Thursday, October 2, 2008

First Appt and breakdown of symptoms

Ok, first things first. I had my first appointment today with my midwife. I've seen her before and was pleased to see her again. I really like her and she is all on board with homebirth. It took 3 hours total, but much of that was taken up in filling out paperwork and waiting.

Paperwork was easy and reassuring. The one negative was that I was honest about my LMP and my conception date and lengthy cycles. She is still dating by LMP, which is 11 days ahead. She agrees with my conception date, and so wrote down both dates, but it annoyed me that she still wrote down the LMP, which puts me due 5.24.09. But I definitely am not that far ahead. And she agrees! So why not just settle on 06.04.09? Well part of it is that she isn't accepting clients in early June because of a planned vacation. So there is a decent chance that if I don't go early, she won't be the person delivering me (booo!), but there is also no point in worrying about that now, so I'm not.

Next appt. is Oct. 30 and she said we may be able to hear the heartbeat - that she can usually find it at 9 weeks (which I will be exactly), but not to get too optimistic, just in case. I do, after all, have a good deal of extra padding, which may make it more difficult. DH is coming just in case.

Other than that, 5 sticks to draw the necessary blood, but won't have to do that again until third tri, so that's a relief. I opted not to seek the HCG levels, because without doing a consecutive draw to check doubling, it doesn't mean much. I guess if something looks off, she'll let me know. I'm a little leery of not having had a pelvic exam done, but then again, it's so early that it wasn't really necessary or likely to yeild much result. Did give a urine sample and get a contract. Bottom line is we will have to pay about $1800 after the deductible, which resets Jan 1 (so we're checking to see if we can post-date our check to avoid paying our deductible twice).

The big issue was my blood pressure. The student midwife took it first and it was crazy, dangerously high - 156/94. Jackie was really concerned and immediately had me lay down and she took it herself. Within two minutes of the first reading, I had a reading completely in the normal range - 136/66. That makes it likely that the student midwife screwed it up, but because I'm overweight, Jackie is being cautious and wants me to take my blood pressure once a week until my next appt. Whatevs.

Now on to the promised symptoms:

2ww -

1-7 dpo: Nada. No cramping, no weird senses, no sore boobs, nothing.
8-10 dpo: Higher temps. Cervix softening a bit, a little more creamy discharge. That's about it, apart from the + on 10 dpo.
11 dpo: Sore boobs, more frequent urination. Overwhelming exhaustion (feel asleep at 9:30 with my head on the coffee table).
12 dpo: Headache, sore boobs, more frequent urination. Waves of nausea, dizziness. Overwhelming exhaustion.

Symptoms now:
Starting to have nausea come more frequently and more heavily. Boobs are generally very tender, heavy, achey. Sometimes feels like shards of glass. Exhaustion. Some shortness of breath.

There you have it.

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