The home stretch?

Eric and I had a pretty nice talk with Dr. H today at my appointment. We went in with our list of questions and came out feeling pretty happy and somewhat in control of our destiny. Well, that's the way I felt anyway, I can't really speak for Eric. Here's a rundown of what we talked about:

First, I asked him to go over the first two ultrasounds in detail. He explained that there were a number of things they look for sequentially (he said he just came from an ultrasound class, actually). At the very beginning, there is a gestational sac, then a yolk sac inside of that, then a fetal pole, and then cardiac activity, etc. On my first ultrasound there was just a gestational sac and not much else to speak of, and based on my LMP I should have been 6 weeks or something like that. Unfortunately I didn't get exact dates written down, sorry. So then on my second ultrasound, which was 11 days later, the gestational sac showed about 6 more days of growth and still not much else in the way of something that should eventually grow into a baby (I really hate the "f" word so I'm not going to use it). He said by now we should be clearly seeing a heartbeat, as I am more than 8 weeks along. He did also say there is a wide variation obviously in the "standard" stages but at this point he really doesn't think this will be a successful pregnancy.

So, options… Since I'm not bleeding or in pain or anything we could just wait and see if I have a miscarriage on my own. That could be weeks or months from now. Yuck. Then there is always a chance I will need a D&C anyway. Then there is medicine I can take to induce cramping and all that. Yuck. Then there is always a chance I will need a D&C anyway. I am not a fan of waiting around and I am also not a fan of being nauseous and tired for no reason. So we scheduled another ultrasound for Monday, just to make sure no miracles have happened. And we set up an appointment for the D&C Wednesday morning - to be canceled in the event of the aforementioned miracle. Before that, we had discussed the pros and cons of the D&C and in the end decided that the risks are very minimal and unlikely to cause problems down the road.

Then… changing gears and assuming there would be no miracle, I said now what? He said get ready to have a laundry list of lab tests. Apparently if I felt like a pincushion before, I'm only just getting started. He did want to have the results from my other doctor faxed over so he could take a look. But he said usually he would prefer to wait until all traces of this pregnancy are gone just to make sure that is not influencing anything before taking more blood. We asked him specifically if either one of us should completely stop drinking alcohol and he said something about taking a lesson from the Italians - wine hasn't stopped them from having babies, obviously. He said it wouldn't hurt to cut back on caffeine if I drink a lot, but the jury is still out on whether or not that is a factor. He said 1 cup of coffee a day probably is okay. At this point I haven't been drinking it anyway, so that won't be hard.

That is about all I can remember. Oh, I mentioned that my thyroid had been a little low and he said that was unlikely to have caused the miscarriages but go ahead and take the pills, it will make me feel a lot better. So that will be interesting. It is funny because it seemed like everything we talked about he felt was "unlikely" to be a factor, but he also said it is unusual to have three miscarriages in a row. So I wonder what he thinks the problem is?

But speaking of miracles, I was chatting with the surgery scheduler today after my appointment and she was saying that she had two m/c before having her four beautiful children. She had been really discouraged and talked to Dr. H about it and his angle was that getting pregnant at all is so unbelievably amazing - all the right things have to happen at the right time under the right conditions with all the right chromosomes, etc, etc, etc. There are just SO many things that can go wrong, and when you finally get all the "stars to line up" so to speak, and the very best egg and sperm meet and it all falls into place, it is so worth the wait. Isn't that nice?