because I’ve been eating less than usual due to the Heartburn that has consumed my life (and the lower portion of my esophagus.)  Since I’m still having trouble with drinking my full quota of water, I’m wondering if I’m retaining water, in retaliation for being not-quite-as-hydrated-as-usual?  Don’t know, but it’s odd to gain a measurable amount of weight without having the chocolate mustache or the carbohydrate high to show for it.

Of course, I’m not complaining.  Believe me, I’m not complaining.  I always find women who bitch too much about pregnancy weight gain to be creepy.  The Boy’s ex-wife apparently only gained 8 pounds (on an already severely underweight body) during her first two pregnancies and wondered why her babies were underweight at birth & why she was completely unable to produce any breastmilk.  Another reason to dislike her, as if I needed one…)

I’m finding myself remarkably (for me, anyway) calm about the impending loss of my familiar body.  And it’s fun to have weight gain be not so much about a perceived lack of self-control as it is about growing a little person whom I WANT to be chubby and roundish when he emerges.  But it’s an interesting feeling, it’s brand new, like so much of this is.  I’m fully into uncharted (well, by me, anyway) territory now, and that means that I’m snapping pictures left and right.  Look at this!  Round ligament pains!  Hey!  Side sleeping!  Whoa!  Anyone ever see anything like this pooch of a belly before?!

Just be glad I’m not going to make you sit through the whole slide show at once in 6 months, but instead you get to see it a little bit at a time.

**

Back to the important, all-consuming questions.  I’m thinking Hieronymous would be a great name for Sprog.

The Boy’s thinking it’s going to be a long six months.

However.

The one teeny tiny silver lining was that because we had the CVS done – and Sprog is, btw, free from chromosomal defects like Downs or Trisomy 18, so that’s a good thing too – we also got to learn what flavor we’re getting about 6 weeks earlier than normal.

Drumroll please! (For those of you who didn’t recognize the nursery rhyme.)

We’re having a son.  Sprog’s a boy.

Holy crap.  There’s a boy in there.

So, let the naming madness begin!  Thus far, Boris and Robin have both been axed as potential tags for our eventual offspring.  As have Napoleon, Sherman, and Hezekiah.  Along with approximately 560 other names of varying degrees of offensiveness to either myself or the Boy.

In fact, the way we’re burning through the baby name book, Sprog might very well be “baby boy sprog” on his birth certificate, if we don’t learn to compromise a little better…

And my project for the day is to start looking for clothing that doesn’t try to make a 3-month-old baby look like a construction worker.  I mean, really – is khaki absolutely necessary to preserve an infant’s feelings of masculinity?  I’m totally dressing the kid in bright colors until he’s old enough to complain.  Just sayin’.

Basically, what happens is that the doctor snips out a teensy bit of the baby’s placenta and that – rather than baby-cells – gets tested for genetic problems.  The advantage is that it’s a test that can be done very early, and the results are pretty damned definitive – they’re also available in 24 hours, unlike the week or so you sometimes have to wait to get amnio results back.  And in the hands of a specialist, it’s as safe or safer than amnio.  This all sounds great, right?  Well, maybe it does until you take into account that there are only two ways that Doc is getting into your uterus to take a sample – it’s either cervically or trans-abdominally.  Being the lucky girl that I am, I got to have both my CVSs done trans-abdominally.  Needles instead of flexible catheters.

Seriously, I thought I was past worrying about needles by this stage of the game, but these were really big honkin’ needles.   Not to worry anyone who’s considering this test, but it really sucked.

Not the needle-jab itself.  That was no big deal.  I mean, needles in the belly, yuck, but whatever.  We’ve all done this by now, right?  Once the pointy part is actually past that top layer of skin you just don’t feel it.  Doc doesn’t even do the numbing cream thing, because really, skin just isn’t that sensitive.  But my peritoneal lining?  Let’s just say it’s a damned shame they couldn’t have slathered a numbing cream onto that, because it felt like the doctor’s entire hand was poking around in my belly up to, about, his wrist.  (The Boy assures me it was just a needle, but I’m not entirely sure I believe him.)

Owie.

To be fair, Doc said that because of the angle of my uterus, he had to go in at an oblique angle, so that probably made it more uncomfortable than it would be normally.

And to be even more fair, it wasn’t like I was in writhing agony with tears running down my face (though I did whimper a couple of times.)  It just felt gut-wrenchingly – if you’ll pardon the pun - wrong.  Wrong to have anything moving around in there that wasn’t, you know, gas or half-digested food.  The full-to-almost-leaking bladder didn’t help matters either.  You know, staying tense so as not to wet myself sort of made it hard to relax those belly muscles when the time came to relax.

And then I got another jab because I’m rh-negative, and needed a rhogam shot.  I just can’t get me enough of those needles!

Anyway, I’m glad it’s over.  It sucked, but it still wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, and it was FAST.  Took longer to wipe my entire lower body down with iodine & alcohol than it did to actually do both procedures.   It will take even longer to remove all that iodine, I’m sure.  Which I’m about to go do.

But all that said?  I’m still really (really really) glad it’s over.  Going to go try to catch up on some of the sleep I lost last night, worrying about this procedure.  Sleep sounds like a really good thing right now…

We’re all set for the guests to arrive.

Happy Lord of the Rings (and eating like a hobbit) Day!!!

(gollum.)